Low-Budget Ideas for One-Person Professional Developers

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Subject: [PD 3421] The one-person OPD
From: David Rosen DJRosen at theworld.com
Date: Tue Jun 16 12:24:29 EDT 2009

On Jun 16, 2009, at 10:57 AM, Leslie Petty wrote:

One thing that has struck me is the complexity of the trainings that people are talking about developing/offering. This was also a topic of discussion at the round table session that Crystal and I moderated at the COABE pre-session. However, both Crystal and I encouraged people to think about the possibilities of providing distance PD that doesn't depend so heavily on extensive (and often expensive) technology components. Crystal talked about how GEDi uses short, single topic online chats to address narrow PD topics. I talked about the online study groups that Project IDEAL offers (and mentioned earlier today by my colleague Jere Johnston). The advantage of these approaches is that they reduce the technological demands (both on the course developer and on participants), while being flexible enough to address pertinent PD issues in a timely fashion. Are these ways that this type of approach might fit with your goals for online PD?

Leslie


Hi Leslie and others,

I'm very glad that you mentioned simple, easy inexpensive approaches, Leslie. Here are four additional ideas, although some (2 and 3 in particular) require comfort with technology, and willingness to learn new applications:

1. At the COABE conference in April I did a session on the Media Library of Teaching Skills (MLoTS) . Most who came were professional developers (who said they had wanted to look at MLoTS, were intrigued by it, but who hadn't had the time, and now chose the session I offered as a way to "make time" to see it. One participant, in the evaluation we did at the end, said that the teachers she works with only have 30-minute blocks for PD. She said that she could see using the model we used in the session for a 30-minute face-to-face PD block that would be very engaging and useful. The face-to-face model, free and easy-to-implement is this:
a. From the MLoTS web site http://www.mlots.org/ choose one of the (50 or more) short videos (made by the MLoTS staff _or_ linked in on this page:
http://mlots.org/Other_video.html
These videos include classroom or tutorial videos on: reading/basic literacy, writing, numeracy, adult secondary ed, ESOL/ESL, family literacy, and integrating technology in the classroom. The videos range from 3 minutes to 9 minutes. Some are stand-alone; some are part of a series.
b. Using the Lesson Plan, Video Discussion Questions, and post-video Notes (for example on http://mlots.org/Chelsea/chelsea.html ) or creating or adapting your own, introduce the video (2 minutes).
c. Get (a) small group(s) of teachers to discuss for five-ten minutes their own approaches to and questions about the lesson they are about to view (5-10 minutes).
d. Look at the video together (3-9 minutes).
e. Using the post-video Notes questions, discuss the video (8-10 minutes).
f. If there's still time, discuss the PD process: what worked and what didn't, how it could be improved.
This is a face-to-face model, but -- without the time constraints -- a similar model could be used asynchronously (or synchronously )on line. The discussion, for example, could be asynchronous on a discussion board or email discussion list. Recently such a discussion of one of the MLoTS ESOL family literacy videos was held on the NIFL English discussion list. The same process described above was used. In this case, although a few people were engaged and, in the online evaluation, said they would like to do this again looking at another video, for some reason most list participants did not -- as far as we know -- look at the video or discuss it. Perhaps this was such a different way of using an online discussion list that some people didn't get (or like) this. It's hard to know with only one test of this idea. Perhaps other NIFL list moderators or moderators of other lists, for example state-focused adult ed lists, would like to try this.
In any case, it was not a lot of work to prepare or to deliver this, and it did not require expensive technology. A one-person online professional developer with access to an email list or free Google or Yahoo group could easily do this.
2. A web conferencing website called dimdim (free) http://www.dimdim.com/ (I haven't used it, but I learned about it from John Fleischman, who usually has great ideas about cutting edge free technology that could benefit our field), and another (inexpensive) web conferencing site I found called Zoho Meeting might be useful to a low-budget, one-person online professional developer in designing and delivering real-time, interactive web conferences with small groups on specific high interest topics. Using another free product, Jing, http://www.jingproject.com/ you could make 5-minute screen capture videos of a web-based or computer software-based process, so you could demonstrate for teachers how to use a particular PowerPoint feature, how to make a Jing video, how to make a podcast, how to use mobile phones in a classroom to get instant (e.g. Twitter) feedback, how to check the validity of a Wikipedia article, or something else that teachers want to learn to do. Each Web conference could be under 30 minutes. Introduce the Jing video you have made -- show it through the web conferencing system, then discuss it using VOIP (web-based telephone conferencing) or the internal chat feature. All free, relatively easy to learn how to use, not requiring much time to design (at least as a series of short online workshops). You could begin with a (free) Survey Monkey survey to find out what technology (or other) skills teachers would like to learn. If you are focusing on technology, you could use AdultEd Online's "Tech Savvy" assessment/PD Planning process http://www.adultedonline.org for the assessment and for teachers to build a technology PD plan for themselves. If you invite all the teachers, you can see which learning objectives which people said they have, group them, and design short (or longer) online web conference workshops to address those objectives for those who have them.
3. The ALE Wiki http://alewiki.org (you may have heard me say before) is a fabulous adult ed PD resource. Pick a topic area (there are over 30) and a particularly rich discussion that has been archived. Ask teachers to read the discussion and to add to it (a link to directions on how to add to a wiki -- a useful skill to learn -- will be found on the front page of the ALE wiki). They can benefit from the knowledge of others in our field, and add their own knowledge. This is free, is not time consuming to plan, introduces teachers to a resource that they may want to come back to, to learn about other things and to contribute their own knowledge.
4. Ask teachers to subscribe to an adult et blog and to read it for 6 months to a year (as well as to read previous postings). Some of my favorites (from the ALE Wiki page on new technologies, http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Newtechnologies focus on technology for adult ed teachers:
Ask them to evaluate what they have learned, and what resources they have tried as a result of reading the blog. Group the teachers and have each read a different blog and report monthly to the group on what they have learned that was useful. You could set up a (free, easy to use) Google group or Yahoo group for this purpose

What low-budget ideas do others have for one-person online professional developers?

David J. Rosen DJRosen at theworld.com

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