Signing up for Professional Development Activities Online

This post guides you through how to sign up for the workshops that you attend on Thursday and Friday of next week.

On January 3, we learned how to use the “PDWeb” to request professional development credit for workshops you have attended. If you have lost the instructions, the website is PDweb.alsde.edu You username is your first initial, last initial, and last six digits of your social security number. (Example: bm273854) Your password is your birthday in this form: MM-DD-YY (Example: 03-17-63).

How Can I Sign Up for Workshops?
You have the ability to sign up for workshops that are being offered. In the post above this one, you saw the schedule for the 2 days, so you should know what things you need to sign up for. Here is how to do that:

1. Go to pdweb.alsde.edu
2. Log in
3. Click on “PD Title”
4. Click on “Search the PD Title Catalog”
5. Scroll down and find the button that says “Search Now”
6. Scroll down and you will see a list of all of the professional development offerings for Talladega City Schools. You can scroll through and see which one apply to you and which to not. To sign up for a workshop, click on “View Schedule.”
7. You will probably get a box or two where you simply click “OK.”
8. You will now see a list of all of the times that workshop is offered. For example, for the Data Meeting, you will see 3 different workshops. To enroll in one of them, click “Enroll Now.”
9. If you get a warning message about a possible conflict, you can probably disregard it. This feature would warn you in case you tried to sign up a workshop that starts at 10:00 and you were already in a workshop that gets out at 9:30. The program does not realize that the workshops are only 50 yards from your last workshop instead of a 50 mile drive.
10. After you have gotten the message that your workshop has been successfully added, you may click on the box to close the window.
11. You may now continue registering for the other activities.
12. You are done!
    

What Happens from There?

1. Your name is automatically added to the roster for that workshop.
2. You will get an e-mail confirmation.
3. If something changes (the time, the date, or the workshop is canceled), anyone who is enrolled receives an e-mail automatically.
4. After the workshop, you will be awarded your professional development credit.
   

Where Are the Plans from Here?
Soon, you will register for every workshop in one place. Whether it’s a workshop offered here at Graham on a professional development day, a summer workshop somewhere in our system, or a workshop offered through any inservice center in Alabama, you will be able to go to one place.

Time is saved in a number of ways:

1. Because you can see workshops and their descriptions online, there is no need for booklets to be printed and mailed.
2. Because your login identifies you, there is no need to fill out a lengthy registration form and no need to mail anything.
3. The people offering the workshop have an up-to-the-minute record of who has registered without having to sort through papers to compile rosters.
4. You never have to wonder if space is available. If the workshop is full, you will see it on the screen.
5. If the date or time changes, or if the workshop is cancelled, you get an e-mail instead of someone having to telephone everyone who had registered.
6. Evaluation will be conducted online. The bubble sheets you have been doing will soon become history.
7. When it comes time for you to renew your teacher certificate, there will be no more having to pull your file and hand-copy onto a form all of the professional development you have done for the last several years. The State Department of Education will already have all of the information.