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About Practical Ed Tech

Professional development for educators often means going to a conference for a day or hosting guest speaker for a day at your school. Too often teachers come away from those experiences inspired, but unsure of how to actually get started on the path to better utilizing technology in their classrooms. The purpose of each Practical Ed Tech course is to pick up where those traditional professional development opportunities leave off.

Practical Ed Tech provides teachers with direct instruction on how to utilize technology in their classrooms. The balance the how-to portions of my webinars with examples of how each tool can be integrated into instruction. Each course is roughly 75% how-to and 25% examples of integration. Increasingly, my webinars include ideas about using technology to address Common Core standards.

Why you should take a Practical Ed Tech course
*You want clear, direct instruction on the nuts and bolts of using technology.
*You want to be part of a small online learning community to share ideas with each other.
*You want to have recorded video directions to accompany written directions.
*You will be teaching others how to use technology in their classrooms. Over the last five years I’ve learned a lot about teaching teachers technology. I’ll share the common pitfalls of teaching teachers technology and how to avoid them.

The structure of Practical Ed Tech courses
*Every course runs for three weeks.
*Every course has three one-hour live webinars on the same day and time for three consecutive weeks.
*All webinars are recorded for participants to go back and watch as many times as they like.
*All courses offer a discussion forum in which participants can ask questions and share ideas between each live course meeting.
*Certificates of completion are awarded to participants at the conclussion of the course.

To contact me
email richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com
or call 1-207-619-3291

Screen Shot 2012-04-08 at 10.48.45 PMAbout Me
I am a Google Certified Teacher who has been invited to speak at conferences and schools all over North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Middle East. For the last year my primary occupation has been writing, speaking, and teaching teachers how to use technology in their classrooms. Prior to that I was a full-time high school social studies teacher. You can learn more about me on my primary blog Free Technology for Teachers.

My philosophy of technology integration (the Reader’s Digest version)
Over the years I’ve reviewed thousands of educational websites and apps. In reviewing all of those resources I realized that all educational technology serves one of three basic purposes; discovery of information, discussion of information, and demonstration of knowledge. While demonstration and creating demonstrations is the most fun use of technology, the discovery and discussion aspects are just as important. The discovery, discussion, demonstration framework is the basis for all of my professional development webinars.