Pekin school district hosts professional development event

PACKWOOD ? Pekin Community School District welcomed neighboring school districts to a day of instructional professional development Jan. 9.

Staff members from Cardinal, Sigourney and Tri-County school districts, as well as representatives from Fremont/Eddyville and New London attended.

The crowd started the morning off with table talk by content/grade level discussing the successes and struggles of being a 1-to-1 laptop school.

Keynote speaker Tony Wagner presented his talk via Skype. He spoke on ?Learning to Innovate, Innovating to Learn.? He discussed the new educational challenges and talked about the ?Global Achievement Gap? and how the educators, as an educational society, stack up to the competition and ways to motivate the ?New? generation. Wagner discussed the culture of schools versus the culture of innovation and other key topics that educators and student face today. Wagner has served as co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and has written several well-known and respected publications. He provided the group an opportunity for questions and discussion on local concerns and questions.

The rest of the day consisted of 13 different breakout sessions that staff could choose from. All sessions focused on specific ways that technology could be used in the classroom. The sessions were lead by Pekin educators as well as presenters from the Great Prairie Area Education Agency.

Pekin Superintendent John Dotson stated he was extremely pleased and proud of how the day was conducted and how everyone at Pekin played a role in making the day a success.