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Remember the "ground rules" for professional learning.
Resources:
Professional Development: Planning, Assessing & PLCs |
- The National Staff Development Council (NSDC) revised Standards for Staff Development "provide direction for designing a professional development experience that ensures educators acquire the necessary knowledge and skills. Staff development must be results-driven, standards-based, and job-embedded.... Staff development that improves the learning of all students organizes adults into learning communities whose goals are aligned with those of the school and district."
http://www.nsdc.org/standards/learningcommunities.cfm
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From the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL), "Professional Learning Communities: What Are They And Why Are They Important?" http://www.sedl.org/change/issues/issues61.html
As an organizational arrangement, the professional learning community is seen as a powerful staff development approach and a potent strategy for school change and improvement.
- The Milken Family Foundation (http://www.mff.org) provides the Professional Competency Continuum: Professional Skills for the Digital Age Classroom by Edward Coughlin & Cheryl Lemke, and published 6/10/99. This "continuum" represents research- and classroom-tested approaches to developing the skills in teachers and administrators necessary for effective integration of technology in learning. Consider this quote from the publication: "Many excellent teachers view the use of technology as inefficient or unpleasant simply because they do not have basic skills of usage and troubleshooting. If teachers are not effective users of technology, it is unlikely that they will recognize how technology might be used well inside classrooms" (p. 13). How many teachers in today's day and age have yet to become effective users of technology?
"It’s not about the technology. It is about the use of technology to enable powerful new forms of learning. New forms of learning require significant changes in our beliefs about the nature of teaching and learning — both student learning and our own professional development" (p. 43). Are we there yet? -- Download a copy at: http://www.mff.org/publications/publications.taf?page=159
- Adult Learners: How to help someone use a computer, from “The Network Observer.” Copyright 1996 by Phil Agre
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/
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From Jamie McKenzie, "The Traits of an Effective Technology Coach and Signs of a Robust Program"
http://fno.org/jan02/techcoach.html
"The short version of this case is that teachers learn new technologies best within an adult learning context that provides great amounts of informal, highly customized support from colleagues who can generate trust while demonstrating skills and partnering in the construction of lessons that make sense."
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From The Journal, "One Size Does Not Fit All" http://www.thejournal.com/the/printarticle/?id=17305
By Janice M. Hinson, Kimberly N. Laprairie, and Janet M. Cundiff. "As the technological age continues to render traditional classroom practices obsolete, many educators are still untrained and apprehensive when it comes to technology integration...."
- From the National Center for Education Statistics, NCES: Guidebook
"Technology in Schools: Suggestions, Tools and Guidelines for Assessing Technology in Elementary and Secondary Education" http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/2003313.pdf
- Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) Project
http://www.apple.com/education/k12/leadership/acot/library.html
- ISTE's NETS*S -- Technology Standards for Students, updated summer 2007
What should students be able to know and do to succeed in today's increasingly digital world?
Current survey to "refresh" ISTE's Teacher standards:
http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/NETS_Refresh_Forum/NETS_Refresh_.htm
-- includes a survey that takes about 30 min.
- NCTE's (National Council of Teachers of English) 21st Century Research Brief:
http://www.ncte.org/library/files/Publications/Newspaper/Chron1107ResearchBrief.pdf?source=gs
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Something to think about...
from David Jakes (http://newtools.pbwiki.com/iltce)
C. The Professional Educator:
1. Are you a life-long learner? How do you demonstrate that?
2. Are you a member of a learning network?
3. Do you use Web 2.0 tools for professional learning?
4. Do you have 15 minutes to devote to your own personal and professional learning.
21st Century Tools -- Building Your Personal Learning Network |
Follow the leaders
RSS: Connecting Ideas and Knowledge, a presentation by Will Richardson at the 2006 Georgia Education Technology Conference: RSS is a powerful yet fairly untapped tool that educators can use to easily track many sources of information and knowledge. But it’s also evolving into an effective way to connect people and ideas in ways that we’ve be unable to before. Using RSS, we can not only read what others write, we can read what they read, and even read what they create in easy, time-saving ways. This session will take a look at the tools and strategies that can make RSS an integral part of every educator’s professional development and practice. Listen to this session
Bloglines.com
Subscribe to your favorite news sites, or blogs. Share your feeds with others.
Blogs: Every educators' responsibilty!
Blogger.com
Continue the converstation, or start your own! Be sure to check out the IL-TCE blog! http://iltce2007.blogspot.com/
Classblogmeister.com
From David Warlick: There are many freely available tools that facilitate blogging, but none seem especially suited for the classroom. That is the reason for BlogMeister. This online blogging tool is explicitly designed with teachers and students in mind, where the teacher can evaluate, comment on, and finally publish students' blog articles in a controlled environment.
Grow your own
Twitter.com -- something you have to experience to appreciate. Sign up, select some folks to follow. They will follow you. What are you doing, reading, writing, blogging, watching, broadcasting, publishing, cooking, buying, teaching, learning … ??????
Social Bookmarking
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking
Social bookmarking is an increasingly popular way to locate, classify, rank, and share Internet resources through the use of shared lists of user-created Internet bookmark, the practice of tagging, and inferences drawn from grouping and use of such tags.
Furl -- http://www.furl.net (A social bookmarking site)
Benefits of Furl: Webpages are cached for later retrieval.
del.icio.us -- http://del.icio.us/
Does not archive like Furl. "Tag" your links and the URL becomes unique. A great way to share pre-selected resources (Example: http://del.icio.us/cchausis/photography) for whatever topic your students are working on.
Ideas for educators: Create a del.icio.us account for your school. Organize bookmarks by grade level, and install the school account on all machines so that users can add to the list. del.icio.us network also allows users to tag websites for others.
Tools for Collaborating: Wikis and More (Google-mania) |
Flickr -- http://www.flickr.com
Photo-sharing. A tremendous resource for images. Many Flickr users have chosen to "protect" their work with a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through photos under each type of license Link to the Creative commons search.
Google Docs -- http://docs.google.com/
Collaborate on spreadsheets and documents -- use Firefox. You'll need to join Google.
PBWiki -- http://pbwiki.com
Advertised as: "Make a free, password-protected wiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich." -- Extend our conversation at http://il-tce.pbwiki.com -- and you will be a superstar (that's the pwd).
WikiSpaces -- http://wikispaces.com
Wikispaces lets you create simple web pages that groups, friends, and families can edit together. They're giving away 100,000 ad-free wikis for educators! Visit: http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers100K
From Educause, Faculty Development for the Net Generation (online version or in print)
http://www.educause.edu/FacultyDevelopmentfortheNetGeneration/6071
From Educause, Cultivating Careers: Professional Development for Campus IT (online version or in print)
http://educause.edu/cultivatingcareers
Edited by EDUCAUSE Vice President Cynthia Golden and written by top leaders in the industry who have distinguished themselves and their organizations for sharpening others' skills, institutional savvy, and ability to lead.
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (online version or in print)
http://books.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/
Successful Solutions for Technology Professional Development
by Janet Corder and Joan Gore, $34.95 from Brewer Publishing
Technology Staff Development Programs: A Leadership Sourcebook for School Administrators,
by Gerald D. Bailey and Dan Lumley. ISBN: 0590492209, March 1994, Scholastic Press. (Amazon.com link)
101 Activities for Creating Effective Technology Staff Development Programs, A Sourcebook of Games, Stories, Role-Playing, and Learning Exercises for Administrators, by Gerald D. Bailey and Gwen, L. Bailey. ISBN 0590497480, May 1995, Scholastic Press. (Amazon.com link)
Audio reflection (aka Podcast) using GarageBand
-- http://www6.district125.k12.il.us/staffdev/tutorial/GB-recording.pdf
What have you learned? How will you take your learning to the next level? What will success look like? How will you know you have arrived? What was your biggest "ah ha" moment? Why is adult-learning theory critical to professional development? How does professional development of the adults in schools promote and enhance student learning? What challenges and opportunities can you identify?
Group 1 response
Group 2 response
Group 3 response
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