Reflection 2.0

As a teacher falling under the fairly new PI-34 statutes in WI regulating new teacher licensing, it’s all about evidence of learning and reflection.  I’ll need to create a Professional Development Plan (PDP) before next fall and and decided to start investigating the specifics of this slightly-scary sounding document that must be completed for license renewal.  Here’s what PI-34, in all it’s glory, requires in the PDP:

1. Identified activities and objectives related to professional development goals, school or school district goals or performance goals identified by the educator.

2. A timeline for achieving the professional development goals.

3. Evidence of collaboration with professional peers and others.

4. An assessment plan that specifies indicators of growth.

(b) Successful completion of the professional development plan shall be documented. The documentation may include but is not limited to evidence of whole group and individual student performance as measured by state, local, formal and informal assessments; lesson plans; supervisor and mentor comments of classroom performance; journals documenting samples of pupil errors and analysis of teacher interpretations of errors; ongoing documentation of classroom management techniques and results; and curriculum adaptations for children with disabilities or other exceptionalities with related outcome measures. The documentation portfolio may also include evidence that identifies professional development activities related to the professional development goals. The evidence may be in the form of samples of pupil work, letters of recommendation; evidence of attending professional meetings, workshops, conferences or seminars; administrative or supervisory evaluations; peer evaluations; journals, diaries or published articles; action research projects and results; college, university or technical college course work; or evidence of in-district work assignments outside of the classroom.

I’m a little disappointed in the wording of this part of the statute - it’s rather antiquated in its definition of professional development and leaves me to believe that the mass quantity of time I’ve spent building my PLN, collaborating with educators from around the world, and learning how to use countless web tools/applications might not be fit to be labeled professional development.  Well, I’ve decided to interpret the part of the statute that includes “journals, diaries, or published articles” as license to utilize my blog as evidence of my professional development.  If nothing else, I’ll be able to refer back here when creating “real” evidence of learning, collaboration, and research. 

I believe it’s my job as a new teacher and member of multiple edtech communities to challenge this definition.  Who knows, maybe this summer when I attend my district’s “PDP’s Made Personal” course I’ll find that I can just throw in the url to Reflection 2.0 and be done!  Somehow, I’m doubting that.  At the very least I’ll have to fill out lots of forms and use lots of big words all relating to WI’s teaching standards, and I suppose rightly so.  Someone out there needs to ensure that teachers are completing meaningful professional development, and regulations typically involve steps, forms, and run-around.  I’ll just roll with it, since I’d like to remain licensed in WI! 

(And of course, I’m well aware that there is more to professional development than just technology, and I will be making sure to put my time in training in the multitude of other areas I’m sure I can learn MUCH more about to enhance my abilities as an educator.)

I’m going to start out by documenting my journey into web 2.0 and building my PLN, but it could take awhile, so I’ll be doing it in multiple posts.  Here goes:

• I attended a 3 hour Intro to Web 2.0 workshop at school presented by 2 of my colleagues.  At this workshop, we were introduced to terms such as Creative Commons, del.icio.us, edublogs, pbwiki, and flickr.  My highly esteemed colleagues simply didn’t have enough time to dig very deep into any of the tools, but we were given links to all the sites.  At this session, I created my first edublog, but didn’t get past getting logged in.
• Starting that afternoon, I began working with my new blog and explored several other blogs that were listed under “Blogs of the Hour” on edublogs’ home page.  One of these was Melanie Holtsman’s Once Upon a Teacher.  I really liked Melanie’s work and was really interested in all of the cool widgets (although I didn’t know that’s what they were called!) in her sidebar.  This was the first time I utilized RSS.
• In a journey to another blog I found on Melanie’s blogroll (can’t for the life of me remember which one!), I stumbled upon a blog with a Classroom 2.0 badge in the sidebar.
• This is where it really took off.  Classroom 2.0 opened the door to collaboration, new tools, and countless wonderful edtech people chiming in to help.  I loved the sense of community I felt when people responded to my post in the Introductions forum and made sure to set it up so I recieved emails every time someone added to the discussion.

I’ll continue my journey in follow-up posts, as this was just the beginning, but I challenge those of you who have been here WAY longer than I:

Do you remember your first taste of 2.0 tools?  Can you remember life without del.icio.us, RSS, blogging, twitter, and the like?  I’ve heard many a lament on twitter about educators who aren’t even aware of these tools, but we were all there at one point………let’s make sure to do our part to spread the word.

Stay tuned for Part 2………and more, I’ve learned a LOT since then!