Welcome teachers, readers, designers, colleagues, students--whoever you are! If you have stumbled upon this blog, you are either taking EDIT 787 with me in Summer 2020 or are interested in reading my thoughts on technology in schools. This blog is meant to be a resource for anyone in the education community of practice who is interested learning about the combination of pedagogy, content knowledge, and technology. The next six entries will focus on a specific topic--Web 2.0 tools--but I aim to continue this blog series as I grow as a teacher and a designer.
Speaking of teachers and designers, let’s talk about my blog’s title: Professional Development for Teacher Designers. In all professions, professional development can be hit or miss. There’s nothing worse than a poorly organized and badly timed mandatory training. The beauty of the PD4TD blog is that I will provide short and sweet tips that you can integrate into your own professional practice. As a designer, I aim to change existing situations into preferred ones. My mission is to communicate meaning, which I will draw from my own living and learning, but also from what is new and proven to work in the field of education. So who am I and why should you read my blog? Great questions!
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| Caitlin Campbell, Latin Teacher Extraordinaire |
By day, I teach Latin and AVID electives. By night, I study how to design K-12 instruction in an increasingly digital world, plan how to apply my learning in my classroom, and occasionally sleep. I am currently reading Tom Standage’s “Writing on the Wall: Social Media--The First Two Thousand Years” to learn about the timeless human experience of spreading information over social networks. The idea that learning and knowledge acquisition is social is nothing new; this idea is well-represented in research on situated cognition, Vygotsky’s theories of cognitive development, and in every collaborative computer or video game (I can even hear my fiance playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare now with his buddies). We humans are social beings who need to connect with one another not only for mental wellbeing, but also to share information, learn, and evolve.
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| Sharing of information begets learning |
Since schools closed in the spring of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I have continually asked myself, “How can I engage learners in an online, asynchronous environment in a meaningful way? How can I replace the social aspect of learning that is now missing from our classrooms, lives, and hearts?” As a teacher, a designer, and a learner, I crave interactions with my students, colleagues, and classmates to implement and learn about best practices in education. I have participated in multiple online, asynchronous learning opportunities that would have felt hollow and ineffective had I not had some way of connecting with other learners. Moving forward with the possibility of continued distance learning in the fall, I plan to learn and inform my readers about how to tackle this wicked problem in a constructive and graceful manner.
Are you curious about how Web 2.0 tools could be a solution? Stay tuned.
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