on pd (professional development)constantly drowning in a sea of acronyms. sorry i just inadvertently just threw some more water in.
so currently i am participating in 4 online courses:
verizon's thinkfinity
book study course through our school of blogs, wikis and podcasts, by will richardson
alec couros's (social media and open ed)
and
cck09 (connectivity and connectivism)
crazy?
maybe.
just wanting to see what is out there first hand. i wrote a bit a while back about suggestions for pd (it's ok now it was spelled out already). curious if my suggestions were sound.
so - free online courses for tic credit? do i still think that should happen?
well - from my experiences with these (and other) online courses...if i were admin - i would want the teachers in my building/district to have this experience in some way. i would want to know that they were getting to experience learning the way we are wanting them to be passing it on to students.
and why for free...
well - teachers are tapped anyway - why add more cost? time is money - they're spending the time - yes?
and how can we be sure they are getting all they can out of it? how do we assess their participation (since that's what the money is supposed to do - right - they pay for people to test them and make them turn stuff in)?
i have 2 ideas for that:
1. in order to get credit - the teacher needs to convince another teacher to take a similar course
change reaction - thank you rachel's challenge
or
2. the admin assessing the teacher takes the course with, ongoing conversations would assess the level of learning/participation.
please note: i'm not saying that true ed leaders like alec couros should get no pay. we do need to have conversations about that. what i am saying - is that if @courosa is offering one of his incredibly innovative courses for non-credit/free, admin/etc should be encouraging participation in that. letting each district/building then take on the responsibility for assessing the level of learning that takes place, whether or not the course is taken for credit or for non-credit. redefining our current thinking that money = worthy, free = not worthy.