21 Things about 21 Things
These are my notes and reflections from a session by Amaoge Okoye titled: 21 Things about 21 Things: Lessons Learned from Staff Development.
Instructional Technology Team from Portsmouth Public Schools; supporting 16,000 students and 1,100 educators.their 21 Things was inspired by “23 Things” from Helene Blowers.
They needed staff development that was: customizable, online, self paced, flexible, do-able, pajama compatible. They built 21 bite-sized, 20 minutes, web based units teachers can complete for staff development credit. They focused on free 2.0 tools and some paid district tools.
Stuff that worked: Wordle.net, Animoto, Blabberize, Fodey Newspaper, Big Huge Labs, Discovery Ed., voicethread, nixbook, wallwisher, glogster, twitter, delicious, voci,
Stuff that DIDN’T work: blogs, podcasts (because the teachers thought it was “too hard” and took “too long” )
From what I am hearing, it sounds to me like their teachers looked at this like a 21 item checklist to complete. The focus seemed to be on completing each item rather than learning something new. I think that this happens when we boil something down and “make it easy” for someone. Bingo, they just mentioned the problem of teachers “owning” it during the process.
I like the idea of doing a 21 THINGS with my staff, and may do so next year. Before I do, however, I need to decide how I can do this without making it seem like a series of hoops I want our teachers to jump through. This implementation seems cheesy, requires lots of carrots (their words, not mine) and doesnt seem to ignite authentic learning.
There was just too much talk about us vs. them in this session for my liking.
Related links:
http://iste2010pps.pbworks.com/
http://plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com/
