Comments on: PERSONAL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT KEYNOTE”Professional Development … with Fries”

By: Garrick Maguire

Garrick Maguire — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:15:41 +0000

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

By: Second life as a bleeding edge PD environment » Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 03:38:23 +0000

[…] 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. […]

By: Weekly Links (20 November 2006) at teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk

Weekly Links (20 November 2006) at teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 17:25:34 +0000

[…] 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) […]

By: Wade Bosworth

Wade Bosworth — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 18:19:19 +0000

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.

By: Moving at the Speed of Creativity » Blog Archive » Reflections on Ewan’s keynote on Professional development

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 17:32:49 +0000

[…] 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. […]

By: The Thinking Stick » K12online Shanghai LAN party podcast #5

The Thinking Stick » K12online Shanghai LAN party podcast #5 — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:57:02 +0000

[…] 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. […]

By: Ewan McIntosh

Ewan McIntosh — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 08:04:22 +0000

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.

By: Janice Friesen

Janice Friesen — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 02:50:52 +0000

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!