Back

Professional Development Collaboratory Wiki

Viewing page version #44
(Restore this version) 

Modified: 1 September 2008, 9:14 PM   User: Paul Beaufait  → Paul Beaufait

Definitions of Professional Development

... an artifact or activity, a process or product?

... different to, or comprehensive of collective:

  • assessment and certification (or similar documentation) of groups' or individuals' professional development?
  • community development?
  • content delivery?
  • content development?
  • curriculum development?
  • curriculum vitae development?
  • economic development?
  • educational innovation?
  • faculty development?
  • materials development?
  • personal learning environment development?
  • personal network development?
  • scholarship of teaching and learning?
  • technological development?
  • telementoring?

"Professional development is a continuous learning process across all levels of... (?the institution) for the entire learning community. Quality professional development expands the capacity of the learning community to realize its vision and reach its goals" (http://dpi.wi.gov/cssch/cssprofdev1.html).

Professional Development Collaboratory

A professional development collaboratory may share fundamental characteristics of other collaboratories including, but not necessarily limited to: organized, rule-governed processes for socialization, instrument (tool) and data sharing, contextualization, and collaboration--either consequent or subsequent to a collaboratory's collective organization, but certainly consequent to its governance if indeed governance is taken for granted. Such a collaboratory stretches the concept of laboratory to embrace endeavours other than "geographically distributed scientific research" (Wikpedia, Collaboratory, Summary, ¶2; 2008.08.25) in order to promote activities and interactions, conceivably experimental, yet conducive to evolutionary and sustainable professional attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours - all this within a relatively unbounded and hot-wired collaborative culture.

How do we find out about Pro-D opportunities?

Listings in trusted online communities (ETUG, SCoPE, WikiEducator, CIDER, iEARN)
Direct recommendations from colleagues Identify a gap in own learning, then seek out pro-d
Google searches for specific topics, activities, resources Follow leads from individuals in our networks (using a variety of tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Tags, Ning, blogs, shared calendars) Lurking close by those who are passionate about teaching and learning
Advertising on home institution websites Mailing lists Websites Compilations created by others
Event services/tools, such as The Conference Calendar, Facebook Events, Upcoming, Google shared calendar Online libraries
Our findings in these places and ways provide opportunities for what?
Celebrating Conceptualizing Collecting
Connecting
Convening Learnscaping (Cross, 2008)
Networking
Planning
Professionalizing Post-Secondary Teaching: 2009 Telementoring: Dates TBA Reflecting upon...

How do we make the time?

Personal Management of Participation in Social Networks: Oct 27-Nov 9, 2008 ???

How do we manage the information?

Use Netvibes , delicious, technorati, or other aggregation tools to bring in RSS feeds, calendar events, social networking channels, bookmark tags, ... to provide a one-stop shopping overview of PD developments in a given (subject?) area.

Build... a Virtual Museum on the History of EdTech: October 1-21, 2008

???


Exemplary Pro-D Websites

Sites that provide venues and communal support for PD activities

SCoPE: a Moodle site with scheduled discussions Examples though links in other §§:
... opportunities for what?
How do we make the time?
How do we manage the information?
WIMBA: a commercial site with Distinguished Lecturer sessions What happens during and after those sessions? Free sessions available via newsletters.
Sloan Consortium: expensive courses
WikiEducator: excellent pd courses and collaborative educational projects Open University of Britain's OpenLearn space: an "online learning environment ... (that is) part of the OER (open educational resources) learning movement and ... (may) provide the most sophisticated tools for collaborative course content design, development, and delivery" (Sylvia Riessner, Cross institutional pro-d activities, Friday, 29 August 2008, 07:36 PM).
iEARN - free for developed and developing/underdeveloped countries, PD courses mainly for k-12 face-to-face and e-learning course, lots of collaborative learning projects worldwide
WGBH Forum Network
The WGBH Forum Network is an audio and video streaming Website dedicated to curating and serving live and on-demand lectures given by some of the world's foremost scholars, authors, artists, scientists, policy makers and community leader.
Accessibility:
Although the WGBH Forum Network site is text search-able, it appears neither to use a tagging system (site search for "tag"), nor to offer captions or transcripts for people who face environmental, linguistic, or physiological listening challenges. Connect-ability:
While human networking opportunities are limited (see, for example: Help, How can I contact the lecture speaker or panelists?), the site provides RSS feeds for both lectures and podcasts. RSS feeds at the series level might be advantageous for some content consumers.
WGBH and Education

LearningTimes™.org
"an open community of education and training professionals" registration required Active Learning Blog Carnival  

Sites designed (or used;-) to gather information about PD

(SCoPE;-) Wikieducator

Guiding Principles

Keep it clean, flexible, and simple so that it's easy to find information and make connections.
We need indicators of quality and reputation of ???
Origin (Do you mean loci?) of pro-d events is not important, because... Fees for ??? are appropriate, if it looks like the gains are there. Remember that not everybody has time for F2F events at home institutions, or suitable events at all at home. Taking pro-d (Do you mean taking part in pro-d?) at other institutions has advantages, such as ??? Best recommendations are from people who have experienced, and are continuing, PD themselves. Build on what already exists - don't duplicate; feed!

Essential Elements

elegant simplicity   quick, easy access to information
  personalization and customize-ability counter-examples: Content in LearningTimes-engineered discussion pages used, for example, by BCcampus fails to flow to fit browser windows (same for discussion and wiki views in this Moodle), and LearningTimes sites fail to maintain user preferences for listing newest posts first.
  overt and accessible tagging mechanisms   RSS feed access at all levels of hierachization For example: A recent announcement from Wikispaces points out what may be (close to) state-of-art affordances (2008.08.28) enabling users to: Receive e-mail notifications when changes are made to your discussions. Monitor specific discussion topics. See everything you are monitoring in one handy place.
easy to navigate
ability to comment on journal articles
community peer review process for submissions some social features, like who's online orientation pages based on your role (administrator, newcomer, faculty) with display of recent content related to that role

  ..

References

Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2008). Social network sites: definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13, 210-230. Retrieved August 31, 2008, from http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/117979376/PDFSTART

Cross, Jay. (2008, August 25). Informal Learning Blog, Learnscape Architecture un-book morphs. Retrieved August 28, 2008, from http://informl.com/2008/08/25/learnscape-architecture-un-book-morphs/

Moseley, B., & Dustin, D. (2008, Summer). Teaching as chaos. College Teaching, 56(3), 140-142. Retrieved August 28, 2008, from AddURLaboutHere (EBSCOhost database).

Ryymin, Essi; Lallimo, Jiri; & Hakkarainen, Kai. (2008). Teachers' professional development in a community: a study of the central actors, their networks and web-based learning. E-learning and Education (issue 4, July 2008). Retrieved August 27, 2008, from http://eleed.campussource.de/archive/4/1251/

Learning Times Network - 17,789 members (2008.09.02)