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Professional Development while on Winter Vacation
This past week in Maine, USA we had our February Winter Break. For those of us who enjoy skiing and outdoor winter activities it was a stellar week. Well, almost, at the end of the week in ski country, we had some very windy days where the ski lifts were closed and since it was -25F below zero, I chose to stay home at camp, warm and cozy finishing up my readings, listenings and reflections for the K12 Online Conference. You are probably thinking wasn't the Conference was held back in October 2006? You are correct! But, since the activities are online, and FREE, you can access them whenever you would like. These online activities are getting better with age! This time I found a great podcast which jolted my thinking about continued professional development, something we are all dealing with, whether we are on the delivery end or the receiving end.
Listened to an event called Professional Development with Fries by Ewan McIntosh, from Edinburgh, Scotland. During Ewan's presentation, I imagined that Ewan was seated in an easy chair next to me talking and reflecting about his promotion of staff development and how to get people on board and trying these new technologies. We, in the technology field, all plan our workshops and and think of how to engage our learners no matter what their skill levels are. It was good to hear Ewan's recommendations. Recently, our staff participated in a NetDay survey.(The survey window is closed, but check it out next November.)
The results showed that about 56% of our staff feel they are average users of technology, 36% are advanced users and 10% feel that they are not as literate as their colleagues. While 66% of those surveyed feel they are somewhat prepared to use technology because of our district inservice, 20 % do not feel they've had enough training.(These results compare favorably with the nationwide results.)
However, when asked if their school was preparing students to compete for jobs and careers in the 21st Century only 19% responded yes, while the remaining 76% said no, or not sure and 3% had no opinion. This survey data scares me the most of all the data I saw. Ewan said, in his presentation, “we don't know what we don't know". I chose to share those two results since most of our staff feel like regular users of technology, while at the same time very few feel like we are preparing our students for their future.
The latest updated ISTE, NETS standards emphasize, first and foremost, thinking skills, logical problem solving skills, creative problem solving, collaborative work skills, research and information retrieval, digital citizenship, technology operations and concepts.
Many of us who train others to use technology in their classrooms have always maintained, it is not just about the technology. It is about good instruction. The latest standards show this.
However, the technology allows us to easily and immediately collaborate with a classroom down the street, across the state or around the globe. The results are more immediate and real; the telephony tools, blogs and wikis allow for conversations to be interactive rather than questions written, sent by mail, answered , then sent back.
Back to professional development! If only 19% of our staff feel we are preparing our students for the new century, then 80% of them (us) should be first in line for opportunities to collaborate and converse about the new web tools which will help facilitate the updated standards. We have the first wave of staff on board with technology, and, with their experiences and facilitation skills we can engage the rest of the staff to make the changes necessary for our learners. After all, would you still be going to your dentist if he or she was using equipment from the 1950's? or how about your car mechanic? I can't imagine taking my car in for a check up only to find my mechanic had not updated the shop with the computer necessary to diagnose my car -in a matter of minutes, I might add, especially with the hourly cost of labor.
I think it is time for all educators no matter where you (we) are on the technology continuum to actively participate in some kind of Web 2.0 collaboration. If you can use these collaboration tools such as blogs, podcasts, wikis and collaborative projects then you will likely engage your students in a project using these tools. Do it for the learners!
If you are among the 19% who feel we are preparing our students for the 21st Century, then maybe you can enlighten me on the kinds of jobs we are preparing our young people for. About all I can say, with confidence, is that our students need to understand GMT time zones in order that they can collaborate with others. Beyond that the sky or the universe is the limit. What do you think we should be preparing our students for?
Comments
Hi Cheryl,
Nice article. How can we lobby for teachers and students to have more flexible learning environments? To collaborate around the world we need to sometimes operate on "world times".
Posted by: Sharon Betts | February 27, 2007 7:38 PM
I'm with Sharon. I think our teaching environments can be more flexible with the addition of Web 2.o tools to the classroom. Blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc contribute to anytime learning. Now for the world wide collaborative part...
Posted by: Alice Barr | March 6, 2007 12:34 AM