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Issue-based learning is a pedagogical approach that features learning opportunities contextualized in compelling, societal issues that face students in their lives beyond school. COVID-19 is a global health emergency and represents the kind of societal challenge that can serve as the basis for issue-based learning. In this project, we facilitated teacher professional development in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic with the aim of collaboratively designing instructional activities to teach about COVID-19. We used videoconferencing technologies to carry out the professional development in the wake of school and university closures. Breakout rooms within the videoconferencing platform and an online collaborative space were particularly important for the successful enactment of this program. The group was able to design four instructional activities each of which incorporates different forms of technology. These activities include a computational simulation, tools for perspective taking, a mathematical model created through a spreadsheet, and media and information literacy tools. Implications for similar forms of professional development include teacher recruitment decisions, flexibility in the face of evolving circumstances, focusing on affordances of technology platforms, and responding to teacher concerns.