Thinking Out Loud
Research Development Portfolio
My initial thoughts:
Student success is directly linked to teacher quality. Many teachers aren’t fully comfortable in a classroom until their experience level reaches between five and seven years. If school districts are to retain quality instructors within the field of education, then they need to develop meaningful, continuous, engaging forms of professional development; a critical aspect of school reform. Teachers need to connect with other teachers. Unfortunately, teaching is a profession of isolation where you go to your classroom and spend the day teaching; interaction with peers and other professionals is limited. Current models of professional development within many school districts are disconnected. Teachers are often given one dose of a prescription with no follow-up time for exploration or continuity. This is not effective, often resulting in poor use of time, disengaged participants, and no application.
Teacher networks and professional learning communities have been shown to be very effective models for encouraging teacher professional development. These networks are successful due to the relationships teachers build, exposure to inquiry based research and the continuity of the professional development projects. Now there is a new phenomenon: the use of technology to enhance the notion of developing a personal learning network. Technology, in particular social networks, empower teachers to connect with other professionals who have the same interests and issues in a continual learning environment. The digital environment allows for customization of professional development in an efficient and fiscally responsible manner.
Here is a snapshot: An author releases a text to Heinemann, The Digital Writing Workshop. The author has created a social network via a free collaborative website,www.ning.com. In this environment, the author provides links to all the digital references in the book, develops discussion forums for each chapter and provides links to videos that support the philosophies behind digital teaching and learning. He (and his colleagues) promote the book and the companion website via social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. A webinar is held via the National Council for the Teachers of English and a series of podcasts are created in conjunction with the National Writing Project involving the teachers highlighted in the book. These projects are archived and accessible to teachers who purchase the book and/or those that join the Ning. The digital connections teachers are able to make through the purchase of this text are abundant. A very different process than just purchasing a text and reading it in isolation.
Critics may ask:
Where will the time and money will come from to train people?
What will happen if we give teachers access to these tools? Will they abuse the privileges?
Are teachers able to develop the concepts needed to learn within the digital environments?
Questions
- In what ways can social networking and other online collaborative technologies enable teachers to develop effective professional development programs or personal learning networks?
- Creating a sense of community through a teacher network provides an environment where teachers feel connected and comfortable and want to contribute. How can this be enacted through online technologies?
- In what ways could this help teachers create their own personal networks and then translate these ideas to students?
- If we help teachers to create these social learning networks within their schools and they see the power in connecting with others, in what ways will that transform into a paradigm shift and allow them to see teaching and learning in a different way?
1Rob Jacobs
wrote on 1 October 2009 at 4:10
I think the technology goes beyond just creating personal learning networks. Technology can radically re-define the very nature of a professional learning community.
No longer is the work of educational teams limited to face-to-face around the table collaboration. No longer is specialization or the knowledge base limited to who is physically sitting in the meeting. No longer is email viewed as the technology of choice for collaboration. No longer are teams limited by geography. No longer should great ideas remain trapped inside particular grade levels, departments, or schools. Technology has allowed us to change all that. Technology has created a new reality.
The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative
http://educationinnovation.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/07/welcome-to-the-revolution-the-professional-networked-learning-collaborative.html
First, technology enables different types of relationships. Virtual relationships are now possible and have become commonplace outside of educational settings. Networks of all sorts (Facbebook, Ning, Twitter, etc.) webcams, Skype, etc. have changed the very definition of presence. Second, technology has changed who is part of the team. Team members can now be virtual. Members no longer tied to geographic limitation can provide input, ideas, and collaborate in real-time for any location on the globe. The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative enabled through technology expands the borders of membership to include specialist, consultants, district staff, etc as part of the team.
The person is the portal to the network. The person is an autonomous communication and collaboration node. Each member can potentially leverage not only their network, but also the network of others who are in their network. This principle is known as Metcalfe’s Law. The number of potential connections between nodes grows more quickly than the number of nodes. The total value of the network where each node can reach every other node in the network grows with the square of the number of nodes. In other words, when PNLC members connect their networks, it creates more value than the sum of networks independently.
The essence of the PNLC is that the “who” of potential members and collaborators is increased exponentially because of individual members networking through collaborative technology platforms, the “what.”
As sociologist Barry Wellman said, “Each person operates his networks to obtain information, collaboration, orders, support, sociability, and a sense of belonging”
So, just at the individual educator has become networked, so too must the Professional Learning Community. And when a PLC becomes networked, it becomes something different. The PLC becomes the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative.
Anyways, great post. A lot to think about. Will follow on Twitter too.
2Sara Beachamp-Hicks
wrote on 1 October 2009 at 14:50
Thanks, Rob, for your thoughts. I especially liked the quote from sociologist, Barry Wellman, “Each person operates his networks to obtain information, collaboration, orders, support, sociability, and a sense of belonging”. I am particularly interested in the ways in which the experience of working and learning withing a personal learning community can expand the teacher’s view of variety of ways students can learn. Your comment (and link to your blog) gave me several reference points. Thanks much! (and thanks for the follow on Twitter! Will connect there also!)
3XYZZY
wrote on 2 October 2009 at 5:38
Interesting notion: “Teacher networks and professional learning communities have been shown to be very effective models for encouraging teacher professional development.”
Of course, this assumes a level of attachment to a ‘networked’ idea of teaching and learning that is not ubiquitous in classrooms. The studies that show PLCs to be efficacious are those that focus on teachers who engage them — in the non-research world of schoolteacher professional development this trait is more rare (not absent, but rare, nonetheless). The problem that scholars of PD run into, it seems, is that they too-often assume teachers will default to some sort of unified affect regarding PLCs, when the reality of school contexts makes this a highly specious assumption.
Be wary of this tendency to generalize — it affects teacher researchers and teacher educators at least as often as it does teachers.
4Frank McPherson
wrote on 23 November 2009 at 16:44
I think there is a relationship between a how teachers use technology in there personal lives and how they use technology in the classroom. I also supect there might be a connection between technology and attracting new teachers.