The Last AWFUL Professional Development I Facilitated

This last blog posting for TIE575 connects to the first - which was about the last awful professional development that I attended. I believe I broke every PD rule there is. Most specifically, I was not fully prepared, I did not have a strong activity for participants to practice with, and I did not have a need or interest analysis to determine if the technology presented would have value to teachers.

So let's pick this apart... Two of my classmates (Nicole and Shane) did a presentation in which they used the web 2.0 application "Wordle" (try it at world.net). I was so impressed I thought I would try it with the staff at Spencer. Well, I got the opportunity when, a couple of days later,our principal informed my colleague Tracey Howse, and I that we had 30 minutes during a PD day to present to teachers. (Disclaimer: I am only referring to my portion of the PD session, Ms. Howse did a fabulous job, as always!!!) Unfortunately, I did not adequately prepare. I did practice a little but when teachers asked me how to put the image in other applications I could not answer. And as I think back, I did not follow up with that teacher - I need to put that on my "to do" list. Also, our art teacher had used the application before and had valuable information to add to my presentation, much of which I was not aware of. I should have opened the presentation by asking if anyone was familiar with the application or even contacted my colleagues through e-mail to see about working with one of them to present or to at least pick their brain while I was preparing. Had I prepared more, by meeting with Nicole or "google-ing" it, the presentation would have been much better and I could have developed a good activity for practice. For practice I just asked teachers to come up with 10 - 15 words related to Finally, without a needs analysis or interest inventory that indicated who may be interested I had several people who were not listening or paying attention, as a matter of fact one teacher actually said, "Oh, I wasn't listening." when I asked him a question. ANYWAY... the uninterested people were a little distracting to those few who wanted to learn about the application. In the future, I would put out an e-mail or in some way contact teachers to ask for those who would be interested in the PD I am facilitating, especially when it comes to web 2.0 applications. I think a smaller group would be better and allow all participants, including myself to experiment and learn.

Creating and Implementing the Problem-Based Lesson

The problem-based lesson that I collaborated with my colleague Tracey Howse to create was another valuable experience in my quest to become a more effective Lead Technology Teacher. In reflection, I found it interesting that after 15 years of creating lessons and writing lesson plans, including problem-based lessons, I was "trippin'" (the only way to describe my feelings) on how difficult it was to decide on the concept and problem. Perhaps it was because I haven't had to do lesson planning on my own for over a year and it was hard for me to narrow down the scope. Also I find that I, and I believe a lot of teachers do this, make a bigger deal out of lessons when I know that I am going to be using technology. I'm trying to get over it, practice what I preach, and look at technology integration more "naturally" and not approach it like I have to have this huge grand lesson. But this has proven to be a challenge.

Tracey brought in the Scholastic Keys software that we used (we have a license at school) and we decided on the spreadsheet application. I love using and teaching Excel. Okay...so we used a scholastic key template about cookie dough which has students determine how many ingredients they would need to make a certain number of rice crispy cookies. Therein lies the problem. Users are able to type in information and the spreadsheet figures out the solution to the problem. In order to make the learning activity more relevant we augmented the template to require students to estimate how many cookies it would take to have one for each 3rd grader in our school. We used the names of the teachers in 3rd grade and provided actual numbers of students in the classroom. This is meeting math standards for third grade, requiring students to use the math operations of addition, and multiplication. It would be appropriate for teachers to use as students are learning that multiplication is repeated addition. Students would work as partners to first estimate, do the math, then enter the data and see how close they were in estimating and whether their math was correct. This is a strong introduction to spreadsheets and formulas.

To improve the learning experience I would add actual rice krispie treats to the mix, and also use examples of the actual ingredients (boxes of cereal, bags of marshmallows, boxes of butter) so the students have real-life references. To extend or differentiate the experience I would have students complete an extended response explaining how they solved the problem using their own minds and using the spreadsheet and how they see the connection between the two.

My Opinion of the National Staff Development Council definition of Professional Development

The National Staff Development Council has created a definition for Professional Development for use in the redevelopment of No Child Left Behind. It states that professional development is:

"comprehensive, sustained and intensive approach to improving teachers' and principals' effectiveness in raising student achievement."

The subtext states that it "fosters collective responsibility for improved student performance." It is "conducted among educators facilitated by well prepared school principals, and/or school based professional development coaches, mentors, master teachers, or other teacher leaders." Takes place "several times per week among established teams" of educators. Organized as a continuous cycle of improvement that evaluates needs and establishes goals based on data and student performance. The identified learning goals include "implementing coherent, sustained, and evidence-based learning strategies; provides job embedded coaching; regularly assesses effectiveness; informs on-going improvements; and is supported by courses, workshops, institutes, networks, and conferences.

Interesting definition. The words that stand out to me are "comprehensive, sustained, and intensive approach." Comprehensive means complete, sustained means continued, and intensive means concentrated 0n a single subject or topic for a short time. First of all, comprehensive and intensive are not really compatible for me. It is really difficult for me as a learner to have an intense course and consider it to be comprehensive. Based on my own experiences (excluding the Nurturing Teacher Leadership program which I mentioned in a previous post) something is lost, either the comprehension or the intensity. I am the kind of learner who needs to have time to practice a skill over again - and I can't be the only one. The "hit-it-and-quit-it" format does not work for me because I don't often have time to go home and play and teach myself in order to master a new skill or strategy, especially related to technology.

Another phrase that sticks out to me is "fosters collective responsibility for improved student performance". This lets me know that a lot of people are selling "snake oil" and the administrators or districts buying it will be breathing down teachers' necks with "intensive training" to see if they can make the next miracle cure for low student achievement work after hours of comprehensive, intensive PD training.

After those words it all started sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher, waa, wamp, wamp...several times a week... waa...several times per week...established teams...waaaaa. In a nutshell it seems like some nice words that look good on paper but not really realistic or feasible to me.