Building a Yardstick for PD Success

Building a Yardstick for PD Success: Establishing Key Performance Indicators for Web 2.0 Personal Optimized Learning Environments by Sharon Peters and Vince Janson

Personal Development a lot of times gets pushed to the wayside with all of our busy schedules. Students, classes, lesson plans, classroom management along with keeping up with the curriculum all seem to take precedence over our own professional development. A common excuse used is that we don’t have time. In the long run as pointed out in this webcast, PD is getting more easily accessible, it’s free and can be worked on when it is convenient to an individual’s timetable.

Being the only media specialist in our building, I have often felt that staff development material has been less relevant for my situation and geared more toward classroom teaching. This webcast was very straight forward indicating that today’s environment for professional development is slowly changing for the better. Three points that they bring forth really make a lot of sense for me.

First they talked about the emphasis for the online professional development focuses on the task and the individual teacher. It gets to the heart of what that particular teacher needs. Second, friends are the facilitators for the learning. Skills are being taught by friends or people one already knows and trusts with similar topic interests. And lastly the feeling of the environment is changing by allowing the teachers to experiment with these new skills in a comfortable environment. With Web 2.0 PD is not designed for educators, innovative educators are harnessing these tools for themselves. It will be challenging to make the change in the “looks” of the PD environment from the present to one that is in the hands of the learners and gives empowerment to the learners. This gives the listeners much to think about for their own future professional development.

Acceptable Use and the Web 2.0

Joseph Bires presented a great podcast on the challenges and problems with using Web 2.0 in education and acceptable use. This podcast was encouraging yet straightforward about obstacles that need to be considered when using Web 2.0 with student learners. Several points made that stand out in this presentation are the acceptable use policy revision and keeping parents informed.

By this time all schools have acceptable use policies in place. Most were blanket documents put together years ago. The idea of creating acceptable use policies for different grade levels is something that should be considered by school officials. Refining this policy and giving different levels of limitation appropriate for age groups for use with blogs, wikis, podcasts seems to be a logical result of Web 2.0. A statement that stands out for me regarding the suggested change in the AUP was that teachers drive innovation and the policies evolve to govern innovations. Great thought!

The other point made here was that blogging, wikis and podcasts are public and for everyone to see. Some parents might be concerned with their students name or picture on the internet or the student’s connection with a certain school being on the internet. Some might not like the idea of student work posted on the web. Learning is messy and messy is hard to deal with when it becomes public. The presenter talked about spelling and grammar in particular. Keeping parents aware of what is going on and assuring them of the safe environment and expectations created can be opportunities for good quality communication.

Creating PLEs with TLC

Creating PLEs with TLC by Brandi Caldwell

This is podcast in simple terms discusses Professional Learning Environments and their importance to educators. Professional Learning Environments are time conscience, long lasting and collaborative. Regardless of where you live, your learning environment has no boundaries. Obstacles that are usually talked about are: time away from classroom, lack of substitute teachers, unwilling collogues and to be cut off from others in your grade level/or department. These obstacles disappear when talking online communities.

I liked the way the presentation was organized from simple to more difficult. Even those most afraid of technology will feel better about networking if given the example of email. A basic online community that most teachers are already using that is provided by the schools is email. Most are comfortable using email and have set up user groups, use attachments with communication, subscribe to listserves. Two other fundamental tools to use that start that base for online community are social bookmarking and online office suite. An introduction to Del.iou.us and GoogleDocs with transferable concepts and skills from other programs already used by most would be nonthreatening. Most educators already have a base for their PLE and don’t realize it.

This summer my goal is to go back to school with a blog that I will visit almost as often as my email. I would like to take a step up from email and book marking and develop something that would help me to be a better leader in technology within my school. I would like to be comfortable enough using this blog and take back what I know and have used to promote this within my professional learning team and more.

Brandi’s presentation was great for beginning audiences and also a great refresher for those still dragging their feet.

Online Professional Development

The webcast, Online Professional Development by Jeff Utecht, was very informative regarding professional learning networks. Jeff is very knowledgeable in professional networking and gave us a glimpse of the wiki he has developed for himself for his own online professional network.

The thought that stays with me after viewing this is to no longer use the internet as a source of reference information but to also use it for personal development. The look of professional development for teachers is changing from classroom course work to individuals creating online communities from all over the world to discuss, share ideas and also learn about issues or subject matter. Other factors that are influencing the evolution for online education are that most of the tools are free, there are more and more of them and past information is archived.

The explanation about the difference between a community and network was helpful for me. I was thinking of these terms to be interchangeable. However, looking at the network as being something that is created specifically by and for an individual and a community the whole is a good way to look at how these terms can be defined regarding online professional development. It can also be correlated similar to the community around you and the network of friend you choose to communicate with. You can learn from both but your trust factor and interests might be greater with your network.

Another thought that is also staying with me after this webcast is the fact that students are already creating their own online networks with tools such as Facebook. Using the background information they already have and helping them to see the advantages of also developing learning networks will help them in using this valuable tool for their own life long learning.