Lessons My Schnauzer Taught Me: The Buddy System of PD

It was a great run and now Casey is banging her bowl for breakfast. It’s 7:30 AM and Mrs. J uploads her email as she pours out 3 cups of kibble. Her techy friend from BLHS has sent her his link to photography sites for her photography option class. She bookmarks it on delicious and adds it to her class wiki. She French presses her Kona coffee and while it is steeping, she checks her EDES 545 site to check for updates and emails links to research articles to school where she can photocopy them if need be. Those will be read at lunchtime.

The MNet News feed pops up and she scans the headlines while her Cobb’s bread is toasting. There’s an email from Ruth, her wiki partner who she will call after supper. It is now 8:15 and with hot rollers sticking alien-like out of her hair, she pours the last coffee in the go mug and gives Casey a distracting rawhide while she escapes to the CRV. As she drives to school she catches a recast of Sparks on CBC where Kerry Kelly from Wired Mag spins his vision of the future of the internet. At the stop light Mrs. J pulls out her yellow sticky pad that sits in the change cubby and scribbles down some references that will be good for the group vision wiki.

As she arrives at school she checks the PD updates emailed from the district PD manager and clicks on an interesting ERLC session on tech integration. Looks good. She sends an email to the admin asking how much money is left in the PD fund. She also has an email request from the ATA local PD rep asking her to submit her school’s plans for the April PD day. A student stops by her office to ask about the Tibet Project. They sit down to Goggle together and agree that the BBC article on the Dalai Lama was the best one. She links it to her division social studies wiki. At coffee break the staff ATA rep drops a copy of the ATA magazine on her desk. Mrs. J scans through it looking for updates for the wiki. She bookmarks a page with a big yellow sticky. It is now 10:15.

This week’s discussion of professional development for teachers took us on quite a journey and it was my colleagues’ discussions that provoked me to reflect on my own PD practice and clarify my personal values, habits, and shortcomings.

Issues

In Teacher Quality: A Report on The Preparation and Qualifications of Public School, this American study shows:

• Only one in five teachers felt well prepared to work in a modern classroom.
• Teachers gave short-term professional development activities (less than eight hours) low marks.
• Only 19 percent of teachers said that they had been formally mentored by another teacher.

ISTE's Hilary Goldmann, suggests addressing these problems by transforming the way universities teach pre-service teachers classroom technology integration. While professional associations such as ASCD firmly believe in educating teachers to learn, teach and to lead others, there are difficulties in implementing this philosophy into actual educational technology related professional development (ETPD).

My classmates reiterated the lack of time for both planning effective ETPD and for reflecting on the goals and values of in-services. They noted that ETPD was typically delivered in an isolated how to "doing” model rather than being built upon a foundation of shared staff philosophy that provided a context for tech learning. They also noted that where leadership did not promote tech PD, there were limited opportunities. Indeed Macleod (2007) noted that leaders needed more tech skills and tech people needed more leader skills. This disconnect results in frustratingly uneven skills among often “self taught” teachers. While the literature also reveals that mentorship is a critical component of sustainable PD (The Center for Women and Information Technology) in practice this is neglected as budgets are tight and do not allow for teacher release time for ongoing reciprocal mentor/mentee relationships to flourish.

Implications for Teaching and Learning

Rather than discussing the specific “how to's” of tech PD as these were well covered in our class readings and discussions, I would like to examine the environment that is necessary for educators to thrive as learners.

A good place to start would be with Organizational Behavior’s Peter Senge (1990) who, in his Fifth Discipline outlines a holistic systems approach where leaders are designers, stewards, and teachers who are responsible for building organizations where people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models – that is they are responsible for learning…. (p. 340).

Harris (2008) confirms that the planning of ETPD sessions with goals to assist in such transformation must be done as an integral part of a systemic school or district change.

One model that may be effectively built upon Senge’s framework is the HP Teacher Professional Development Program. I chose this model even though it is coming from a product provider because it has been piloted in Canada, it is built upon ISTE standards and contains elements of effective sustainable ETPD that are described in the literature.

What is the HP Professional Learning Program?

· Customizable – able to be tied to Board objectives

· Project-based

· Individualized

· Online

· Mentor-based

· Ongoing throughout the school year

· Flexible

· Collaborative

· An account in an ISTE Online Learning Community and a work space that provides a collaborative site for a discussion board/forum, the posting of lesson plans/stories/etc., synchronous chat.

But now it is 8:00 pm and Mrs. J is checking her EDES class discussions. “You know, in some ways I feel closer to this class than to my colleagues,” she remarks to her husband.

Rogers (as cited by Harris, 2008) has shown us that news of new techniques and tools travels by interpersonal connections. And this is what is missing in her PD! Ongoing connection with colleagues.

While I have discovered many means of connecting through the wonderful examples given by classmates and through my research (see resources below), and while I have lurked and occasionally added to a subject wiki, I have yet to commit to a Ning, a wiki, or a twitter#. But my excuses are wearing thin. Besides the glowing endorsements from my classmates and my prof, here is a rationale I also needed.

In Why Teachers Should Try Twitter, Ferriter (2010) notes:

When you join by yourself, Twitter can be a lonely place until you build some solid digital relationships. When you join with colleagues, you know someone is listening and you can extend conversations/discoveries in real life.

It is my favorite tool for differentiating my own learning.

That last line really resonates with my style of learning…

...Who knows? Maybe I’ll even find a # for eddogs and Casey can get connected too!

ETPD Resources for Nervous Tech Novices

There are lots of links inside these ASCD headings:

ISSUES IN TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION

CLEARINGHOUSES OF ONLINE RESOURCES FOR EDUCATORS

GETTING STARTED: BEHIND THE SCENES AND IN THE CLASSROOM

Recommended Blogs: Great One Stop Shopping!

ASCD has launched a new teacher network called the EDge.

Our version: ASCD Canadian Education Network

B.C. Teachers' Association PD Guidelines

Toolkit for Mentoring

Ongoing ETPD

And finally......

How you know if your PD was ineffective:

http://southbronxschool.blogspot.com/2008/12/numb-nuts-gave-professional-development.html

References

Goldman, H. (2008, March/April). Preparing teachers for digital age learners. Learning and Leading with Technology, 10.

Harris, J. (2008, February). One size doesn't fit all: Customizing educational technology professional development. Learning and Leading with Technology, 18-23.

Harris, J. (2008, May). One size doesn't fit all: Customizing educational technology professional development. Learning and Leading with Technology, 22-25.

Liberman, W. (2008, Sept-Oct). Online connections: A new approach to PD.

http://www.teachmag.com/teachmag_archives.html

Macleod, S. (2007, November). An absence of leadership. Learning and Leading with Technology, 17.

Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday.