For about 20 minutes last night, I was a participant in #kyedchat. This is a recent Twitter hashtag created with the idea of spawning some intelligent and relevant discussion on all matters related to Kentucky education. This sort of thing takes place fairly often on Twitter with any number of topics. Last night, the pre-defined topic was professional development, with questions posed to the Twitterverse to prompt all followers of the hashtag to respond and converse. I joined in when I wasn’t ruining a t-shirt during a misfire as I was doing a load of laundry. The joys of Twitter, I suppose. Here’s one thing that struck me, though…
I’m not a teacher.
There I was, reading and occasionally chiming in on several topics related to teacher professional development. At no time have I ever ‘officially’ participated as a teacher in any professional development. I’ve presented at conferences, talked to teachers and have heard stories about various PD experiences. However, I haven’t walked the proverbial mile in the shoes of a classroom teacher. Does it invalidate anything I said? Should I have even been in the discussion at all?
As luck would have it, one of the topics talked about Twitter itself and its potential benefit as a professional development tool. I’ve found that, with Twitter, it’s very easy to engage as a participant in discussions. It’s also easy to be a wallflower. The prompted questions for this scheduled discussion were meant to engage the followers… to illicit feedback and to keep participants from standing on the side like wallflowers, waiting to be picked to play in the game.
I deal primarily with CIOs on a daily basis. On a pretty frequent basis, the challenges at the local school district level are similar to those at the state level. I think the same holds true with teachers (particularly with their own professional development) and the students they work with. Several comments brought that point home to me during the discussion last evening. Below, I’m going to quote some statements from the chat last evening. With each one, a word or two could be changed (if needed) and could be applied to students and learning in the classroom environment. From the #kyedchat:
“Does age play a role in the educators’ willingness to participate?”
(Good PD should be about) “make/do versus sit/get.”
“Best PD is self-chosen.”
“On your own PD should count (some). Give teachers choice.”
“Anything that can be presented in a ‘list’ format shouldn’t have to be gone over verbally. It’s insulting.”
“It’s tough to sit through an hour-long PD or ‘flipped’ video.
“I need it (PD) in chunks. Once school is underway, it’s easy to get stuck…”
“Some PD is =2 students getting an A for sitting in the class. Where is the evidence of growth?”
I could go on, but I think you see the point. It seems to me that our educators have lots of informed thought on how their professional learning could be made better. These same constructs need to be applied to how we can make our students’ learning environment better. Give me choice and flexibility. Make it engaging. I don’t want an hour of nothing but lecture every day. Find something that helps my knowledge grow rather than something that serves only to pass time and ‘check a box’ to acknowledge that a topic was covered. All of this applies not only to the teachers’ growth but to the students’ growth as well. It should, as we promote the concept of life-long learning in our schools every day.
Pretty regularly, I get asked about various technology devices and whether they might be a good fit for the educational environment. I usually point out that the answer depends entirely on what you want to accomplish. The challenge our teachers have it to constantly engage students in the learning process. Technology can make that easier… and it can make it a whole lot tougher. I like to think I was a good student ‘back in the day,’ but there were certainly times that I wasn’t engaged in the discussion. I remember doodling, making paper footballs, daydreaming, playing Hangman with a classmate and all sorts of other things to pass the time. If I had been given access to something like the Internet, I would have certainly been using it for… who KNOWS what?! Well, that leads toward Digital Citizenship and a topic for another day.
I know this, though. Kids today are on Twitter (NOTE – The trends come and go pretty quickly, so this post could be dated in six months.) As with any number of hardware devices, this application CAN be used for education. It can also be used for inappropriate purposes. When I listen to these educators use Twitter for engaging, thoughtful discussion, it shines the bright light on the potential benefit of using Twitter to engage the ‘wallflower’ students into thoughtful, relevant conversation. Some of that is occurring and I hope we see more of it moving forward.