Social and Professional Learning for Teachers

Challenge. While the goal to implement social learning among teachers is highly valued, many schools struggle with teacher adoption. How can schools formalize social learning experiences for teachers? To answer this and related questions, we integrated social and professional learning tools to improve teaching and student achievement -- a goal shared by all professional teachers.

Integrating Social and Professional Learning Tools

Solution. Release the power of social learning by giving teachers a set of digital tools and a learning community to share their expertise and results with other teachers interested in similar goals. Think of it as a dynamic professional learning community within your school, district, and beyond.

Syzygy: Teachers post something as simple as "off to eat lunch with my instructional team" or as complex as "what is data-driven teaching?" Simply put, Syzygy is a tool for teachers to communicate with each other when something is relevant and timely to share or inquire about.

TaskBuilder: Teachers easily access content standards and evidenced-based templates to plan lessons, tasks, and assessments to help students learn basic skills, rigorous academic standards, and technical skills. In short,  the TaskBuilder tool helps teachers to complete the “Tasks” of teaching and learning.

WikiTasks: Teachers archive, post, access, and clone tasks developed with TaskBuilder. The WikiTasks tool supports teachers to create and update tasks independently or collaboratively. WikiTasks makes tasks available for feedback without any restrictions or with limits for ensuring control over changes made to WikiTasks.

Programs: Teachers complete professional learning entirely over the Internet. They learn at their own pace, in their preferred location, and submit practice activities and products to their coach, colleagues, and teams for formative feedback and to their coach to confirm completion and earn badges. 

Coaching: Teachers schedule coaching sessions with a peer or program coach to support learning, teaching, and assessment tasks and to guide their progress through professional learning programs.

Takeaway. Teachers experience integrated social and professional learning in each tool because people, teaching, and technology are connected to create new and better ways of learning.

How it works...

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