Sharing Web Resources: Professional Development

           Over the past four weeks, I have been navigating through and studying the resources located on the website for the National Association for the Education of Young Children. This This week, I decided to visit the Professional Development section of the NAEYC website (www.naeyc.org). While exploring this section, I learned that the NAEYC offers several different professional development opportunities that include online training sessions, training dvds for use at home, and annual conferences to increase the knowledge and skill of early childhood professionals.

Online learning classes range from information regarding developmentally appropriate practices to an opportunity to eLearn using the Teaching Young Children Magazine. Early childhood professionals also have the opportunity to engage in face-to-face trainings about communication in difficult situations as well as classroom based assessment for preschoolers.

NAEYC’s annual conference is held nearby in Atlanta, Georgia this year and the focus is “Developmentally Appropriate Practice in the 21^st Century. The keynote speaker is Mem Fox, an Austrailian picture book author. Surprisingly, I also learned that the Walden University Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership is a year-round sponsor or the NAEYC. Given that the focus of the conference is on developmentally appropriate practice, this ensures that children enrolled in the programs of attendees have the potential to ignite their learning in new ways. It also guarantees that these participants will receive training in how to use strategies that agree with the way children develop and learn.