Be of Use

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, sel...

One of my mentors was venting to me the other day about meetings he and his teacher learders go to once a month. The message is change the way you teach...facilitate learning...problem-based/challenge-based learning...flip the classroom. And what did they get in these meetings? Sit-n-git, sage-on-the-stage pontification for 2-hours every month. Not a good way to sell an idea. This post on The Tempered Radical  really brought our conversation back to me this week. Bill Ferriter hits it on head The moral of this story is that we CAN'T be surprised by teachers who run quiet classrooms where lecture is the norm and empowering learners is the exception when those same teachers sit silently listening in faculty meetings for decades on end. We can't really expect our teachers to change en mass if our leadership doesn't change - right? This is nothing new, but how much time have we wasted sharing news that could have been sent via email. In my life 6 years X 10 months X ...