In order for my vision to be realized, professional development (PD) needs to change. Below are a few alternatives to traditional PD that will transform educators into 21st century learners themselves.
Playdates-
Educators created the idea of this alternative PD format. Reich quotes Sockalosky & Magiera (2013) who explain that "The concept is to invite educators from around the area to join together on one day, sit in a room for a few hours and dig more deeply into these tools. We will collaborate with one another to explore functionality, application in our learning environments and experiment. There are no presenters in the room, no experts and no agenda. Simply time to play, tinker, and explore" (Reich, 2013, What is PLAYDATE2013).
This is the Playdate website. There are so many resources posted on the site for educators to explore.
https://sites.google.com/site/playdatechicago13/homeA.J. Juliana writes about gamifying professional development for teachers . He discusses how he is collaborating with another educator to flip their district PD, and also make it game based using missions, badges and a leaderboard. He said that, "This idea of flipped PD, learning pathways, badges, and leader boards are going to be completely new to most of the people in our schools", but he hoped that people would be willing to try it out. The link to the article is below:
http://ajjuliani.com/gamify-professional-development-school/Staci Stanfield (2013/14) writes that for schools hoping to include new technologies, there are several things that schools can do. The first involves paring tech-savvy teachers with those who are less tech-savvy during staff training to build a support system amongst teachers at the school. The second is creating a school blog where teachers can share their technology experiences with other teachers at the school. Third, schools need to create a climate where innovation is valued and encouraged, and failure is seen as a learning opportunity. (p.34-35).
Educators are going to have to take initiative to become connected educators- using Twitter, blogs and other social media to find and share resources and knowledge, any time and any place. We want our students to be active participants in shaping their learning, and so it is important that as educators we practice what we preach.
Professional learning communities- teachers are going to need to look outside the walls of the classroom and the school and become global educators. This means creating learning communities that extend beyond the barriers of our school.
At the end of the day, the standard model of professional development isn't going to be effective if we want technology integration to be fully realized in our schools. Different approaches are going to need to be taken. If teachers are willing to act as agents of change, I am certain that many key points of my vision will come to fruition.