Our Professional Development Offerings

All workshops and courses are:

• Deeply interactive and created with the specific participants in mind
• Led by internationally acclaimed educators with over 30 years of classroom experience
• Designed to highlight and build from educators experiences and insights
• Research informed and continuously iterated to be relevant and thought-provoking

Offerings can be tailored to specific subjects and grade-levels, including:

A range of durations and variety of delivery formats are provided to ensure the best match for your organization. Learning outcomes and supports are enhanced with more invested time. Please contact us if you're interested in a more custom PD session length.

WORKSHOPS

Introduce educators to foundational media literacy practices through these trainings, which can range from two hours to a full day. Participants take part in inquiry-driven activities and share their interpretations of media documents presented by the facilitators. Attendees are then invited to reflect on how the learning experience resonates with their teaching context.

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• Integrating Media Literacy and Critical Thinking into the Curriculum

  • This foundational session introduces the core constructivist media decoding approach found throughout Project Look Sharp curriculum. It can be tailored to incorporate examples and specific teaching strategies best suited for particular grade levels and subjects. Free resources and example activities will be shared.

• Going Beyond Cyber Safety and "Just Say No": Healthy Strategies for Children and Teens in Today's Media Saturated World.

  • This engaging and interactive workshop explores today’s concerns about media use and digital safety within the contexts of child/adolescent development and research on media effects. Drawing on robust media literacy strategies, educators will learn how to facilitate evidence-based, inquiry-driven conversations that encourage youth to critically reflect on the media messages they consume and create.

• Truth, Lies and Metacognition: Integrating News Literacy into the Curriculum

  • Democracy requires an educated and literate citizenship. This workshop provides guidelines and strategies for training our students to not only assess the credibility, accuracy, and bias of various news sources, but also to reflect on their interpretations and build their capacity to meaningfully take action online and in their communities.

• Addressing Challenging Topics through Media Literacy

  • This workshop, informed by the more extensive course described below, helps educators become more confident in addressing controversial issues with their students through media literacy, metacognition, and critical thinking.

• Amplifying Student Voice through Youth Media Production

  • With emerging technologies that make it easier for youth to create and disseminate media messages, it’s essential that they continuously reflect on the impact their messages may have and thoughtfully consider why they make particular decisions throughout the production process. This workshop helps educators integrate inquiry and critical thinking into media making and identify ways to use analysis to deepen students’ digital expressions.

COURSES

Educators are supported in designing, implementing and revising their media literacy practices over an extended period of time with abundant resources and customized training along the way. The flexible format, offered fully online or through a hybrid approach, enables participants to learn from experts and work with their colleagues to apply learning theories and models to their teaching, develop their own activities, implement new instructional strategies, and reflect on their practice.

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• Analysis, Reason and Reflection: Teaching Students to Think in a Media-Saturated World

  • This engaging course provides the theory, models, materials, practice, and support needed to make inquiry-based media decoding a core component of the curriculum.
  • By participating in this course, educators will learn how to:
  • Make teaching more engaging, relevant, and accessible for all students
  • Repurpose rich media documents to teach both core content and new literacy standards
  • Effectively use questioning and discussion strategies that foster habits of critical thinking
  • Facilitate self-reflection and civil discourse on conflicting truths about challenging topics
  • Become more student-centered, outcome-driven, creative and thoughtful educators

• Challenging Topics Course

  • This robust course helps educators become more confident in addressing controversial issues with their students through media literacy, metacognition, and critical thinking./li>
  • By participating in this course, educators will learn how to:
  • Align trending topics with larger learning goals to increase relevance and student engagement
  • Draw upon diverse media texts to portray expansive representations and perspectives
  • Scaffold discussions and lead document analysis activities to enhance critical thinking and empathy
  • Prevent and address emotional pain and unhealthy conflict through nonviolence techniques
  • Cultivate a safe learning environment where everyone feels heard and comfortable contributing