Content

• What is Professional Development?

• Institutional vs. Personal Professional Development

• What Works

• Distributed Learning Communities

• Using Social Media

• Strategies & Tools

• Q&A

What is Professional Development? • What is your role?

• What do you seek to gain?

• How do YOU get it?

Purpose of Professional Development

School/District • School-Wide Initiatives

• Satisfies Mandates

• Few days per year

• Early Dismissal

Personal • Personal growth & dev.

• Prof improvement

• Relevant & timely

• Frequent

• Ongoing

• Self-directed

Traditional Professional Development

What Works in PD?

• Small groups of educators

• Work together over time

• Professional learning communities

• Based on principals of effective adult learning

• Deepens educators' content knowledge

National Staff Development Council Standards for Staff Dev.

Principles of Adult Learners

• Self-directed

• Relevant

• Immediately applicable

• Problem-centered

• Informal

• Timely

• Collaborative

Distributed Learning Communities

• Diversity of expertise

• Shared objective of advancing collective knowledge/skills

• Emphasis on Learning How to Learn.

• Mechanisms for sharing what is learned.

Personal PD Using Social Media

Join an online community

• Discover colleagues

• Find experts

• Shadowing (ambient awareness)

• Seeking answers, solutions, support

• Discovering new resources

• Following #hashtag topics

Blogging

Social Bookmarking

• Diigo, Delicious

• Tag & share bookmarks

• Discover others' bookmarks

• Join a group

• Annotate web pages w/highlights & comments

Virtual Events

Organizing Your PLN

RSS

Developing Your PLN