The Pro-D Flip
The Pro-D Flip
Since writing my 3 Keys to a Flipped Classroom blog post, I have been reading many great contributions to the discussion around flipping classrooms. Last week I was commenting on Lisa Nielsen’s thoughtful post Five Reasons I’m Not Flipping Over The Flipped Classroom and something occurred to me…
I have flipped my Professional Development!
I’ve done this with my blog and with Twitter.
Professional Development for me used to be about going to sessions on specific days and then trying to ‘bring back’ what I’ve learned and incorporate it into my daily practice. Sometimes this was very challenging, I would get inundated with new information and find it very hard to apply what I learned into what I did on a day-to-day basis. Often my notes would be filed away, not to be seen again.
The Old Way
Sign up -> Go to session -> Take (paper) notes -> File notes away (with intentions to go back to them) -> Repeat.
Now Pro-D seems to be different for me. The key thing is that I don’t ever wait for Professional Development Days or conferences to initiate learning opportunities. In fact, my Pro-D choices stem from what I’m already learning about on Twitter, and sharing in other learning spaces like my blog, Diigo, and Scoop.it.
The New Way
Follow links on Twitter -> Dig deeper then blog my ideas -> Seek related Pro-D opportunities -> Connect to other participants -> Share as I learn -> Consolidate ideas and blog again -> Follow links on Twitter…
Now, Professional Development needs to change to accommodate a new kind of learning journey that participants are on:
1. Share resources, and make connecting easy, ahead of time.
2. Make sessions about action not information.
3. Use the skills of the participants (have them not just participate, but also lead).
Examples:
1. Share resources/connecting ahead of time
- Teasers, Sharing slide decks, conference #hashtags, participant profiles
- Learning in Louisiana – I joined a team from November Learning to present to groups of teachers on the topics of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasting, PLN’s and other Web2.0 tools. Most of the event was hands-on with teachers having a lot of time to try the tools out.
- Flat Classroom Conference – Beijing 2011 – We broke into teams and developed our own flat projects. I haven’t followed up with our ‘Reportizens‘ project yet, but I do think this is something I would like to pursue!
- EduBloggerCon events which include a ‘Smackdown‘ where participants share tools they like in rapid succession.
- Edcamp – “…an unconference devoted to K-12 Education issues and ideas. A new kind of professional development dedicated to giving educators a voice.”
[Cross-posted on the David Truss :: Pair-a-Dimes for Your Thoughts blog]
