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I work with teachers to -- hopefully! -- empower them to leverage 1:1 technologies and create innovative learning opportunities for our students. I was struck by the blog prompt asking what elements of the eight things exist in my professional learning, not only because I am a lifelong learner myself but because I help design learning opportunities for teachers. I would agree on the importance of the eight characteristics in today's educational environment, both for students and adult learners.
Some of the things I believe we include in our ed-tech development opportunities are voice, choice, and reflection. When we first became a 1:1 iPad learning environment four years ago, we embedded ed-tech PD in weekly "iLeader" PLC meetings. These groups of approx 12-15 teachers were led by teacher facilitators and intentionally included at least one other department/level member for common relevance and collaboration ease. Learning was indeed social, and we all learned from each other. One thing that people liked was having both department and school-wide collaboration in the same meeting. It allowed them to get to know people across the disciplines, which is sometimes difficult in schools.
As for choice, we regularly survey folks on what they would like to learn and give them a choice of topics from which to choose for our now three tech weeks/year. I would like to try an edcamp model soon, though!
As a Jesuit school, reflection is a plank in our pedagogical paradigm; and as a school, this is a big part of our culture. I would like to incorporate more free-response-type questions in our post-workshop surveys. I also like the idea of designing learning experiences to include five minutes at the end for capturing folks’ thoughts or a Padlet board to share folks’ thoughts.
Three down, five more to take a closer look at!
Three down, five more to take a closer look at!
