Teaching Learning Cast (TLC) #3: Personal Learning Networks and PeerLearning Communities

TLC Socials

Piry Herrera

Benjamin L. Stewart

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First segment: Personal Learning Networks

• Cultivating and Growing Your Personal Learning Network
• “Do you have a PLN?”
• “Alone we are smart, together we are brilliant”
• “A PLN can help you find a curate the best ideas and resources, and build a network of supportive peers in a time of constant change.”
• “To maintain relevancy in the classroom, we need to maintain relevance ourselves”
• 15% (now more like 25%) of teachers are connected (The Connected Educator) – These percentages should not be the focus, however.
• How can we help more educators cultivate and grow a PLN?
• Districts need to see a PLN as a viable means for professional development.
• We need to provide credit for educators to make the extra effort to build a PLN.
• Teachers need more time.
• Personal Learning Network at Google Trends
• Connectivism at Google Trends

Second segment: The teacher outside the classroom

• Is there a moment to take the “teacher suit” off?
  What kind of impact do teachers cause outside the classroom?
  Chapter two of this book mentions a project in which teacher extended beyond the classroom to transform education in their community. It is a proper example of how important can be teacher’s roles outside the classroom. Reflection raises on the impact that teacher can cause outside the classroom, whether intentional or not.
  Guilles, R., Ashman, A.,Terwel, J. (2008). The Teacher’s Role in Implementing Cooperative Learning in the Classroom. New York, NY: Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
  http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387708911

  Beyond the classroom and into the community

  GI model

  Four new features of GI: investigation, interaction, interpretation, and intrinsic motivation

  Six stages of GI model

  1. Class determines sub-tooi a and organized into resource groups
  2. ‎groups plan their investigation
  3. ‎Groups carry out their investigation
  4. ‎groups plan their presentation/feedback
  5. ‎Groups make their presentation
  6. ‎teacher and students evaluate their project.

  Six mirrors of the classroom

  1. Mirror one: the physical organization of the learning and teaching space.
  2. ‎Mirror two: Learning tasks – Using peers and computers as thinking and investigation resources
  3. ‎Mirror three: teacher’s instruction
  4. ‎Mirror four: Teacher’s communication
  5. ‎Mirror five: Pupil’s academic behavior
  6. ‎Mirror six: Pupil’s social behavior

  Teachers’ role in school-family partnership

  Literacy-related activities (first graders): meetings and workshops with both cultures (Arab and Jewish participants)
  Family storytelling as cooperative writing each month,

Shared Teaching Experience

• (Benjamin): Academic Writing: Self-Assessment PROPE

  • Assessing Academic Writing (Student) Survey
• (Piry): Making class decisions for the right reasons.
• Raising awareness on the idea of why we decide to do something in the classroom: material selection, context, discipline, topic, vocabulary, projects, technology, etc.