Meeting My Professional Development Needs

A capstone paper as required by the Imagining Futures EDLT 726 course at Pepperdine University. This paper explores a proposed Learning Management System (LMS) for Teachers that facilitates the building of strong Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) and Communities of Practice.

Teacher professional development opportunities in Mexico are currently lacking. The traditional approaches of professional development such as workshops and conferences are commonplace but do little to bridge the gap between abstract concepts about teaching and learning and the practicalities teachers face in the classroom. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to describe how ideas, materials, and social interactions form a PLN through online, informal pedagogical dialogues among English language educators as it relates to professional learning. The five participants of this study were selected from a total of 10 based on their willingness to complete an informed consent form, complete an initial online survey, interact with other professionals publically online, and participate in a final interview. The online survey contained demographic information about each case and included both open and closed items; a content analysis was done on public interactions that tool place online; and a final in-depth interview used open questions to inquire about how respective PLNs changed over time. All data was coded, categorized, and placed into themes based on the ideational, material, and social aspects of each PLN. The findings show that professional knowledge, skills sets, and overall dispositions emerge in unique ways based on how ideas, technologies, and personal contacts interrelate with each other over time, and that an individual’s PLN provides unanticipated benefits when sharing publicly online.

Educators realize that they no longer have to wait for professional development opportunities. Although the idea of professional networking is not new to educators, advances in web technologies such as blogs, learning platforms, and social networks have enabled educators to form larger and more useful networks that would have been inconceivable even a decade ago. With these networks, called Professional Learning Networks, or PLNs, educators are able not only to find cutting edge information and resources but also to learn about opportunities for collaboration and professional development. This paper briefly describes PLNs and gives an overview of how educators in higher education are using Web 2.0 tools for professional development. A number of popular components that are used to construct PLNs are highlighted, along with specific examples. The paper concludes with practical suggestions and a list of resources that can be used when starting a PLN.

Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 2010

This paper discusses the outcomes of a professional development project offered to faculty of Arizona State University's College of Teacher Education and Leadership. The goal of this project was to assist instructors with progressing technologies and to help them transform their pedagogy to leverage the affordances provided through the integration of Web 2.0 tools. Through the redesign of an instructional unit to incorporate social networking, instructors experienced positive outcomes. Findings suggest that the benefits of integrating social networking tools used in a meaningful way while carefully considering how they fit within specific content areas and teaching methodologies included increased feedback for students and a more student-centered approach to teaching.

2000

As technology is transforming the way that people work, communicate, and learn, schools and teachers must accommodate and adapt to these rapidly changing conditions. How to prepare teachers adapting to change is an important focus of the current wave of educational reform. In particular, traditional methods of teacher training has often been criticized for its profound disconnection between theory and

Personal (or professional) Learning Networks (PLN) were developed and maintained in many organizations as a part of their strategy to equip the employees with up-to-date knowledge cropped up in the field of interest. These PLNs may be of a group of persons or professionals with low or high level expertise in the field who are linked together through physical communications, interactions and organized gatherings. There is a flow of information or intelligence inside the network and the benefit goes to each member. The trend has gained momentum in the second half of the last decade with the emergence of social media as the main ecosystem where it becomes possible to connect the least knowledgeable individual with the most intelligent of the lot. How a library professional could gain from this influx of access points heaped up around him? Why it is crucial to develop one’s Online Personal Learning Network as part of his/her lifelong independent learning to keep up with the instant changes happens in the field? This paper seeks to address these questions by studying the working PLN model developed by the author.

Professional development in CALL: a selection of papers, 2019

T he emergence of Web 2.0 has created diverse opportunities for continuing professional development in the area of language teaching. This article begins by presenting how the pedagogical model implemented in an online postgraduate programme integrates the Personal Learning Environment and Personal Learning Network (PLE and PLN) concept and practice to support students' learning. Furthermore, it provides two case studies from the students of the programme on the integration of the PLE and PLN concept in their own settings as well as its effects on their professional development. The first case study describes how the PLE and PLN concept has become part of the instructional strategy of the teacher and discusses the outcomes of its implementation. The second case study deals with how the PLE and PLN concept facilitated the professional networking activities of the teacher and how this has affected teaching practices. The two case studies demonstrate diverse ways as to how teachers can use PLEs and PLNs for supporting their own as well as their students' learning, and for creating professional development opportunities within their

International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2019

As education becomes increasingly complex, effective continuing professional learning is an important strategy to support teachers in schools. However, current professional development approaches may not meet contemporary teachers' needs. Seeking to enhance teachers' professional learning opportunities, this paper presents a model of learning as a connected professional. The model draws upon the findings of a qualitative case study of 13 teachers who interact with others through a personal learning network (PLN). Theories of connectivism, networked learning, and connected learning underpin the model, which conceptualises the whole experience of learning as a connected professional. The model comprises three elements: arenas of learning, teacher as learner, and PLN. Key characteristics of the experience are practices described as linking, stretching, and amplifying. These practices recur in various ways across all three elements of the model. The model promotes professional learning that is active, interestdriven, and autonomous, meeting personal learning needs while being socially connected.

The Reading Teacher, 2015

2012

This paper reports the results of a naturalistic study obtained from a teaching experience in higher education with first year students of the Primary School Teacher degree. In this study we want to analyse how they are organizing their activity for learning (reading, reflecting and sharing knowledge) and how those learning processes are integrated on their PLE. In order to achieve that, they have been reflecting about the learning basic "components" of their course activity: reading (in a multimedia way, or not only by text), doing (reflecting and creating cognitive artifacts), and sharing (discussing, showing, and providing and receiving feedback from and to a community of reference), they have made relationships between those components and technological tools, if there is any, and using those they have created mind maps for representing their PLEs. The idea is try to understand how are PLE organized and perceived by learners but not starting from the technological point of view but from the learning processes perspective.