Professional Development 2.0

This year I arrived at a new school and was inundated with information to help me adapt to the new school culture. Administrators make presentations and bring in consultants to portray the ideal goals of the community. Essentially, this is a period of indoctrination before I find out what the school is all about for myself. A lot of the time, school culture is very different than its portrayal during orientation and opening weeks--alas, that is a topic for another post. What I’d like to address in this post is the ephemeral nature of orientation related professional development.

Though I always groan when I have to spend my time in “professional development,” I will admit that the presenters are usually good. More often than not, they present information that helps me learn something about my craft (after all, the speaker was selected by the administration). Sometimes this has noticeable changes in the classroom in the short term. And even with weaker presenters, the information is enough to force teachers to be self-reflective, which is always a good exercise.

The problem with these workshops, however, is that they only last a day. Even the ones that make me think differently about my classroom come and go in 24 hours. There has to be a more effective way to administer professional development. After all, one of the reasons that I groan in the first place is because I know I get stellar professional development 24/7 on twitter by following educators and edtech blogs.

To remedy this, I’ve seen schools use wikispaces or diigo to move relevant information to their faculty, but they’ll tell you that these are far from perfect. And more likely than not, most administrators who manage the faculty don’t even know what those services are. So they try to relive the summer’s professional development the old fashioned way--with more meetings to talk about how the speakers from August helped teachers do things differently. All of this is fleeting.

In my opinion, the answer lies in Web 2.0. Administrators can use technology to connect with presenters and reach their faculty (or reach through the department chairs). They can remind teachers to adhere to the words of the presenters, whether by using more technology, or addressing diversity effectively. Next, administrators can carve out time for teachers to share how they’ve applied what they’ve learned, providing their colleagues with an example of how to harness information gleaned from professional development. Web 2.0 can also act as a tool to move current information that relates to the professional development from presenter to administrator to teacher. Applying the presenter’s words to practice and continuing the discussion of the educational theory is a powerful combination.

The ultimate goal for an institution is for the administration to be able to see which members of the faculty have developed professionally (their goal in the first place) and are buying into the ideal goals of the community. Ultimately, the students would benefit greatly from more diverse lessons and progressive teachers who are collaborating to create the best lessons and classroom environment.

My Foray into Passion-Based Learning

This summer I taught a class of 14 middle-schoolers Journalism for five weeks; I decided that what drives the course should not be my syllabus but student interest. It’s important to note that this was at a boarding school and the administration’s motto was all about trying new things. Thanks to this direction, I went full bore into my first jaunt into passion-based learning--and it was awesome!

On day one, I announced the objective of the course: to deliver whatever information the students wanted, in whatever medium they wanted, as long as it enriched the campus community. Then, I gave them a username and password to a campus Tumblr and Twitter (they later created their own Facebook group).

Naturally, middle-schoolers are an inquisitive, creative bunch, but it’s hard to get them to follow up on any of their whimsical interests. Even though we only met for forty minutes a day, this format worked. Students pitched ideas and wrote articles about local restaurants, current events, pop-culture, politics, history, cooking, technology, fashion, movies--you name it. They produced digital shorts, took polls, interviewed campus personalities, wrote opinions and even recorded campus events--including a talent show and an Instagram photo contest.

Interestingly, most students found a niche, usually a subject or format, and rolled with it. But, as the summer progressed, they took more risks. We started with news articles, followed by feature stories, opinion pieces, and then in week 3/5, I opened the blog to multimedia. I suggested video, music, podcasts, info-graphics  and QR codes. Once again, students pitched ideas and then took the initiative to complete and post the finished product.

After an advertising campaign that included announcement, chalking, flyers and QR codes, campus faculty and students started to check the blog. Even colleagues who didn’t work in the program became interested in what I was doing. This only made my students work harder and double their efforts to locate, analyze and produce content.

In the end, the students in my class developed crucial skills in planning, pitching, writing, creating, innovating, and collaboration. But, they learned new platforms like Tumblr, Twitter, QR readers, Instagram and iMovie. This course also forced students to keep up with the news.

I’d heard a lot about passion-based learning before this summer, and was a believer, but never tried it with this type of conviction. And, if I were to do it again, I’d turn even more power over to the students--it works.

Unfortunately, I’m back in the structured curriculum of a high-school History Department. But I can assure you, I’ll be exploring passion-based learning again next summer.