More on professional development
Clarence Fisher from Remote Access posts about professional development. He talks about enjoying
his professional development days and how he usually finds good ones. I
have felt the same way, for the most part. Here’s an excerpt from his
post:
we have in this space. In the year + that I have been blogging, I have
consistently and constantly found it to be the best learning space I have ever
encountered. We write, we read, we listen, we consider, and we respond to what
each other writes or speaks about. I find myself during the day in my classroom
thinking about blogging a certain event, or watching an event unfold in my
classroom and running through a post from someone else I have recently read at
the same time.
As other’s have said, the value is in the conversation that we hold. Blogging
helps me to clarify events, think through responses, and plan for the future of
my classroom.
He ends up with this question: Will anyone besides those of us who blog understand the importance of this
space?
I’d really like to see
blogs used for professional development but I don’t believe it will
happen anytime soon. It really could put us in charge of our own
learning. It allows conversations among educators themselves. This takes me back to a post I wrote a while back, Blog for staff development. I wish we could try something like this in our schools.
Clarence
caused me to keep thinking about my professional development over
the years though. Choices were made more for me than by me. There
was not much built in for sharing and building among groups of
stakeholders in and outside the classroom walls. There would be plans
for collaboration and sharing but that would always be the first thing
to go when time got scarce, as it always did. We have to be in
control of our own learning and mirror that to our students. We have to
become the independent learners we are trying to develop in our
classrooms.
November 14th, 2005 at 12:04 pm
Inspired by you and Will and many others, we are doing some staff development around constructivist teaching with technology - and continuing our discussion through a blog (and starting some blogging with students). I don’t think it’s quite at the level you are envisioning, but it’s a start. Feel free to visit http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/ - I think it would be great if you had any comments to add to our discussion - or to the class blogs listed on the right. Thanks for all you do!