Time For Professional Development

There were 21 votes to contribute to this data on discretionary time for professional development.



It is a bell curve with most falling in the 2-4 times a month and not too far behind 2-4 times a week. That would mean that most put at least an hour a week into their professional development. An average would be 2 hours a week or 8 hours a month. Two hours a week seems reasonable for 1 or 2 of these items weekly:
• read an article
• listen to a podcast
• take notes to reflect, focus or review learning
• have a conversation to clarify or share learning
• participate in an E-bolt session
• reflect or share learning via the blog
• search on the Internet
• attend a workshop...

I cannot help but wonder what we can do to help the individuals who have no time for professional learning? Certainly as a professional development entity we must encourage everyone to learn professionally. If we create professional development, can we assume that approximately 9% of our clients have no time for professional development and will not access it in any form? Do we focus on the 91 % who can dedicate at least an hour for their professional learning and forget about the 9% who can't? What then becomes of the clients (maybe K-12 students) of the 9%? Do we develop learning opportunities for this 9% which can be accessed more easily within their time constraints? Do we examine why 91 % do have the time and 9% do not, to find solutions?

Russell, I wonder if this data has any significance to your study focusing on when clients will access professional development via electronic means. It is data only from our small LC group, but it may very well reflect the SBBC world. If most people have 2 hours a week, it should be value added. I wonder if a higher value added factor would increase the amount of time that individuals make for professional development? Do your attendance figures mirror this data?

This little piece of data gave me more questions than answers. Of one thing I can be certain, all professional development must be of high quality as everyone has a limited amount of time and none to waste.

Treadmill + ipod = healthy body and mind

Today I walked an extra 1/2 mile because I wanted to see and hear the rest of John Merrow's Podcast on a teacher recruitment/training program in New York City. I used the iPod for MY learning. This is really a well done series and I strongly recommend you subscribe.
Go to iTunes
Click on iTunes store
Search in iTunes store for "John Merrow Education Podcast"
You can subscribe for free and get all episodes automatically downloaded to iTunes, Or you can see a listing and just get the episodes you want - transfer to your iPod and use as you will. some are video some are audio only.

When I got home I decided to search for another place where John Merrow's "Making The Grade" series lives - GUESS WHAT !? John Merrow has a blog just like us - johnmerrow.blogspot.com. We are in good company!

Click here and you will see his podcast (2nd in the Making the grade series) that was the one that made me walk an extra 1/2 mile. I wanted to see what happened to this teacher - if she got over it - if she stayed or quit - if she got over the November dip. Do we have new teachers experiencing the October-Novemebrer Dip? Might they benefit from watching this? Might coaches benefit from using this with new educators?

BTW - Anamarie - the URL is the way to include this in your blackboard class - you link to the url and it plays on that site. I am curious as to how John was able to load the video into his blog...anyone know how to do that?

A Little Data Analysis

20 people responded to the question. What does it mean? Well, it looks like the most significant motivation for getting involved with this Learning Community is to learn and to help with our work. To a lesser degree was peer pressure and getting an iPod ... but still significant to see that they are a motivator for some. I wonder how the motivation correlates with the participation level? I don't have that data as some data is anonymous and some data is not.
If our client population is anything like our group of 20, it would appear that all 4 of these listed motivators work to some degree but we would get more bang for our buck if we focused on teaching something new and demonstrating how it has a positive impact on our work.
There is one question I did not ask - How many did it for the points?

Study of Ourselves In Order to Understand Others

I wonder - if we are a slice of the SBBC employees. Are we an an example of what our clients are in knowledge, skills, attitude, behaviors, and aspirations? If we are, then the barriers and the motivators should be the same for them as they are for us. It's curious that a motivator for one, may not be a motivator for another - and of course - the same for barriers.

Data Plan

What, How, When
• self-reporting- weekly surveys on my blog, ongoing anecdotal records from e-mails
• observation of users’ behavior and interaction - categorize and quantify - monthly
• tests on cognitive or behavioral skills that have been affected - technology showing up in our events? Not sure about this one? Working on it.
• records - access log files on the frequency of downloads, protocol review information, AR participation of this group (attendance and participation)- some already exists - ongoing
I'm also going to look at the data and success that others have reported - maybe there's a relationship

Notepods - I wish I thought of it!

Check this out...

Cliff Notes on another level
• NotePods releases audio study aids for students at $1.99 each.

logo possibilities

just for fun
Which do you prefer 1, 2 or 3

How, what, when, where to get the data?

Formative evaluation is used to help improve a product. Our product would be the content that is delivered through the pod technology. Content to inform, review, remediate, coach...

Formative evaluation information is collected in four ways:
• self-reporting- refers to users’ directly relaying their experiences with opinions of the product, generally by means of a questionnaire, survey, or interview with an evaluator
• observation of users’ behavior and interaction with the products
• tests on cognitive or behavioral skills that have been affected
• records - records and documents, such as server access log files, are used to gather information on the frequency of downloads—data that can give an idea of how much a product is being used.

Profcast

Video 1 - Who is podcasting?
video 2 - What is podcasting?
Video 3 - When does podcasting make sense for me?
video 4 - Where do you find podcasts?
Video 5 - Why Podcast?

the only thing missing is how

Awesome information and pretty cool delivery which we can do via
Profcast


You can download Profcast for 15 days - so be sure you will have time to take advantage - it is pretty easy -create a powerpoint , darg icon into profcast, record your presentation and voila - a profcast is born.

The company is very customer attentive - yes I contacted the help folks - I learned
no templates or fancy fonts
no animation
a little tricky with share/save and transfer to device
you have to write the narrative down - natural does not work - practice the script
it is satisfying and kinda fun too.
It is a $29. program. I suggest you provide purchasing info to your director and purchase for your unit.