Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Yesterday Mike Tholfsen Tweeted about Microsoft's Teacher Training Packs. Teacher Training Packs are collections of resources that are designed to help IT administrators, technology specialists, and curriculum directors lead professional development workshops centered around various Microsoft tools (most of which are completely free for educators).

I’ve been using the institutional partnership Coventry University has with Linkedin/Lynda.com and have been taking a few short, video-heavy courses to further my understanding in a few area. In light of this I took the opportunity to attend a ‘making the most of Lynda.com‘ course too, presided over by a LinkedIn representative and someone from the DMLL (Disruptive Media Learning Lab) here at Coventry.

One of the best advantages of the Internet and web technologies is that they have levelled the educational playground making education and learning accessible to anyone anywhere in the world with a computer and Internet connection. Whether you want to pick up a foreign language or learn the basics of a craft from scratch, 'you Google it and you find it'. 

Harvard University professor Heather C. Hill says the “professional development system for teachers is, by all accounts, broken.” The question is how to overcome this for our most effective professional development as educators.
 
Studies show that teachers need to take part in programs providing at least 14 hours or more of professional learning in order for it to be effective. Frankly, these types of programs are few in number. Short-term professional development learning is on the rise, and we are seeing the impact it has on our educational system.

Teachers must be models of lifelong learning, but besides occasionally reading books and blogs, attending conferences, and collaborating with a handful of colleagues at school, how can we extend both the reach and frequency of our interactions with our fellow educators?

In our digital age, social interactions are evolving as people increasingly turn to social media and other virtual spaces to connect. Researchers question if social media hurts or harms our ability to interact with one another, and so far the results are mixed. 

It is certain, however, that the internet has created new opportunities for connections and learning that otherwise wouldn’t have existed. This is especially true for professional development, where communities of practice grow networks of educators who come together to learn with, and from, their peers.

Growth is essential to becoming an excellent leader in education. This growth is indispensable when it comes to major areas, like technology, especially because the information is always changing. You should be working hard to grow continuously into a more tech-savvy leader for the school. Unfortunately, many people aren’t sure where to start when it comes to becoming more educated on technology. They wind up falling behind because they didn’t prioritize learning all they could about the technology in their buildings.

Why read books, book chapters, journal articles, and other scholarly work as part of your professional development? As a manager, why support and enable colleagues to do so? In this post I discuss some challenges for library managers and leaders in supporting deeper engagement with scholarly work, and some issues in the library profession more broadly with engagement with everything we term “theory”. To be clear, this is a personal reflection on experience not a systematic piece of research; and I am aware I speak from a position of privilege in various ways.

“When you listen to someone, it’s the most profound act of human respect.” -William Ury

I remember when I began my work as a professional developer and coach. It was the first time in my daily work where students were not my immediate focus. My interactions on a daily basis were with adults, and I realized that I wasn’t as prepared for this type of communication given my credentialing and my graduate studies.

I had a credential in how to teach students the subject of English, and what became increasingly clear was that I didn’t have a credential in how to work effectively with adults; and certainly didn’t have a background or an intentionally developed skillset on how to be an effective group member.

Teaching is hard.

And because it’s so important, we push ourselves–and are pushed by others–to be as close as we can be to perfect.

In public education, defined in terms and standards that it defines and measures itself by, perfect teaching means bringing every child to master every academic standard, then to be able to prove that mastery on a government-designed test.

In my organisation I lead on providing CPD for a small team and providing meaningful, cost-effective opportunities for learning and gaining know how at a micro scale can be challenging.  We’ve taken part in open online courses like Blended Learning Essentials and 23 things, we have a regular ‘show & tell’ slot at weekly team meetings, we take part in events and the networks we support and we sometimes have guests who share their work with us.