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A 21st Century Professional Development Proposal
The blog post from the May 20, 2010 Leader Talk blog on Education Week's web site raises important points & includes the brief video, below. Not to be missed!
From the blog:
Nothing has promised so much and has been so frustrating wasteful for teachers and leaders as the thousands of workshops and conferences that led to no significant change in practice.
-Michael Fullen-
Great teachers help create great students, agreed? In fact, research shows that an inspiring and informed teacher is the single most important school-related factor influencing student achievement. So, what helps teachers become great? What equips them in helping students reach their highest potential? The easy to say professional development,but unfortunately we have all experienced what Micheal Fullen is speaking of.
When I think of my own teaching and learning, the most influential element of my professional development comes from my personal learning network (PLN).
Read more at the site.
What Does a PLN Look Like?
Image by Alec Couros http://www.flickr.com/photos/courosa/344832591/
Personal Learning Networks: The Power of the Human Network
This wiki by Judith Epcke (@jepcke) and Scott Meech (@smeech) is the collection of resources accompanying their presentation for IETC.
What is a Personal Learning Network (PLN)?
Definition One: Personal Learning Networks are:
- a concept based on Web 2.0 and social software
- learner-driven, problem-based, or motivated by interested
- based on the idea that learning will take place in different contexts, and not come from one place or person
Definition Two: Personal Learning Networkss are systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to:
- set their own learning goals
- manage their learning; managing both content and process
- communicate with others in the process of learning
- and thereby achieve learning goals
Simply put: A PLN is a system for lifelong learning.
Continue reading at the wiki.
PLN Yourself!
Except from the wiki by Australian educator, Sue Waters
The aim of this site is to help you gain the skills to build your own personal learning network (PLN)!
Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) are all about using web tools such as blogs, wiki, twitter, facebook to create connects with others which extend our learning, increases our reflection while enabling us to learn together as part of a global community. PLNs increase our opportunities to ask questions and receive help compared to our normal daily face-to-face interactions.
Best of a PLN is it's personal! You make all the choices:
- What tools you use!
- Who you connect with!
- How you want to learn!
- When you want to learn!
Continue reading at the wiki site, PLN Yourself
PLN:Your Personal Learning Network Made Easy
The clip, below, is from the blog, Once a Teacher.... It offers a helpful and detailed overview of what a PLN is and how to create one for yourself.
Continue reading at the blog
Stages of Personal Learning Adoption
by Jeff Utecht, an excerpt from his blog The Thinking Stick
- Stage 1 Immersion: Immerse yourself into networks. Create any and all networks you can find where there are people and ideas to connect to. Collaboration and connections take off.
- Stage 2 Evaluation: Evaluate your networks and start to focus in on which networks you really want to focus your time on. You begin feeling a sense of urgency and try to figure out a way to “Know it all.”
- Stage 3 Know it all: Find that you are spending many hours trying to learn everything you can. Realize there is much you do not know and feel like you can’t disconnect. This usually comes with spending every waking minutes trying to be connected to the point that you give up sleep and contact with others around you to be connected to your networks of knowledge.
- Stage 4 Perspective: Start to put your life into perspective. Usually comes when you are forced to leave the network for awhile and spend time with family and friends who are not connected (a vacation to a hotel that does not offer a wireless connection, or visiting friends or family who do not have an Internet connection).
- Stage 5 Balance: Try and find that balance between learning and living. Understanding that you can not know it all, and begin to understand that you can rely on your network to learn and store knowledge for you. A sense of calm begins as you understand that you can learn when you need to learn and you do not need to know it all right now.
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