2006- Pers Prof Development
PERSONAL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT KEYNOTE
“Professional Development … with Fries”
Ewan McIntosh
Edinburgh, Scotland
Blog: http://edu.blogs.com/
Presentation Title
“Professional Development … with Fries”
Bio
Ewan McIntosh is New Technologies Research Practitioner with Scotland’s national education agency, Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS). His work involves applying new and bleeding edge technologies in classrooms across Scotland to measure their effectiveness, and the development of policy and guidelines on using social software. He also has a professional interest in encouraging more public bodies to converse with their public through social media.
He now blogs regularly at edu.blogs.com, but has worked with social media for four years in schools, helping children produce one of the first podcasts from a school in Europe and some of the first open comment blogs from UK schools.
Description
Professional Development needn’t be on others’ terms. When was the last time you chose who, what, when and how you were going to learn something new? Do your colleagues know what they need to know to learn something new? Are we independent learners or interdependent learners? Are teachers learners at all? Ewan takes us through what one education authority and one country is doing to change the face of continuing professional development while bringing the profession along with it. You might pick up some ideas for your own education area, but you’ll also see how important your personal learning environment really is.
A Word From Ewan
For the past year I have been responsible for the development of an online professional development project for Modern Foreign Languages teachers. The MFLE was a pilot for how things might me delivered through Glow, the national intranet. When I inherited the project the spec written back in the early part of the century was concentrated more on the online world as a discussion forum and resource repository than on a collaborative space where teachers can share, construct their beliefs and knowledge and try out new ways of teaching and learning.
After a year of promoting the use of social media for professional development we now have a burgeoning community of modern linguists and other teaching professionals connecting to each other and sharing their ideas, thoughts, complaints and congrats through complex social networks. My current role as New Technologies Research Practitioner with Learning and Teaching Scotland aims to explore these avenues further.
The difference is substantial between the ‘traditional’ means of professional development, which inspired the MFLE, and the ‘connected’ means of professional development, which the project has, to some extent, helped begin to bring to the mainstream.
Why?
- Things have changed
But it’s not policy or CPD providers that have changed by and large. We are still seeing top-down provision of development opportunities, certificates and “logged hours” spent on courses counting more than reading the thoughts of a peer through their weblog.
But the community of teacher-learners has changed / grown (though, how would we know whether it had begun or simply grown since there was no record of this community’s existence before?). The community of practice has changed and become more accessible because of technology.
Before, good teachers’ ‘secrets’ had never been known. Now, teachers and students can, together as learners, reflect on each other’s work. Teachers are being forced to think about the way they think, but, for me, it’s not happening fast enough or deep enough.
Excellent teachers will continue to reflect with colleagues in the staffroom, at informal meetings, over Chinese meals 
The majority of teachers will save their reflection for annual conferences and occasional collegiate time activities.
* Teachers as learners – a real-life concept?
This is a great concept that is widely accepted and ignored simultaneously. When so many professionals adopt a clock-watching attitude to CPD can teachers really be lifelong learners?
Learning styles and formative assessment techniques which help our students learn seem to be ignored when it comes to professional development – we happily sit for hours in conferences while someone stands and delivers. It’s like those ‘good classes’ we love to get but which occasionally become a poisoned chalice, where we feel we can get away with lecturing to them or thumping through increased content, but at far less depth than we would like to get into.
But these are the very classes with whom we can offload some of the boring necessity and concentrate on motivating and having fun while learning deeper in class with each other face to face. We can do this using social media to continue the learning beyond the four-walled classroom.
In teacher development we can also try to inspire teachers to become better learners themselves. Clock watching is not an issue because the teacher is so motivated to learn we can’t stop them. If you’re reading this post then this might be true for you.
The accompanying podcast to this blog post is very much ’stand and deliver’, but I would appreciate every effort to have a conversation afterwards on the blog – mine, theirs or yours. The conversation is permanent and changing (permanently changing). The presentation will date (or be dated already). The conversation will take on a life of its own and move with the times.
* Teachers as learners is taking time
The ‘flattening’ of the teacher-learning process is taking time, a situation further compounded by teaching professionals who feel they have the upperhand on their colleagues (we are not worthy) – I’ve even been made to feel that while preparing for and interacting with this conference. If we can’t keep a learning blog for fear of being unconstructively criticised then there’s little hope for further development of peer-to-peer professional development, because the top-down quality police will be in there before we’ve had a chance to work through our idea, get to the end… And then there’s the issue of whether, in keeping a learning blog, one’s thinking through is ever… well… finished…
But let’s ask the Big Question about why people feel compelled to share their experiences as teacher-learners. If you’re a teacher what’s more important – validation from successful learning in the classroom or validation from a conference certificate or validation from a group of academic peers?
* Quality of information vs. Abundance of information
Tools like this can help find quality information – but quality is not as objective as some would have us believe. There is often little ‘proof’ that one thing over another has made a difference: the kids in my classroom, the state of my classroom fabric, the curriculum I’m aiming to cover, my teaching style, how interesting or boring I am perceived as being by my kids… all these have an effect on whether my classroom practice is ‘good’ or less good. What I report on my learning blog as being ‘proof’ something works may end up falling down in another classroom.
So, we need to resort to personal recommendation, trusting one individual’s ideas, suggestions or advice because we’ve ‘known’ them online over a long period of time. The longevity of my relationship with some fellow professionals who keep blogs has given me more successful learning opportunities as a teacher than attending some ‘5* status’ conferences.
Doing this doubles the amount of material you will be exposed to, so coping with this is essential.
* COPING WITH ABUNDANCE
It’s the way of our world that if you are involved in the information or knowledge industry (and we are) your destiny will only be a happy one if you can cope with the increased availability of information. Getting to know these skills has been vital, as far as I have been concerned:
- Bloglines to read blogs online (NetNewsWire on the Mac to read them on the non-internet train journey
- Skim-reading and scanning relevant posts
- Good typing skills to write blog posts
- Good cross-referencing skills to give credit where due
- Knowing whether to blog something (can I add anything to this? if not, let’s just…
- del.icio.us it – online bookmarking keeps things shared and in a useful, findable format.
- GTD – you’ve got to live your online life in an organised way to cope with large amounts of info.
* Seven Fears (from Seth Godin’s Marketing Blog)
- The fear that you’ll have to implement whatever you dream up.
- The fear that you will fail.
- The fear that you will do something stupid and be ridiculed by your peers for decades.
- The fear that you’ll get fired.
- The fear that there will be an unanticipated backlash associated with your idea.
- The fear of change.
- The fear of missing out on the thing you won’t be able to do if you do this.
-Dreaming and talking to yourself are important in order to articulate possibilities and then adopt or discard them
-Efficiencies (GTD, RSS, Mobile devices)
-Scaling (Exc-el) – more dedicated teams required. Human/social networks might be easier (Social Software Adoption strategy) – avoid micro-management, micro-help.
-You give up after one year of doing it
-The fear of not knowing everything (flurry of can’t cope blogs)
-Lack of community
-Too much community to handle
-Presumption that what was going on before was good.
-Moving away from a template comfort blanket
-Animated gifs were the future in 1998. Then came podcasts and vlogs.
We don’t know what we don’t know
-The community are your peers – they want to know you. They might not be in your immediate geographical space. That’s OK. Power comes from networking communities for local action. Act local, be global.
-Getting your idea out there in the first place – can you?
-Keenness can hold things back
-Personal gain first, the group later?
-K12 conference backlash
-Speculate to accumulate
-Have some imagination!
Presentation
http://k12online.wm.edu/McIntoshK12.m4a
On this day..
- Day 9 Presentations: 30 October 2008 - 2008
- Leading the Change
Telling the New Story: Leverage Points for Inspiring Change Orientation - 2008 - Kicking it up a Notch
Interactive tools for remote and synchronous mentoring - 2008 - Leading the Change
Teaching Web 2.0 - Everything you need in one place - 2008 - Kicking it up a Notch
Monsters Bloom in our Wiki - 2008 - Leading the Change
Teaching Web 2.0 - Everything you need in one place - 2008 - Congratulations to the Help Desk Committee! - 2007
- OVERCOMING OBSTACLES KEYNOTE
"Unleash the Potential:
Remix Obstacles into Opportunities!" - 2006 - Overcoming Obstacles
"'At-Risk' Students in Our Virtual High School" - 2006 - Personal Professional Development
"What is RSS and How do I Start Using It?" - 2006
Discussion
8 comments for “PERSONAL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT KEYNOTE
“Professional Development … with Fries””
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I went to David Allen’s site to find out about GTD. It looks like a really helpful concept. I think that this is one of the things that I am dealing with right now when it comes to social networking. I have a bloglines account. I have a blog. I see their value, but I wonder how I will ever have time to read and think about all of the blogs that are so interesting out there. How do I decide what to give my attention to when there is SO much available that is good? How do I avoid limiting myself to reading all of the people that I agree with already instead of challenging myself by reading (or listening to) some people that I don’t agree with so much or need to think about and process?
Right now I am subbing and so I do not bring home tons of work and stress to deal with at home. I also have grown children and a busy husband so that my evening time is my own. What do people do who are teaching and have small children or a second job? When do they read blogs or write or reflect? How can I urge teachers to do this when I struggle myself to find the time?
I am risking my fear of saying something stupid by posting this!
Your points are really valid and need tackled on a practical level. All I can say is what we are doing to help teachers. We are creating ‘aggregators’ of information related to very specific concepts for teachers to dip into on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. That way they might not see ALL the info but they can see the snapshot at that time and not get bogged down. We are also releasing the OPML file for those links so that the teacher can choose a limited range of sites to store in their bloglines account that teachers with experience in both the subject and the blog matter in that subject have deemed amongst the most useful.
I think there is an important role for the ‘meta aggregators’, people like me and Stephen Downes and loads of others who read a lot of blogs (300, 400, 500+) and sift off the points of the day.
I guess the great thing with this way of developing professionally is that you can go as in depth or as wide or both depending on your circumstances.
[...] It just keeps getting more interesting. This podcast is around the conversation that Ewan McIntosh started in his Keynote. I think this is our best conversation to date, because people are starting to feel more comfortable around the mic and the power of blogging/podcasting. We talk a lot about fear. Fear of blogging, fear of opening yourself up to a public audience, yet here is a group that one week ago I had to basically force to podcast. Now 5 podcasts later, three people took notes while listening to Ewan of things they wanted to say. No sooner did I turn Ewan off at the end of his keynote that people wanted me to press record. They did not need a prompt and that fear, fear of hearing their own voice, fear of ‘putting themselves out there’, fear of saying the wrong thing, is slowly leaving. [...]
[...] I have just listened to Ewan McIntosh’s keynote for the K-12 Online Conference, and am actually listening to his preso a second time and now taking notes on it. If the K-12 Online Conference had just been a traditional conference this would not have been possible: I would have had ONE OPPORTUNITY to listen to his ideas, and if I didn’t “get” or understand something the first time that would be too bad. Not so with an online conference in which the presentations are shared in an asychronous format. There is POWER here, POWER which I did not have access to in my own formal education. This is POWER I want my own children to have access to in their formal and informal educations, and it is exciting (as I probably mention quite a lot here) to be living in a time when such transformational power over the publishing and sharing of information is accessible to so many. [...]
My dad is an educator with over 30 years of experience. I am in my 8th year of teaching. I cannot even fathom what he would have thought in his 8th year of what I am doing in my 8th year in regards to professional development. Engagement in the K12 online conference has taken place over a long period of time — almost a month now. During this time thoughts and ideas have come in and out as I reflect on how the topics impact my teaching. I have learned new skills like wiki and blogging. I have continued my transformation from web 1.0 to web 2.0 by “attending” a professional development conference on my terms.
My dad still teaches today and is a digital immigrant with a passion to be a digital native. He has developed technology skills at each point along his career — programming, personal computing, the internet, web 2.0. We are starting to find ways to engage in professional development together on our own terms as he lives a good distance away.
This is a huge challenge to districts to find solid professional development. Thanks for the challenge as I plan PD for our science teachers.
[...] In Reflections on Ewan’s Keynote on Professional Development, Wes Fryer links together nicely Ewan McGregor’s presentation from the K12 Conference (Professional Development… With Fries) with a book which has been on my reading list for a while by an author whose surname I can’t pronounce! (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience) [...]
[...] The digital literacy divide which exists in most of the schools where I work helping teachers and students is amazingly huge. While I do have some opportunities (like last week’s digital learning academy) to work with teacher volunteers who have a higher level of motivation to learn and use digital tools than your “average” midwest teacher– more often I’m sharing professional development sessions with captive teachers just as likely to be “clock watching” (to borrow Ewan McIntosh’s term from his keynote about PD during last year’s K-12 Online Conference) as to be really paying attention and learning. [...]
I the opening paragraph I fear an error . .”His work involves applying new and bleeding edge technologies ”
Maybe ‘leading edge’ would be safer? Pity it happened to a fellow Scot!
Nice work however.
Garrick
Rome