For professional learning teams, the costs of collaboration can be quite high. Sharing information, creating new lessons together, and communicating with colleagues—both within and beyond their schools and districts—can take huge amounts of additional time that teachers just don’t have. As a result, many teachers begin to question the benefits of PLCs. In this session, Solution Tree author Bill Ferriter introduces participants to a range of free digital tools that 21st Century learning teams are using to make their collective learning more efficient and rewarding.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
To learn more about how PLCs are using digital tools to decrease the transaction costs associated with coordination, explore the examples below. While studying, think carefully about the kinds of digital projects that your learning teams may be ready to tackle.
A PLC uses a wiki to organize common assessments, lesson plans, and student exemplars.
http://snipurl.com/salem6ss_ce
A PLC uses shared tags and a social bookmarking service to organize collections of websites connected to their curriculum.
http://ed.voicethread.com/share/113288/
A PLC uses an asynchronous discussion forum to reflect on professional learning communities.
A teacher uses a microblogging service to gather information and resources connected to his professional interests.
A PLC uses a collaborative document service to generate a unit plan together.
A PLC uses an RSS Feed Reader to organize a collection of content-based websites for their students to explore.