OPLS blog

IB Online Professional Development are pleased to announce the opening of the new web portal which will be the ‘one stop shop’ for online professional development for IB teachers.
Teachers will from the end of November 2009 be able to identify their workshop, register and pay using a secure online form.
Links built into the foot of all pages enable all users to inform their learning community of the site using micro-blogging (Twitter) and save page information using a variety of online social bookmarking sites.

The IB is expanding its offerings of online professional development in 2010, in order to accomplish this a new group of course developers are required, who are experienced at development using Moodle. If you fit this requirement and perhaps additionally have IB teaching experience we would like to hear from you. Please complete the online form here and we will be in touch.
To find out more about the current and future online workshops for teachers, please visit our newly designed online workshop website

The professional development team at the IB are pleased to announce the release of our 2009 calendar of online workshops for teachers. These workshops currently appear in a calendar for each of the IB’s programme’s:

Primary Years Programme
Middle Years Programme
Diploma Programme

Our online workshop provision is likely to increase throughout 2009, hence teachers and coordinators are advised to regularly check for updates ( this can be done automatically by selecting to receive notification of page updates, this option is available on all calendars).

This year’s online workshops will begin across all IB programmes on Monday 26th January 2009 (registrations for this iteration will close on Friday 16th January).

As part of our commitment to increasing the standard of the professional development of IB teachers, this year the certificates issued at the conclusion of a workshop will be awarded showing a level of engagement, this will be reached through reflection by both participant and workshop leader.

There is a comprehensive Frequently Asked Questions section on our professional development website, however if you require more information please contact the online workshop team.

Horatiu Pop a Physics teacher from The British School in Warsaw has produced a series of video podcasts to help his students and other High School students called IB Physics Help.

It is great to see IB teachers using new Web 2.0 tools as part of their teaching, as it enhances the learning of pupils who are used to viewing material online or as a download. Horatiu has posted his video podcasts to variety of sites( Blip.tv and YouTube)in order to encourage his pupils and others to download them to help in their studies.
We look forward to seeing more IB Physics Help video podcasts in the near future, and would like to hear of any other web 2.0 initiatives like this that are happening in IB schools around the world.

The International Baccalaureate has from the beginning of this year scaled up its online workshops offerings for IB teachers. There are currently in excess of 400 teachers and IB coordinators taking part in 25 online workshops from the Middle Years Programme through to subject specific workshops in the Diploma Programme.
To find out more about workshops that are currently available please take time to visit our Online Professional Development Workshop site. These workshops also appear on the IB’s public website and on the OCC and IBNET.
While planning to have further iterations of the current workshop programme in September and October, we are currently developing new workshops in order to give a greater amount of choice to IB teachers around the world. Online workshops to look out for later in 2008 will be PYP assessment, subject specific MYP workshops and Theory of Knowledge (in both Spanish and English).