Professional Learning is common among all educators. Currently, Professional Learning is very lecture-based with little to no active participation. The current model of Professional Learning needs to be adjusted to fit the needs of educators in an engaging and ongoing framework. Through these past eight weeks, I have learned what it takes to make Professional Learning effective and put together a plan to take this alternative style of Professional Learning back to my campus.
5 Key Principles to Effective Professional Learning
- Significant & Ongoing: PL should not be delivered one time without ever revisiting the information. Learners should have continuous support after the initial PL session to be able to fully implement the new idea or information.
- Support During Implementation: Learners should have assistance and support when they are implementing the idea or information in their own classrooms. Someone who is skilled in the new idea should be there to help with any challenges that may arise in the classroom.
- Engaging: PL sessions should be engaging and active, where learners are participating in discussions and other activities to deepen their learning.
- Modeling: Learners should be able to see the new concept modeled in a real classroom that is specific to their discipline.
- Specific to Discipline: PL needs to be relevant to its learners, so the content should be discipline and grade-specific to maximize the learning happening.
Alternative PL: Call to Action
Why?
Most educator professional development sessions are structured in a way that is less than engaging. Teachers receive an overload of information in a short time without any follow-through on the new ideas. Districts spend thousands of dollars on these training sessions, but the question is; are they effective?
The current professional development model needs to be updated with a more engaging, ongoing, and supportive framework where teachers feel confident implementing the new skills or strategies. Instead of a ‘sit and get’ session for information, teachers need more of a ‘show and go’ approach using hands-on activities and modeling. These are a few of the key principles that make professional development effective.
What?
How?
As I created this presentation, I wanted to make sure my ideas stood out and made an impression on my audience. This information is extremely beneficial to teachers, and it is imperative for school administrators to move towards more effective professional development. Wanting my presentation to stand out, I followed tips from a few different resources. In Nancy Duarte’s Ted Talk video, she presents a specific structure to follow when communicating new ideas. Moving back and forth between ‘what is’ to ‘what could be’ allows the audience to be engaged. I followed this structure with my presentation about effective professional development and ended with what could be a ‘new bliss’.
When designing the presentation, I used the online program, Canva. This website is very easy to use with a variety of templates to choose from. When building the slides, I took tips from Presentation Zen and David JP Phillips in How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint. Both of these videos had great tips for PowerPoint presentations. I made sure to use as little text as possible and build up the slides throughout the speech, rather than giving all of the information at once. I used a black background that is easier on the eyes and made sure to put one message per slide. In using these tips and tricks, the presentation is no longer the main focus – the presenter and the message is.
Click below to download the presentation!
Professional Learning Outline
Creating an ePortfolio for my master’s courses at Lamar University has opened my eyes to the benefits of using them in an everyday classroom. With this being said, my Professional Learning course will be geared towards educators and staff to create their own ePortfolios, use them in their own classrooms, and eventually assist their students in creating one for themselves. This goes hand-in-hand with my innovation plan for my Fine Arts classroom and will work side-by-side with the strategies I’ve learned for creating change in an organization. For this assignment, I had to tweak my original outline plan a bit as I understand more what is needed in a Professional Learning environment and specifically this PL plan.
The PL Sessions will begin with Phase 1, where ePortfolios will be introduced and the need for using them in the classroom will be addressed. There will be monthly sessions from August to December and a pilot team will be established by the end of the semester. Phase 2 will be a five-week course on Google Classroom with the pilot team to begin creating their own ePortfolios. There will be both in-person and online meeting sessions during these five weeks. Phase 3 will be the implementation phase after the ePortfolios are already created. Teachers will have 1:1 support as they take it back to their own classrooms and begin having students create their own ePortfolios.
Significant & On-Going: The plan will follow a hybrid model with both online and in-person components. For the first phase, all sessions will be in person. The five weeks of the Google Classroom course will have in-person sessions every other week during Wednesday conference periods. After the 5 week course, Phase 3 will offer both in-person refresher sessions as well as individual in-person or online meetings.
Support During Implementation: Collaboration will take place consistently between learners and instructors. Through in-person sessions, scheduled discussions, and open discussion boards, learners will be able to interact with each other and the instructor when needed. Beyond the PL, learners will be assigned a designated content expert to help with the implementation process in the classroom. There will be refresher courses every month to address any issues that may have come up, helpful tips and tricks, and improvement. Learners will have additional support throughout the online course, as it will stay open indefinitely for learners to interact with each other and the instructor.
Engaging: Learners will be actively creating an ePortfolio for themselves. There will be tasks each week that will require active participation and creativity. Once individual ePortfolios are created, learners will be actively modeling and assisting their own students in the creation and implementation of ePortfolios.
Modeling: During Phase 2, every other week will be in person and will address the content from the session before. Instructors will model the activities in person and be there for extra support and help when needed. During Phase 3: Implementation, learners will be able to have 1:1 meetings with mentors where they can model material when needed in an actual classroom setting.
Specific to Discipline: This Professional Learning course is designed for teachers, administrators, faculty, and staff who want to create an ePortfolio to use in a secondary educational setting. After creating an eP of their own, they can take it back to their classrooms and have their students create one. The course will use Fink’s 3 Column Table as its instructional design (see below). The instructor will be the Digital Learning Specialist for the campus and will use teachers who are DL masters for assistance when needed.
Resources needed from Learners:
- Personal laptop for online and in-person sessions
- Stable WiFi
- Access to Google Classroom through the district
- Innovation Plan and resources
- Change in Organization resources
- Alternative Professional Development resources
- Designing Online Courses resources
- Technology TEKS
- Google Suite resources
How will you foster collaboration and modeling? My plan includes weekly discussion boards to foster collaboration, as well as weekly meetings with the instructor. These meetings will be both in-person and online and will allow for communication and collaboration between classmates and the instructor. The instructor will model for the learners how to create the different parts of the ePortfolio when needed, and then will model how to use the ePortfolio in the classroom during the implementation stage.
How will you foster self-directed learning? Because some of the course will happen asynchronously, learners will have to be self-motivated and self-directed learners. Learners will be expected to complete all required tasks in the course and continue implementation outside of the course. Learners will complete a self-evaluation at the end of the online portion of the PL plan, so they will have to really reflect on whether they put their all into the course or not.
Who will lead what components? I will be the instructor of the course and will lead the group discussions. I will utilize other technology specialists to assist in mentoring and helping with the implementation process after the course is completed.
Audience and their needs: The audience for my courses will be secondary teachers who are willing to pilot the implementation of ePortfolios in their classrooms. I will start with Fine Arts teachers and move outward into regular education teachers. Teachers will need physical materials to create ePortfolios, such as laptops or personal devices, as well as extra time for collaboration during the school day or conference times.
PHASE 2: GOOGLE CLASSROOM COURSE TIMELINE:
For more information on how Phase 2, the online Google Classroom portion of this PL Plan, is set up, click here.
Professional Learning Session ‘Build Out’
I have decided to fully build out Phase 2, Module 2: Taking Ownership. I chose this module because the Pilot team will have already been established, the process of creating the ePortfolios will already be introduced, and this will be the session where the instructor will be in-person and able to model any necessary components of the course.
References
Cult of Pedagogy. (2013, September 16). How presentation zen fixed my bad powerpoints. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/vkrl1j0IW-c
Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the teachers: Effective professional development in an era of high stakes accountability. Alexandria, VA: National School Boards Association. Center for Public Education. Retrieved from http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/research/teaching-teachers-effective-professional-development or http://conference.ohioschoolboards.org/2017/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2016/07/1pm111317A114Job-embedPD.pdf
Hill, H. C. (2015). Review of the mirage: Confronting the hard truth about our quest for teacher development. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. https://nepc.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/ttr_hill_tntp_mirage.pdf
Standards for professional learning: Quick reference guide. (2019). Retrieved 3/25/22 from https://learningforward.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/standards-reference-guide.pdf.
TEDxEast. (2010, December 10). Nancy Duarte uncovers common structure of greatest communicators. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/1nYFpuc2Umk
TEDx Talks. (2013, November 6). Empowering the teacher technophobe: Kristin Daniels at TEDxBurnsvilleED [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puiNcIFJTCU&t=536s
TEDxTalks. (2014, April 14). How to avoid death by powerpoint | David JP Phillips. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Iwpi1Lm6dFo