This week’s learning model again is structured around ISTE Coaching Standard 4: Professional Development and Program Evaluation: Design, develop and implement technology rich professional learning programs that model principles of adult learning and promote digital age best practices in teaching, learning, and assessment. (ISTE, 2014)
- Triggering Event Initial Question: What digital age best practices should be addressed in professional development and how should this be accomplished?
- My Triggering Question:
What are the some of the best practices for implementing flipped learning into professional development for teachers and what are the possible roadblocks to this?
My Observations:
With professional development I have noticed that often teachers are wondering why they are there and are struggling to stay engaged with the material. Sometimes it’s even the first time they have seen certain concepts and have little time to process information during the session. For me personally, the idea of having information digitally delivered to me before a PD session is especially appealing since I would have time to digest the information before hand and perhaps even interact with the material. The question is: How should this be accomplished?
Benefits/Best Practices
- Personalized Digital Content/Differentiation – Edsurge, talks about creating personalized content for teachers after they have gotten to know teachers through coaching. This can include lots of a digital content such as docs, pinterest, twitter chats, or videos. (Daniels, 2014)
- Videos – An article titled, Flip Your PD for Extra Flexibility & Support, proposes the idea that video works best for flipped PD. This could be in the form of everything from instructional videos to how-to guides and should be brief in length. The linked article has some create resources for creating videos off of screens as well. (Carey, 2014)
- Digital Badges! – By creating the opportunity for teachers to earn digital badges you can gamify your flipped P.E. and motivate them to collect them. I especially like the idea I found on Shake Up Learning, that talks about not only displaying their badges digitally, but also putting up on their physical classroom door so their professional achievements could be seen by students and others in the building as well. (Bell, 2015)
- On-going PD – Flipped professional development should also be something that is embedded in the school and happens regularly. By creating a model where teachers are supported on a continual basis they can complete their individual goals more consistently.
- Teacher Engagement – see video
You also might enjoy watching this video on how one school flipped their PD and helped engagement.
Roadblocks/Disadvantages
One roadblock for creating flipped professional development is just finding the resources and content that are ready-made. According to Global Partnership for Education, a good resource to take advantage of might be open content or crowdsourcing services. Creation by the school district or leader may be what is needed however, if nothing else can be found already created. (Burns, 2016)
Additionally, it is sometimes a challenge to get teachers motivated to complete their portion of the PD that happens before the in-person sessions. One idea to fix this was to create an assessment for participants to complete once they made it to the training to hold them accountable for the material beforehand.
References:
C. (2013, April 22). Retrieved February 12, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox4i9yVQUUI
Daniels. (2016, July 10). The Flip Side of Professional Development (EdSurge News). Retrieved February 12, 2017, from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2014-04-18-the-flip-side-of-professional-development
Flipping teacher professional development. (2016, May). Retrieved February 10, 2017, from http://www.globalpartnership.org/blog/flipping-teacher-professional-development
H. (2015, November 17). Take PD to the Next Level with Badges – Gamify Professional Learning. Retrieved February 11, 2017, from http://www.shakeuplearning.com/blog/take-pd-to-the-next-level-with-badges/
ISTE Standards for Coaches. (2014). Retrieved January 29, 2017, from http://www.iste.org/standards/standards/standards-for-coaches
