Faculty Learning: Scoring a Basket!

What are the barriers that impede teachers growth as learners?

The most common answer is usually a lack of time, unfortunately in some cases I believe that there is also a lack of motivation.

On Monday, we had a Staff Development day and the administration required faculty to attend at least one technology session.

I was thrilled with the opportunity but I realized that some of my colleagues would not have attended otherwise; that left me with several things to consider about professional development.

Among other things I wondered:
1. How do we make the sessions meaningful?
2. What is the best way to present a new digital tool?
3. How do we engage and keep faculty motivated to integrate the tool?

Here is my take at possible answers to the questions:
1. In order to make a session meaningful to teachers it has to be a hands-on session. Teachers should have the opportunity to create during the session. The topic has to be relevant to their subject area and applicable to a lesson.
2. One good way to present a digital tool is to show an application of that tool. I've seen lots of great presentations at SlideShare that show a particular tool with bullet points about possible applications but rarely linked to an actual example. If I am able to show how I integrated a tool into my own curriculum and demonstrate it's usefulness for student learning I am sure that it would be easier to convince teachers to give it a try.

3. Once a teacher is engaged it is very important to follow-up their progress. Sometimes a teacher is willing to try a new tool but when they are alone in their classroom and stumble upon some difficulties they might be tempted to drop it. If the mountain doesn't come to you, you have to go to the mountain!

I like to document ideas that people have shared with me about a particular project and then after a few days  e-mail them or stop by their classroom to ask them about their idea. With this method I've been successful in reigniting the fire.

How did our Staff Development day go?
I think it went really well! We had 8 presenters for a total of 11 sessions. The requirement was to attend one session but 50 out of the 108 teachers attended two and some of them three sessions! All of the sessions were hands-on and the faculty had an opportunity to select which session to attend.
For the past two days we've had requests for installing Google Earth, help with advanced features in Google Sites, troubleshooting Prezis and the best of all: two of our administrators have started their own blogs!

So what is the secret to score a basket with faculty and their own learning?
I don't believe that there is a definitive answer to this question but I will certainly keep trying different strategies!

Learning, learning, learning: Perfect Day!

What a fabulous day of learning!

My day started by checking on Twitter around 4.35 am, it is always unbelievable how many Tweets have been posted overnight! I posted a couple of good links as I try to become more of an "informer".

At 7 am we had our second PLP Virtual Session. The topic was on Network Literacy. Will introduced three note-taking tools Evernote, Zoho and Zotero. I really liked Evernote as Zoho looks pretty much like Google Apps and Zotero is an add on for Firefox.

I've signed up for an Evernote account and will be ready to give it a try.

We had a small group discussion on Network Literacy and I was in a group with Ohio teachers. Our discussion circled around Effectiveness (so many links to click, so little time!) and Ethical uses (copyright and safety).

The last part of the session had to do with our Research Project. Sheryl walked us through the steps of the project and showed us a few samples. As a good multitasker I created a Site for our project (PLP Research Project) and send out invitations to the team for a meeting tomorrow before school.

I was very proud of our Parish team as they were engaged in the conversation!

Had a great day at school, was able to help Dave Monaco set his students as collaborators and then create their own blogs. I was relieved that everything went well and we didn't have any technical issues. I will be 'teaching' his class on Thursday so I need to be prepared!

At home I was enjoying reading Twitter when Alec Couros posted a link for an Elluminate session.
Wow! that was phenomenal! It was called The Power of Sharing and was lead by Dean Shareski. I learned even more! For example, I was able to add my Delicious Network to my Google Reader!! I didn't know that you could do that, now I can keep up with new bookmarks more efficiently!

All in all, just a PERFECT DAY!

I created the Wordle with words that resonate with my understanding of Network Literacy

wordle.net

Presentation for Inservice

Today and tomorrow I will be presenting to faculty during inservice days.

For the Upper Elementary teachers I will introduce the Myths and Legends Creator, hopefully some of them would be excited about trying it.

In the afternoon I have a session for Middle School teachers about Possibilities for 21st Century Teaching and Learning. The session's goal will be to introduce the three major 21st Century frameworks. I will start with Alan November's talk on Myths and Opportunities, followed by a Prezi and the introduction of the NETS-based professional development model.
Tomorrow I will present two sessions for Upper School faculty.

Here is the Prezi for the session, it was a lot of fun to create!

Professional Development NETS based

Just finished the PD program that will be presented to faculty during inservice. I designed it using the NETS for teachers as a framework. Includes digital tools but also sessions on teaching and learning like: authentic instruction, assessments for learning, Bloom's taxonomy and digital citizenship.

Pretty ambitious? yes, doable? sure but only with full administrative support and faculty buy-in!

This is the Academic Technology website that I created.

This is the page for the Professional Development model.

Blogging: important aspects to reflect upon

Will Richardson posted a blogging scale to determine how students and teachers are using blogs (here is the original posting). Scale:

• Posting assignments. (Not blogging)
• Journaling, i.e. “This is what I did today.” (Not blogging)
• Posting links (Not blogging)
• Links with descriptive annotation, i.e. “This site is about…” (Not really blogging either, but getting close depending on the depth of the description.)
• Links with analysis that gets into the meaning of the content being linked. (A simple form of blogging.)
• Reflective, meta-cognitive writing on practice without links. (Complex writing, but simple blogging, I think. Commenting would probably fall in here somewhere.)
• Links with analysis and synthesis that articulates a deeper understanding or relationship to the content being linked and written with potential audience response in mind. (Real blogging)
• Extended analysis and synthesis over a longer period of time that builds on previous posts, links and comments. (Complex blogging)
  

Where in the scale do I place my students?
I believe that they are closer to Real Blogging as they are articulating their personal understanding on a specific topic and they are paying attention to their audience (their peers, me, outside of school viewers).

Although my original intention for the Digital Portfolio project is for students to reflect on their own learning through a series of structured assignments, I would like to shift my focus and challenge the students to write on a regular basis. I would love to see their writing continuously reflecting and extending their knowledge beyond what is covered in the classroom.

Our challenge? Move to Complex blogging!

Professional Development

Had a great exchange of e-mails about ideas for incentives for faculty professional development.
Last bit of good news, big prizes is a go!
I need to come up with a PD model a.s.a.p since I had great buy in at the FLC meeting. Was quite surprised by having it as a mandate for departmental lunches.

21st Century: jargon? buzzword?

This video makes a good case for TEACHING not just using technology tools.