Our friends at the Arizona Department of Education are running a two-part professional development session on their platform this July featuring OER Project's own Eman M. Elshaikh. This session is free and open to the public--you do not need to be an Arizona resident to participate!

Session Title: ADE: The Story of Knowledge

Part I: July 12, 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. MT (Register)
Part II: July 13, 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. MT (Register)

Part I Description: Students have a lot of misconceptions about where knowledge comes from, who makes it, and how it changes. They often imagine a lone genius having a eureka moment, but there’s not much diversity in this imaginary story. How can we diversify and contextualize knowledge? In this session, we will talk about how to expand our understanding of the history of knowledge, including more people and societies, and focusing on the collective and social aspect of knowledge. We will use a series of illustrated biographies from OER Project courses as a case study, brainstorming techniques to use in the classroom to equip students to tell bigger, better stories about knowledge and critically evaluate limited stories.

Register for Part I

Part II Description: Following up on the Story of Knowledge session, this session will focus on critical reading practices. We will explore some techniques to help students with identifying historical arguments, narratives, and themes in secondary and primary source texts to track themes, concepts, and arguments across multiple texts and begin to trace conversations across them. This will lay the foundation for critical writing exercises that mobilize the texts in multiple ways.

Register for Part II