Week 6: Professional Development

When I think about professional development, particularly when it concerns technology, I feel that we play the role of consumers and the new technology is the product. Our professional development often demonstrates and introduces us to a product, with its accompanying bells and whistles, and then we are sent back to our classrooms. Sometimes the product works beautifully as demonstrated. Often though, the product does not work in quite the same fashion as demonstrated, nor does not live up to the expectations that we had during our "test drive". We are left to figure out exactly how to get the product to work effectively in our classrooms. Since we are all short on time, it gets put off. It collects dust. Eventually, is gets sucked into the black hole that is our "I'll get to it as soon as I get these other really important things done first" pile.

"Our professional development models should involve teachers in how we use and struggle to use such tools meaningfully and how we ourselves wrestle with and resolve such issues."

The sentence above is taken from Christine Greenhow's Reccommendation 2 of Supporting Teachers ' Development of Extended Social Networks for Teaching and Learning, found on page 110 of the book Web 2.0, New Tools, New Schools. I am in complete agreement with this statement. If we want our professional development, specifically Web 2.0 tools, to "stick", we need to discuss how are we going to use this technology meaningfully. We need to discuss the educational benefits of using these tools, and research what works and what does not. I fear that if this research does not take place, the new bells and whistles that were demonstrated during our professional development will quickly begin to devolve, much like the annoying Powerpoint sound effects that seemed so cool once.......ten years ago, but now make you cringe. I made a special video for those who wish to hear the laser, drum roll, and applause again.