Professional Development

iEARN offers both face-to-face and online professional development workshops and courses for educators seeking to integrate online global project work into their classrooms.

iEARN has trained more than 100,000 educators since it started in 1988. iEARN workshops are designed to cover the technical, collaborative and organizational skills needed to participate fully in a global, collaborative Internet-based learning environment.

Hands-on, face-to-face workshops are led by iEARN Trainers with years of experience, who work with participants to design workshops that meet their particular needs and interests. Trainers may introduce basic computer and Internet skills for newcomers, or review this information for more experienced participants. The primary focus of any iEARN workshop is on the particular curriculum and classroom context of each participating teacher, and the skills needed to engage in collaborative activities, such as peer review, team-building, joining regional and international learning communities, and developing project-based curricula that integrate national educational standards. Trainers may also tackle specific organizational issues, such as computer lab scheduling. By the end of the workshops, participants will be able immediately to assist their classes to join Internet-based collaborative learning projects.

Follow-up "Master Teacher" Seminars delve deeper into curriculum integration and development, oftentimes including the design of "Resource Toolkits" by participants, in order to draw upon the their experiences and knowledge, and feed the collective learning back to the larger school community and local community. The medium of the Toolkit may combine print materials, as well as website and CD-ROM production, depending on the technical resources available at the site. "Master Teacher" Seminar participants are asked to bring classroom resources and curricula with them to the workshop, in order to apply these to discussions and planning on integrating collaborative project work into the classroom, and aligning project work with local and national educational standards.

After going through an iEARN workshop, participants return to their schools with a built-in support network -- on-going technical and staff development assistance from iEARN staff, as well as an online community of colleagues worldwide. And, since all of iEARN training materials will be available online, participants can easily return to any component of the training they may feel they need to review.

iEARN Online Professional Development Courses are designed so that by the end of nine weeks, teachers will have outlined how they will use an project with their students, and will have begun work with their students in an international online collaborative project.

For more information about iEARN's Online Professional Development Program, click here.

For more information about scheduling an iEARN workshop, please contact your iEARN Country Program (click here to find a contact in your region). iEARN-USA staff can help direct your inquiries: : phone: 212-870-2693 or by e-mail inquiry_prof_dev@us.iearn.org