March 2008 — Features
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Five on Five: A Dialogue on Profession Development
Hokanson: I want to tell a great story of something that happened at our school. One day, members of our local senior center wanted to come in and see what we were doing. They came, and by the time they were finished with their day, they were amazed at the Smart Board and other technologies we were using to teach kids visually to understand concepts that were so abstract. So I think opening the schools and making them a little more transparent is a really good idea
5 What will professional development look like three to five years from now?
Martinez: The trend that's really going to make the
difference is just the amount of technology in
schools. People are bringing in all kinds of technology. I think
it's going to push us to realize that students have to be included
more in professional development because it's impossible to
keep trying to funnel this through teachers and hope it trickles
down. It just doesn't make sense to give every student a laptop,
and then only teach the teachers how to use those laptops in educational
ways. Students are 92 percent of the population in
schools. We've got to start thinking of them as these incredible,
eager, willing partners who really want to help. This is what it
means to be a citizen of the 21st century, where everyone's learning,
contributing, communicating, and collaborating.
Hokanson: I agree, we need to get people connected. Too often, we are working to meet the needs of school initiatives, and we're not looking at individual needs of teachers and connecting them with like-minded people so they can have more individualized learning in an area of support that they need. Either via webinars, virtual environments, or learning management systems, I see this notion of interconnectedness as a growing trend.
Gates: Another immediate change I'd like to see would be that the people who are preparing the workshops will shift from training talks to talking about the actual impact in the classroom. The chatter needs to change from "What did you learn at the end of this day?" to "Did you see how this tool can help your students learn?"
