An important question contemporary educators should reflect upon asks where they sit with innovations in professional development opportunities. Long gone are the days when PD is delivered in a whole staff assembly over a few days throughout the school year (at least they should be). To many teachers, this model was irrelevant, pointless, or  extra grading time. Personalized learning, a strategy long practiced with students, is found in some districts allowing teachers to pick from a personalized menu of presentations. I was part of that model in Springfield, MA and found I could utilize my time better. I also felt more professional.  However, another move, one that goes from the personalized to the personal, is upon us. Learning Analytics, the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occur, bridges that move to personal learning. Toronto educator Melanie McBride , explaining the import of personal learning, notes:

“Autonomous learning is self-directed and self-selected according to the learner’s own needs, preferences, and learning arrangements… Truly autonomous learning means making our own choices about what…and with whom we wish to learn with or from, where we want to do this learning, when we prefer to… and how we want to learn.”

McBride’s statement was targeted at students. I contend that her sentiments are just as relevant when applied to the teaching profession. Moreover, a personal approach to PD addresses the contentious theme of teacher  professionalism  by empowering educators to demonstrate all they do to improve and inform themselves in their content area and in the field of education in general.  In turn, personal PD plans should be used in evaluations and impact promotion decisions. In other words, this model of PD is available, As You Like It.

So, in relation to self-designed PD,  what stage of development or activity (Shakespeare suggests there are 7!) are you in?  Are you a main character,supporting cast, behind the scenes, in the audience, looking for a ticket?  Has your involvement with online PD involve been a tragedy or comedy? Are you making history?  The great news is, that wherever you are, there are always ways to improve, expand, or sharpen your present practice.   Online opportunities for educators to grow professionally abound. You can  take a course, create a PLC, explore recorded webinars, and build a network of educators. You can act as a catalyst for your own learning and impact the learning of those connected to you. Overall, this area of education is exciting, daunting, and rapidly expanding. It is an aspect that was probably not covered in most teachers’ pre-service training. But it is never too late to start or return for a cameo.

I have found that demystifying online technology is important in order to attract hesitant educators. Simply put, online technology, courses, and communities…

a) Remove the limits of space and time concerning learning and collaboration.

b) Allows educators to design their own innovative PD plan  and teacher evaluation.

c) Act as a gateway for building networks, meeting people, and exposure to ideas.

Will Richardson, during a recent webinar hosted at the Center for Learning, emphasized the advantages of engaging in and developing your own online personal network. In his book, Personal Learning Networks: The Future of Learning, Richardson reminds us that among the triple A of online learning  (Anytime, Anywhere, Anyone),  “Anyone” stands out as most important. Engaging in a  public network of professionals, as opposed to having  nodes of contacts, places ideas and perspectives on center stage. Moreover, it is more likely that comments will not only be from “yes men” but will invite challenging discussions to help refine your educational philosophy and practice.

Below,  I have included a brief list of options for teachers to take online courses or modules. This is only a sampling and I am confident they will expand. Enjoy…

Coursera:We are  a social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. We envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions. Our technology enables the best professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students. Through this, we hope to give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few.

Udacity: Udacity was founded by three roboticists who believed much of the educational value of their university classes could be offered online. A few weeks later, over 160,000 students in more than 190 countries enrolled in our first class,

Open Culture: Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It’s all free. It’s all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it

P2PU: The Peer 2 Peer University is a grassroots open education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements. P2PU creates a model for lifelong learning alongside traditional formal higher education. Leveraging the internet and educational materials openly available online, P2PU enables high-quality low-cost education opportunities. P2PU – learning for everyone, by everyone about almost anything.

Learning Space The Open Univeristy: Try over 600 free online courses from The Open University.Available from introductory to advanced level, each takes between 1 and 50 hours to study.Complete activities to assess your progress and compare your thoughts with sample answers.

Academic Earth: We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.  Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment in which that content is remarkably easy to use and where user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable.We invite those who share our passion to explore our website, participate in our online community, and help us continue to find new ways to make learning easier for everyone.

iAcademics:iAcademics is a group of teachers of the teaching department of Catalonia who has created a collaborative portal of courses of any fieldThe objective of iAcademics is to create a learning environment which makes it possible to share some resources among all its users.

Tufts Open Courseware Tufts OpenCourseWare is part of a new educational movement initiated by MIT that provides free access to course content for everyone online. Tufts’ course offerings demonstrate the University’s strength in the life sciences in addition to its multidisciplinary approach, international perspective and underlying ethic of service to its local, national and international communities.

Ted-ED: TED-Ed’s commitment to creating lessons worth sharing is an extension of TED’s mission of spreading great ideas. Within the growing TED-Ed video library, you will find carefully curated educational videos, many of which represent collaborations between talented educators and animators nominated through the TED-Ed platform.

EdX: EdX is a joint partnership between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University to offer online learning to millions of people around the world. EdX will offer Harvard and MIT classes online for free. Through this partnership, the institutions aim to extend their collective reach to build a global community of online learners and to improve education for everyone.

 

Global Education Conference: the third annual Global Education Conference, a free week-long online event bringing together educators and innovators from around the world, will be held Monday, November 12 through Friday, November 16, 2012 (Saturday, November 17th in some time zones). The entire conference will be held online using the Blackboard Collaborate platform (formerly known as Elluminate/Wimba) with the support of iEARN worldwide as the conference founding sponsor, who will be running their annual international conference in conjunction with this event.

Hope to see you at the Global Education Conference. If you don’t attend or  watch at least one of the over300 sessions, or submit a proposal to present  a great idea and share it with educators on a global scale, please comment to this blog an share your excuse why you decided not to. By not participating, you perpetuate the vision of educators as profession filled with people who were motivated to teach by three reasons; June, July, and August. If teachers are to be viewed as professionals, anything must be done to bury this view;  “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”