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Flipped PD: Stealing Good Ideas from Minnesotans

Back in spring, I wondered via blog post how professional development might look different someday soon. After reading much about Social Learning, Personal Learning Networks and Informal learning, I knew there were ideas out there I was doing a bad job of connecting with. Plus I had come to a tipping point with professional development offerings. I was done with trying to make the 60 to 90 minutes between the end of school and picking your kids up from daycare, work.

I threw it out to my fellow teaches to see what they thought. They said, what I thought they would based on seven years of experience with training teachers - after school isn't a very popular option for learning.

Personally I believe your average teacher isn't going to be able to effectively jump right into Twitter and being building a strong Personal Learning Network after having only friend-to-friend interactions on social networking sites. I feel a bridge is needed to get to that place of independent, self-directed learning nirvana.


This summer I stumbled upon the work of Kristin Daniels and Wayne Feller in Stillwater, MN - Flipped PD. Cue the light bulb turning on. This wasn't just a cool article to take in and share, this changed the way I thought about content delivery. I was keyed in on training video creation many years ago, but I was never smart enough to put the human side to it. Daniels and Feller have a setup I'm going to try hard to emulate - getting teachers available to work on developing their skills with you for 2-hour blocks once a month. It may take awhile to get the blocks of time they have available during the school day, but starting Tuesday we're giving it our own try. 

The great library media staff and I will be collaborating on tutorials twice a month (with RtI, PBIS, SLOs...two a month might even be pushing it) and offering time to meet with us one-on-one or in small groups to brainstorm ideas/provide further support. I thought it made sense to lead off with videos on creating and uploading content to flip your classroom. This is something that I'm determined to make work. I hope to be blogging soon about the great successes of our teachers trying out new things and adapting them to their needs, but I know it will take time to build. I'm genuinely excited to see where this one takes us. No matter what, trying something new beats doing the same old thing over and over again and expecting different results (definition of insanity). Thanks Kristin and Wayne for the help!
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