Professional Learning Community Blog

Well, I was swept away by the holidays, a trip to New York, and budget matters before that, many budget matters.... so haven't posted for a while. Just catching up on my blog feeds, and I want to post again about the Adult Education Matters blog by Martha Rankin and her staff at Newport Mesa USD Adult School. The blog is a part of their overall professional development plan, and they use it to keep staff updated on work of various teams, to post documents such as their school-wide PD plan, and ESLRs (expected student learning results). They even have a short PowerPoint about their ESLRs that students view and then sign via SmartBoard.

This blog is such a good example of how blogging can be used by an administrator and program to build a sense of community and share information, I wish every adult ed program in California could check it out. The goals of the blog are:

- to provide current research and articles on the matters of adult education

- to give useful and successful ways to put the research into practice in the fields

- to create an online “home” for professional development ideas in the form of videos, music, pictures, documents, and online articles

- to build a learning community among adult educators and provide an e-forum in which they can collaborate

Technology integration is an important part of their school-wide professional development plan, and is reflected in each of its four sections. For example, they support peer tech mentors to offer tech tips during a 20 minute period at the beginning of class when students have independent work to do. Topics include using SmartBoards, blogging, Internet sites, writing projects, etc. There is a big emphasis on collaboration, and on the importance of technology as a part of 21st century literacy. What a great model!

What Makes Teachers Technology Users?

I'm in Ann Arbor this week for the Project IDEAL conference on distance learning in adult education. One advantage of traveling is time on the plane to read the stuff that piles up on your desk because you want to read it but you don't have time. This morning I read an interesting research article from the Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, by Peggy Ertmer of Purdue and two grad students, that surveyed 25 teachers who had won awards for using technology effectively in their learner-centered classrooms.

The goal was to find out what these teachers perceived as the supports to their success, and whether they thought intrinsic or extrinsic factors were more important. Extrinsic factors were things like access to computers, software, administrative support and tech support. Intrinsic factors were things like attitude towards technology, confidence and previous success with technology.

The interesting thing about the results was that teachers rated intrinsic factors as more important to their success than anything else. Even if they had limited computer or Internet access, or a lack of support from their administration, if they felt confident and committed, they found a way to overcome the barriers. So if you believe that using technology will help your students, and you have a strong commitment to helping your students, you will find a way to use technology in your classroom even if it is not well-supported in your program.

To me this indicates support for the mentoring model. Mentoring builds confidence and successful experiences with technology through support from a peer mentor. Workshops, seminars and conferences are great for introducing new ideas, and 76% of the teachers surveyed identified these as their preferred approaches to professional development. But workshops and conferences don't necessarily create positive attitude and commitment. Mentoring has a role to play in cheerleading, building confidence, analyzing challenges and celebrating successes.

The highest rated success factors were inner drive, personal beliefs, commitment and confidence. How do we build and support those qualities? There were differences between genders (good tech support was more important to women, and to teachers who had been teaching longer, perhaps because they were less familiar with the technology.)

I can't find the article online right now, maybe the ISTE server is having a hiccup, but I will keep trying.