Professional Development Courses for Educators.

Never thought of yourself as someone who can make beautiful graphs, presentations, videos, charts, infographics, or posters? 

Think again; Canva makes designing all these visuals (and more) a breeze. 

Course participants start with setting up and applying for the free (yes free!) pro-teacher account and then plunge into templates, elements, design choices, branding, video, student use, and much more. Participants are encouraged to build designs they can immediately use in their classroom keeping the learning practical and useful.

Michael Boll, your instructor, guides your journey with helpful video screencasts and insights along the way.

Take a step into the Canva world and emerge as a stellar designer loaded with ideas on how best to communicate visually.

This course is appropriate for all educators from Pre-K to High School and beyond.

Learn more about this course by visiting MrBoll.com/canva

Discover fresh new ways to cope with the daily grind; and become inspired with a new vision of what we could become, and find ways to bring those visions to your students in this class. In this course you will find answers to why and how to inspire and remotivate your classes on a daily basis, making lively and engaging daily work, encouragement, and teachable moments your norm.

Are you looking for a class that will allow you to create digital resources for your students?  Then this is the perfect course for any K-12 educator interested in furthering their skills.  This course is designed to lead you through the process of making digital Google Jamboards for your students.  It is practical and a great use of your time to meet the diverse needs of your students. 

When instruction moves online teachers need to prepare a digital space for learning, just like the physical classroom.  Designing online math instruction requires a blended approach of synchronous and asynchronous instruction coupled with distance learning activities to support exploration of concepts and development of procedural skills.  Technology tools to build students’ efficacy in math must be developmentally appropriate and aligned with student’s ability and interest.  This means online instruction must be highly personalized and accessible to all learners.   Delivering digital math instruction can be powerful with virtual manipulatives at your fingertips for teachers to model and students to demonstrate.

Develop hand-on project-based curriculum learning Digital Photography lessons using smartphones, tablets and apps that foster growth mindset and infuse your classroom with enjoyment, playfulness, and active learning.

Ignite and unlock every student’s creative potential by accessing daily device students already know and possess, smart phones, and tablets.

With the use of the downloaded text and resources participants will develop an understanding and learn basic photography principals, techniques, and the use of simple, yet powerful, Free editing apps.

It’s harder than ever to know where the truth can be found today in public media. Since the 2016 presidential election in the United States, both the political as well as social polarization in America has sunk to new lows. While this reflects historic social, political and ideational differences, the widening gulf in media reporting, including fake news, is a main contributor to the breakdown in finding the “truth” as bias pushes narratives on different sides further apart, each side claiming fact-based truth.  Common ground and bipartisanship is all but lost. In this course for secondary teachers we will explore fake news and bias in all media platforms and its effects on public attitudes and actions. Participants will develop the tools, skills, and strategies to help students be able to break through the barriers of disinformation to find the truth within the agendas being pushed by governmental, and outside powers of influence. Our text, Fact vs. Fiction: Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News, is $24 on amazon.

The key to student success is not how well they perform on standardized tests or their ranking in school, but their ability to work hard, struggle, and persevere until they accomplish a task. Learn how to instill grit in your K-12 students through relationship building, challenging tasks, goal setting and active reflection. Students should perceive mistakes as an opportunity to grow. When taught in the classroom research suggests grit may have an impact key to long term success and happiness.

This course meets OSPI’s STEM requirements

Learn how to incorporate great STEM lessons (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) into your K-8 classroom, and why STEM integration is important. You will also learn to use rich resources, creative activities and templates to enhance student learning and confidence. The popular movie "The Martian," provides a rich resource of STEM activities. Your students will discover the many occupations STEM learning translates into.  Fulfills OSPIs STEM requirements for Washington State teachers.

This course meets OSPI's STEM requirements.
(Formerly: MORE REAL WORLD MATH)

Math is a fundamental component of much of our modern world and can be taught using real world problems, data, and examples. This online course will take advantage of Internet resources in the use of real life math. By assessing resources on the web, we will begin to prepare a portfolio of both on-line and off-line classroom projects that can be used to teach math in your specific classroom.