Classroom teachers from Gibsonville Elementary and Sedalia Elementary schools attended an E-Workshop presented by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) during January and February. The event was coordinated and facilitated by Terry Tomasek, an assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education.
The focus of the workshop was on geometric thinking at the 3rd through 5th grade level. It offered approaches and techniques for integrating geometric concepts in the classroom and provided activities for classroom implementation. The highlighted activities promoted student understanding of shapes, spatial relationships, transformations and visualization using technology instructional resources. Visual workshop information was delivered via the Internet while audio was delivered by speaker telephone.
The E-Workshop offered a collaborative and interactive opportunity for local teachers to explore a professional development topic with their colleagues from another school as well as colleagues from across the world. Online participants were from areas across the United States, Canada, South America and Japan. The workshop was conducted in the newly remodeled Curriculum Resource Center at Elon University.
The E-Workshop was conducted in two sessions giving teachers the opportunity to use the ideas learned with their students and then bring back those experiences to share with the e-learning community. The follow-up session was a time to reflect on and discuss the impact of the activities on student learning and to explore additional activities.