edublogs

K12 Conference: Professional Development... With Fries

My keynote podcast for the K12 Conference goes online today (it's here now), and the discussion from Saturday's fireside chat runs really well alongside it (just save the app when your asked to view the whole session's video, whiteboards, audio and chat).

This is an outline of the kind of things I've discussed in the keynote and the questions I would love to know the answers to.

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? Read on in the extended post...

K12 Conference: Live Fireside Chat at 4pm BST

I've just been having a tour of the Elluminate package which is being used by the K12 Conference for the live Fireside Chats that have been taking place. At 4pm BST (in 30 mins), if you're around, please do drop in to the chat. At the moment I'm enjoying seeing people from around the globe drop in to test their microphone levels (it's 00:05 tomorrow in Adelaide and 08:35 today in the States' West coast right now and Jeff looks like he's in from Hong Kong - brilliant!).

Looking forward to talking about my keynote contents which go live on Monday. In the keynote I'm wondering how professional development has changed with the introduction of social media to the mix. It's just some basic ideas and the conversation we have today will be far richer, I'm sure, than the 30 minute keynote ever could be ;-)

Join me for a Fireside chat

Anne Davis and I will be coaxed through a fireside chat with Will Richardson this Saturday afternoon at 4pm GMT and you're invited along, too, to talk about how we learn as teachers and how we can raise the barriers to using more social media in the classroom. This is ahead of the keynotes from Anne and me, launched Monday.

Wes announced this morning that there are an unlimited number of places at this, thanks to the nice people at Elluminate. You don't need any special software, just a web browser, and someone will be online at the conference an hour beforehand to sort out your audio should you need help with that.