DeWert, Marjorie, Leslie Babinski, and Brett Jones. “Safe Passages. Providing Online Support to Beginning Teachers.” Journal of Teacher Education 54 (2003) : 311-320
This article really shows the importance of building some sort of community for first year teachers. This article was written about a study that brought together inexperienced first year teachers with experienced teachers and university faculty in an online community that allowed them to share experiences and raise questions about issues they were facing in their classrooms. The questions and concerns that the teachers are raising have a correlation to many of the issues first year teachers at a community college face. Unlike other articles I read this article focused on a smaller project and showed strong results.
Ardichvili, Alexader, Vaughn Page, and Tim Wentling. “Motivation and Barriers to Participation in Virtual Knowledge-Sharing Communities of Practice.” Journal of Knowledge Management 7.1 (2003) : 64-77.
This article looked at reasons why people do and don’t contribute and take part in online knowledge sharing communities. They studied an online community at Caterpillar Inc. to determine how and why the online community was being used. The article gave me great insight into motivations for using an online community. Both the good and bad and some topics I have been hearing from my peers. Some of the most interesting points brought up were that if a person viewed knowledge as a public good they were more likely to share knowledge with a community. An interesting barrier to sharing knowledge was the fear of looking bad to your peers. The idea being if you post a question or problem you’re having that people will look down on you for not knowing it. This is exactly the same things I have heard from people when I ask them to post writings to my initial online community blog.
Brown, John, and Paul Duguid. “Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation.” Organization Science 2.1 (1992) : 40-57.
I choose this article to try and gain a better understanding behind the concept of communities of practice. The idea behind this paper was to examine the communities people create in jobs outside of the structured hierarchy that is on company flow charts. The overall idea is that companies must respect these communities that work outside the normal flow of information because these communities could be sharing and creating knowledge that needs to be shared with the company as a whole and if their communities are not valued this information and their practices could be buried.
Barab, Sasha, et al. “Designing and Building an On-Line Community: The Struggle to Support Sociability in the Inquiry Learning Forum.” Education Technology Research & Development 49.4 (2001) : 71-96.
This is a deeper explanation of how the ILF community was laid out. The previous article I read focused more on the later stages of the community while this paper laid out the entire history of the process, from design to implementation to redesign. It shares the success and struggles of this implementation and makes me realize the nightmare that I am up against. This is just an outstanding article, packed with useful information that is based on both research and real life experiences of building an online community.
Treacy, Barbara, Glenn Kleiman, and Kirsten Peterson. “Successful Online Professional Development.” Learning and Leading with Technology 30.1 (2002) 1-4.
A simple article that covers some of the basics of online professional development. It mainly reiterates main ideas and points I have come across before. The importance of face to face meetings in an online environment, the importance of having motivated and knowledgeable people participating and creating the online enviroment.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Progress report.
After a rough patch I am very excited about what I am finding out and what I am reading. My research project connects to a much larger project that I am implementing at JCC and the readings I am finding are helping me greatly as I begin to shape this project in my head and gather more data about it around my college. I have been looking for articles that approach online professional development from a lot of different areas. I have been looking for viewpoints on it from different schools that have worked on it. I have been looking for articles on how to create good communities of practice. I have also been looking for articles that relate to constructivist teaching methods in online environments. I feel like if I get a good idea about these concepts I will be able to lay the groundwork for JCC's online professional development model. I am a bit worried how I am going to get all of this to translate into a paper but I am sure I will figure it all out. I am off to read the new articles I found and be my bib up for them.
Dave
Dave
Annotated Bib 2: electric boogaloo (1st 5)
Vrasidas, Charalambos, and Michalinos Zembylas. “Online Professional Development: Lessons From the Field.” Education + Training 46.6/7 (2004) : 326-334.
This article starts with the theoretical approaches to online professional development by first looking at how interaction occurs online and breaking that down into three dimensions of interactions that happen online, Personal and social constructivism, situated and distributed cognition/knowledge, and local and non-local communities of practice. The article then goes on to give examples of e-learning projects that were put together and one of the main issues it raises from that is the importance of collaboration in an online environment and connection to practical things that teachers and
students are doing in their classes.
Brazelton, Jessica, and Anthony Gorry. “Creating a Knowledge-Sharing Community: If you Build It, Will They Come?” Communications of the ACM 46.2 (2003) : 23-25.
The strongest part of this idea is their creation of a title called “knowledge stewards.” These are the people that are both interested in using technology and have a good deal of knowledge about a particular area that they frequently share with the community. These stewards are the ones that drive the online community as others look to them for information. It also stresses the importance of face to face interaction amongst the learners in order for them to learn more about the technology and for them also to learn more about each other.
Barab, Sasha, James MaKinster, and Rebecca Scheckler. “Designing System Dualities: Characterizing An Online Professional Development Community.” Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning. Ed. Barab, S.A., Kling, R., & Gray, J. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
This book chapter gives a strong layout on how an online community was laid out for pre-service mathematics and science teachers. The commuity was designed to allow them to share, improve, and create new lesson ideas and teaching methods. This chapter shares some of the struggles and the success that came from putting his project together. The main issue that the chapter comes back to is the importance of creating an online space that is minimalist and allows for personal touches. It also deals with the struggles between developers and teachers on how those spaces are created.
Gibson, Susan, and Bonnie Skaalid. “Teacher Professional Development to Promote Constructivist Uses of the Internet: A Study of One Graduate-Level Course.” Journal of Technology and Teacher Education 12.4 (2004) : 577-592.
This article focuses mainly on how teachers in a graduate level class were trained in different ways on how to merge constructivist teaching methods and internet websites into their classrooms. I think the strongest part for me comes from a teacher who said that she was beginning to look at the internet in a new way and that the class changed how she viewed using the internet in her class. She stressed that she learned how important it is for her to be clear about how she is using the internet and making sure her objectives for what she wants her students to do is clear.
Finley, Laura, and David Hartman. “Institutional Change and Resistance: Teacher Preparatory Faculty and Technology Integration.” Journal of Technology and Teacher Education 12.3 (2004) : 319-337.
This was an outstanding article that dealt with issues facing colleges as they try and get their departments to include more technology in their classroom environments. The article feels that one of the issues that teachers have about technology is that its being pushed on them without any connection to pedagogy. Teachers are being told to use technology in their classrooms but they are not being told how or why. Another issue that was raised by teachers is that schools tend to focus on the “cool” technologies and not functional ones. The suggestions are that the increase in technology is directly tied into content-specific purposes. It also suggests that teacher preparation in technology not be limited to “one shot sessions” (329) but a more detailed and ongoing program of technology professional development be created. It also suggested like many other readings I have come across that one on one sessions that allow for more personal interaction be available.
This article starts with the theoretical approaches to online professional development by first looking at how interaction occurs online and breaking that down into three dimensions of interactions that happen online, Personal and social constructivism, situated and distributed cognition/knowledge, and local and non-local communities of practice. The article then goes on to give examples of e-learning projects that were put together and one of the main issues it raises from that is the importance of collaboration in an online environment and connection to practical things that teachers and
students are doing in their classes.
Brazelton, Jessica, and Anthony Gorry. “Creating a Knowledge-Sharing Community: If you Build It, Will They Come?” Communications of the ACM 46.2 (2003) : 23-25.
The strongest part of this idea is their creation of a title called “knowledge stewards.” These are the people that are both interested in using technology and have a good deal of knowledge about a particular area that they frequently share with the community. These stewards are the ones that drive the online community as others look to them for information. It also stresses the importance of face to face interaction amongst the learners in order for them to learn more about the technology and for them also to learn more about each other.
Barab, Sasha, James MaKinster, and Rebecca Scheckler. “Designing System Dualities: Characterizing An Online Professional Development Community.” Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning. Ed. Barab, S.A., Kling, R., & Gray, J. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
This book chapter gives a strong layout on how an online community was laid out for pre-service mathematics and science teachers. The commuity was designed to allow them to share, improve, and create new lesson ideas and teaching methods. This chapter shares some of the struggles and the success that came from putting his project together. The main issue that the chapter comes back to is the importance of creating an online space that is minimalist and allows for personal touches. It also deals with the struggles between developers and teachers on how those spaces are created.
Gibson, Susan, and Bonnie Skaalid. “Teacher Professional Development to Promote Constructivist Uses of the Internet: A Study of One Graduate-Level Course.” Journal of Technology and Teacher Education 12.4 (2004) : 577-592.
This article focuses mainly on how teachers in a graduate level class were trained in different ways on how to merge constructivist teaching methods and internet websites into their classrooms. I think the strongest part for me comes from a teacher who said that she was beginning to look at the internet in a new way and that the class changed how she viewed using the internet in her class. She stressed that she learned how important it is for her to be clear about how she is using the internet and making sure her objectives for what she wants her students to do is clear.
Finley, Laura, and David Hartman. “Institutional Change and Resistance: Teacher Preparatory Faculty and Technology Integration.” Journal of Technology and Teacher Education 12.3 (2004) : 319-337.
This was an outstanding article that dealt with issues facing colleges as they try and get their departments to include more technology in their classroom environments. The article feels that one of the issues that teachers have about technology is that its being pushed on them without any connection to pedagogy. Teachers are being told to use technology in their classrooms but they are not being told how or why. Another issue that was raised by teachers is that schools tend to focus on the “cool” technologies and not functional ones. The suggestions are that the increase in technology is directly tied into content-specific purposes. It also suggests that teacher preparation in technology not be limited to “one shot sessions” (329) but a more detailed and ongoing program of technology professional development be created. It also suggested like many other readings I have come across that one on one sessions that allow for more personal interaction be available.
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