(2007-08):  Cohort I (September 24, 2007) or Cohort II (January 14, 2008) (repeat)
(2008-09):  Cohorts III and IV Dates to be determined

Room SZB 439B, Sanchez Building University of Texas, Austin (College of Education building). The Sanchez building is located on Martin Luther King Boulevard just North of the Bob Bullock State History Museum.  Parking is either in the Brazos Parking Garage or if that is full, the UT Trinity Garage.  A Map to the Sanchez Building and Parking garage is available at http://www.edb.utexas.edu/education/SZBmaps0.php

Each Collaborative (Mathematics and Science) can send one representative to attend the training. The representative may be the Project Director, an Instructional Team Member, or a Master Teacher who will be responsible for delivering and managing the delivery of podcasting as a professional development support tool training to the teachers served at the regional level.

With funding from the El Paso Corporation, the Texas Regional Collaboratives Program has completed a pilot study at Region 19 Science Collaborative (May 2006 – April 2007), to determine the feasibility of using podcasting as a professional development support tool. Based on the results of this pilot study, the TRC is embarking on a project to expand the use of this new communication medium to support the statewide science and mathematics professional development provided by the TRC. Cohorts 1 and 2 will participate in 2007-08 project year and Cohorts 3 and 4 will participate in 2008-09 project year. 

To successfully leverage this online media distribution system, it is important to establish a cadre of Collaborative podcast training specialists throughout the state.  These specialists will be expected to provide professional development workshops to a minimum of 25 teachers during the September 1, 2007 – August 31, 2008 time period on the use of podcasting for professional development.  Each workshop must be at least 2 hours in duration. 

The TRC will fund the travel and lodging for the Project Director or designee to attend this training in either the September or January session.  While recipients of podcast content can participate with any online computer, we know that the most frequent users of podcast content prefer to do so from a mobile device. To make sure our podcast specialists can include support for use of these mobile devices, we will equip attendees with an iPod.  In addition, we will remove the primary barrier to publishing by hosting podcast series published by Collaboratives on our TRC server.

This hands-on training opportunity will:

1. Equip attendees with the knowledge and skills required to be consumers of podcast content for science and mathematics education professional development and with the use of workshop materials to scale up this training at the regional level to science and mathematics teacher mentors in a technology integration workshop.
2. Introduce basic concepts of planning and authoring podcast content for regional support of their professional development programs.
   

By supporting regional training in the use of podcast content by our state wide professional development community, we will insure this new communication infrastructure will be accessible to TRC teachers as educational leaders.

Participating in Phase I or Phase II?
We know that each of our Collaboratives is at different points of readiness for online publishing based on the technology resources and skills locally available. There is not an expectation that every Collaborative will participate in our initial expansion of podcasting in offering training or in authoring.

This year’s efforts will definitely involve some problem solving and extra work to define the most effective tools for training and processes for authoring. In determining whether you want to participate in Phase I or Phase II (next year), please consider the level of interest, involvement, participation, and readiness of your Regional Collaborative to be an active member of a podcasting cohort.   Please feel comfortable in delaying your involvement until phase 2 after initial participants help us find and solve startup issues. To allow for maximum benefit and one-on-one assistance in the training, each of the September 24, 2007 and January 14, 2008 sessions will be limited to 20 participants.   Participants will be accepted on first come first served basis as reflected through online registration.

Keith Mitchell
Technology Initiatives Coordinator
512 471 6862
keith.mitchell@mail.utexas.edu

Lodging will be provided and direct billed to our department. Your email confirmation will have instructions on how to make your hotel reservations through our block.