CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – About 400 Illinois teachers and administrators are going to school this summer, the first of them this week (June 13-17), to upgrade their technology and teaching skills at seven sites throughout the state.
The educators are taking advantage of a training program called “A Moveable Feast,” now in its eighth year. The program offers weeklong institutes for teachers – including an advanced version, new this year – as well as two-day institutes for administrators and three-day institutes for school technology coordinators.
Organized by the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the program has trained about 2,500 Illinois educators since 1998.
The first of the weeklong institutes are running this week at Bloomington High School, Centralia Regional Technology Center, Danville High School, Pekin High School, and Urbana High School. The institutes will run again next week (June 20-24) at the same locations, plus Lake Park High School-East in Roselle and St. Joseph-Ogden High School, and July 11-15 at Roselle.
A two-day training institute for school administrators was held June 8-9 at Centralia, and additional institutes will be held June 27-28 at Roselle and June 29-30 at Bloomington. A three-day institute for technology coordinators was held June 6-8 at Manteno High School, and additional institutes will be held June 27-29 at Centralia and July 18-20 at Galesburg High School.
Teachers participating in the “Moveable Feast” will spend the week improving their skills with productivity, Web and multimedia resources and tools, said Shelley Chandler, with the college’s Office of Educational Technology, which runs the program.
In particular, they will focus on learning how to integrate technology into classes, including those with special education students, and doing so in alignment with Illinois state learning standards, national technology standards and Engaged Learning standards.
Institutional sponsors for the “Moveable Feast” are the university, school districts and the Illinois Principals Association. The major corporate sponsor is Microsoft Corp., which two years ago named the “Moveable Feast” a Model Professional Development Program. The company donates software and books for the trainings and for participants to take with them after the sessions.
Also sponsoring this year’s program is United Streaming, which is providing free accounts to participants for downloading educational videos.
For more information: call 217-244-7005.
