Facilitating Online PD for Distance Educators

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Subject: [PD 3446] Day 3: Facilitating Online PD for Distance Educators
From: Jackie A. Taylor jackie at jataylor.net
Date: Wed Jun 17 11:19:48 EDT 2009

Good day or evening, all,

Leslie wrote:

"Our experience has shown that not every effective F2F PD facilitator will be an effective online PD facilitator (regardless of whether they, or someone else, designed the online PD). Facilitators for online PD need to build their skills in providing effective instruction in the particular environment in which the PD will occur; this is a very different task from providing PD in an online setting. How are people receiving or providing training to help PD facilitators make this transition?"

Leslie offers a great segue into today's new discussion topic. In the Design Elements document http://home.comcast.net/~djrosen/Design_Elements.1.pdf (our springboard for this guest discussion), the authors note that it is important to help teachers communicate effectively with online students. It would seem to follow that in order to help online teachers communicate effectively, we must be up to speed with our own skills in facilitating online PD and to receive or provide training for online PD facilitators.

Please reply; address one or more of the following, or post your own question:

  • As facilitators of online PD, what do you do to build your skills in providing PD in an online setting? Are there online venues where you practice, for example? Resources you read? Approaches or practices you study? Tell us about it.
  • What sound educational approaches and practices do you use to teach distance educators to effectively communicate online?
  • How do you build quality into your communications? How do you teach online teachers to build quality into theirs?
  • Further, how do you create engaging online learning experiences for online participants? What strategies do you use, or what effective strategies have you experienced?
  • Finally, how do you help other online PD facilitators or distance educators transition to teaching online?

I look forward to hearing from you...Jackie


~~

Jackie Taylor, Online Facilitator, jackie at jataylor.net Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/Professionaldevelopment

Co-sponsored by:

National Institute for Literacy www.nifl.gov <http://www.nifl.gov/> Association of Adult Literacy Professional Developers www.aalpd.org <http://www.aalpd.org/>

Subject: [PD 3451] Re: Day 3: Facilitating Online PD for Distance Educators
From: Marcel Kielkucki mkielku at kirkwood.edu
Date: Wed Jun 17 11:30:06 EDT 2009

I want to address the how to communicate portion of this discussion. One of the best ways to communicate is by using your email, as it's quite similar to using the discussion items in many online courses.

Also, it's critical if you're attempting to teach good communication skills to insist that students use proper grammar in their communications, and that you as an instructor/facilitator do likewise. If you get a response with abbreviations, etc. ask them to send it back correctly.

One method that you can use to get students to respond to you is to try as best you can to force the student to respond. Phrase your replies/responses to a student with a question they have to answer back to you.

I look forward to seeing everyone else's thoughts as well.

Mr. Marcel Kielkucki
Kirkwood HSDL Coordinator

Subject: [PD 3462] Re: Day 3: Facilitating Online PD for Distance Educators
From: Holly Dilatush holly at dilatush.com
Date: Wed Jun 17 13:56:59 EDT 2009

Hello all,

- As facilitators of online PD, what do you do to *build your skills*in providing PD in an online setting? Are there online venues where you practice, for example? Resources you read? Approaches or practices you study? Tell us about it.

I wish this were a reflection question and group discussion question more often. I find relevance and learning opportunities all around me -- from entering the grocery store and seeing hand held scanners ( http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1448719/giant_grocery_stores_new_scanit_system.html ), to Twittering and more.

TESOL conferences (http://www.tesol.org) and state and local conferences have inspired me and led me to more new directions than have local PD opportunities. However, anecdotally I believe the opposite is true for many of my colleagues. At conferences, I hear of things I have never heard of before. This appeals to me, lures me in. This is how I discovered Moodle ( http://moodle.org, http://moodlerooms.com). CALL centers used to terrify me and make me feel incompetent; today they are a magnet! Moodle (and I attended the first presentation about Moodle because I loved the name!) was the "key" that opened many, many, many doors for me!

Today, NIFL listserv discussions, connections made from PLNs and SLNs (personal and social learning networks): TESOL's EVOs (Electronic Village Online: http://academics.smcvt.edu/cbauer-ramazani/TESOL/EVOL/portal.htm), various Twitter connections/posts, Larry Ferlazzo ( http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/ ), and LWCers ( http://learningwithcomputers.pbworks.com/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/learningwithcomputers/ ) rank among my top personal PD patterns. I find this answer interesting to myself, because these have been the least expensive PD pursuits I've undertaken! I'm currently paying for, and investing tremendous time into completing a master's degree online. I've paid to attend and participate in webinars, seminars, short courses, and found less value in them (although they have indeed added value to my learning journey). This discussion is helping me to recognize a 'shift' in my personal learning preference; I'm preferring Web 2.0 / Web 3.0, it's becoming crucial to my learning process. [and there's still SO much I do not know about, am not at all familiar with...]

I still read (a lot) -- articles and books -- on and offline (and still prefer reading offline). But "classroom" to me no longer conjures images of a physical door and rows of desks and chairs... regardless of the subject/content matter!

Very interesting discussions,

Holly -- Holly (Dilatush)
Charlottesville, VA USA
holly at dilatush.com

Subject: [PD 3476] Re: Day 3: Facilitating Online PD for Distance Educators
From: Kathy Olesen-Tracey ktracey at cait.org
Date: Wed Jun 17 16:53:35 EDT 2009

The GED-i Team has created a Youtube channel, a social bookmarking site, and a twitter account with two purposes in mind. First and foremost -we want to provide as many sound instructional resources to our programs, administrators, and teachers in the field. Secondly, we want to model best practices for using these tools.

The key, is not only in the diversity of delivery methods, but the quality of PD and the expectations of the trainer and participants.

As for Twitter - the goal was to share important information on upcoming trainings and share web resources. I invite you to follow GED-i on the Twitter network to see what all the tweeting is about. We are http://twitter.com/GED_i

Today's tweet was: " Check out http://ohdontforget.com It appears to be a great way to send text messages from your computer. It's free and easy. "

Kathy

Subject: [PD 3479] Re: Day 3: Facilitating Online PD for Distance Educators
From: Crystal Hack chack at cait.org
Date: Wed Jun 17 17:43:43 EDT 2009

Hi--I want to piggyback on what Kathy shared and share that our goal for tweeting this particular site. We see it as a nice way to remind students to register for the GED test, to remind them to come in and post test if they are at a distance students, etc. We want to model using the technology and encourage teachers to use it with their students. We will probably follow up this tweet with some detailed information on our listserv about how to use ohdontforget.com to reach students using the technology they are used to using...their cell phones and texting.

Today's tweet was: " Check out http://ohdontforget.com It appears to be a great way to send text messages from your computer. It's free and easy. "

Crystal

-- Center for the Application of Information Technologies

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