Staff Development 2.0
By David Jakes
Technology & Learning 26 no10 20-4 My 2006

This article caught my eye because I thought it might relate to the Web 2.0 and Library 2.0. I also was interested in it because I lead a lot of inservices at my school and thought it might have helpful information regarding that.

While the article was designed more for district wide inservices and I work with just my building, there were interesting things I learned. I realize that all educators are not equal when it comes to applying technology to the learning process, and it was helpful to be reminded that “the assessment of educator skill level and readiness is critical.”

I also found it helpful to identify technology standards for teachers and students. We are working on an information literacy curriculum, but I hadn’t considered identifying these for teachers. While some of the teachers in my building would be intimidated by this, I like the idea of requiring “every teacher to have a core level of technology competencey and demonstrate mastery on a formal assessment.”

I also appreciated the idea of extended training. Too often our inservices are informational or inspiring, but then the busyness of educational life enters and the newly learned skills sit idle because there is no time to develop them. I don’t see this happening very often though, and until it does, professional development will never be as effective as it could and should be.

The final idea that I really appreciated in this article was the idea to encourage community. I am impressed that in one school weekly reflections are emailed to the administrator and the administrator replies to each teacher as well as emails a weekly reflection. I would love to see our teachers interacting about professional ideas and tools more frequently whether it be via blogs or emails.