http://www.johnhendron.net/digest/2008/05/09/professional-development-thoughts/ education technology Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:45:56 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 http://www.johnhendron.net/digest/2008/05/09/professional-development-thoughts/#comment-335 Jon Becker Mon, 12 May 2008 02:08:10 +0000 http://www.johnhendron.net/digest/?p=278#comment-335 <p>John, this is a particular (empirical) interest of mine. As all the chatter about PLEs or PLNs happens, I wonder how that might work with/for educators who can't be in front of a screen for any length of time during a school day. I think that's a real issue, and when I speak about new learning paradigms and PLE/PLNs, inevitably, I get the "we don't have time for that..." line. But, at the same time, I think many educators need to reframe their thinking about "time." We shouldn't have to build so much professional learning time into the school day; we should trust that educators are using "non-instructional" time to learn and advance themselves professionally. I know, I know...teachers don't get paid enough, yada, yada, yada. In New York, lots of teachers got that mentality from their unions. In Virginia, there are no real unions telling teachers that they shouldn't be working beyond "contract hours." So, for me, the question is how do we get teachers to be learners before, during and after school.</p> John, this is a particular (empirical) interest of mine. As all the chatter about PLEs or PLNs happens, I wonder how that might work with/for educators who can’t be in front of a screen for any length of time during a school day. I think that’s a real issue, and when I speak about new learning paradigms and PLE/PLNs, inevitably, I get the “we don’t have time for that…” line. But, at the same time, I think many educators need to reframe their thinking about “time.” We shouldn’t have to build so much professional learning time into the school day; we should trust that educators are using “non-instructional” time to learn and advance themselves professionally. I know, I know…teachers don’t get paid enough, yada, yada, yada. In New York, lots of teachers got that mentality from their unions. In Virginia, there are no real unions telling teachers that they shouldn’t be working beyond “contract hours.” So, for me, the question is how do we get teachers to be learners before, during and after school.

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