Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Creating a Professional Development Learning Rave

Dear Colleagues:


Although political and educational leaders, researchers, and corporations develop new standards such as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and look for ways to help teachers implement them, they overlook an obvious one...

Today's online learning communities make it possible to connect the individual and collective intelligence of people uniquely qualified to match their expertise with the needs and problems of individuals and organizations implementing the standards. 

For example, integrated social media and professional development tools help online learning community members and teams to learn, develop, co-create, remix, and share resources on-demand -- thereby moving beyond a conventional "schedule of district or school PD days" to a dynamic venue for advancing professional development. 

All this calls for starting a "Learning Rave" for professional development rather than designing another "new system." Over the decades, school reform in the United States has seen numerous "new systems" get co-opted by the status quo. In today's world, if we want ideas to flourish and spread, using an online learning community strategy with integrated social media and professional development tools will scale-up dramatically and lead to the types of PD scenarios described here to support CCSS:


Nick Hobar

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