Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Visual Report 1
Visual Report 1
Visual Report 1
http://foxteachestech.blogspot.com
Julie Loland
November 29, 2010
Inquiry question
How can I contribute to the effectiveness of my professional learning community
by helping others effectively use existing and emerging digital tools and
resources to improve student learning?
I developed the site and published a number of posts in time for the beginning of
the year staff meeting. I wanted to give the teachers a new tool to begin using at
This article was a case study completed with a voluntary group of faculty at the
University of Maine at Farmington (UMF), who formed two-person teams and
after training, became each others consultants. The college had "limited formal
opportunities to share ideas, discuss concerns, pursue new areas of research, or
receive stimulation from colleagues" and this was the reason for the study (p.
82). This purpose is what interested me most and encouraged me to further read
the results of the study, as I felt Terry Fox Elementary had a similar story.
Essentially, the teachers at both schools share a common goal, the desire to be a
more effective teacher.
In the case study, colleagues as consultants had very positive results at UFM
including developing a faculty that was more aware of and concerned about their
teaching, creating an environment where colleagues talked and helped each
other, and improving teachers attitudes toward teaching, which they believe, lead
to better teaching. I was inspired by this and wanted to see the same thing
happen at Terry Fox Elementary.
Warlick, D. (2009). Grow your personal learning network: New technologies can
keep you connected and help you manage information overload. Learning &
Leading with Technology, 36(6), 12.
This article helped me expand my PLN, while at the same time keeping it
manageable. Warlick provides his readers with an overview of what a PLN is and
how technology has enabled us to move from PLNs of personally maintained
I found the tips and tools presented in this article incredibly helpful as I was
looking to expand my PLN in my search for new ideas and sites to share with my
colleagues. I particularly appreciate the suggestion he made to use Google Blog
Search to subscribe to topic specific information. This proved very helpful as I
gathered information on specific topics.
This article was a case study of a middle school teacher using blogging to support
her professional identity development. I appreciated the review of the literature
the study began with and found the benefits of blogging presented in the article to
be encouraging as I began posting my thoughts, ideas and knowledge on the Fox
Teaches Tech site and in my LTT blog. The benefits that I particularly connected
with were the opportunity blogs provided for reflection (p. 289), the opportunity
to further ones thinking because of the interaction with an audience (p. 332),
and that blogs allow for identity brokering by allowing and encouraging bloggers
to connect their own work and thoughts to others (p .333). Essentially, blogging
provided the teacher in the case study with a valuable opportunity to wrestle
with important issues central to her practice.
And, 64% of those surveyed have tried at least one or two of the ideas presented
with their students.
I was given a lot of encouragement through comments, both on the site and
through email, but my goal was to get people thinking and "chatting" about
technology. While I was disappointed with this aspect of my Field Study, though
my reflections I realized that this was an area that I needed to work on too.
"I want to encourage people to start commenting and interacting with others in a different
way, begin to feel comfortable posting their thoughts online and help them develop their
PLN. But other than asking, I am not sure how to encourage commenting. The reality is, I
rarely comment on the posts I read, so why would I expect others to comment on my posts.
Wow... maybe that is what I am supposed to learn through all of this...the words, "practice
what you preach" are currently reverberating around in my head..."
I am exited that new learning did happened, that ideas were tried, and that some
commenting did take place. I think the learning that I am most impacted by
however, is the development of my own PLN in my attempt to seek out valuable
information to share with others. In following the advice presented by Warlick in
his article "Grow your PLN...", I have further expanded my own PLN through
Twitter, RSS feeds, nings, forums, and connecting with my LTT class. I also have
a new understanding of the importance of getting involved with posts and ideas
online though commenting and sharing responses to ideas presented. I was so
encouraged and inspired by comments readers made in response to my posts and
I want others bloggers to be encouraged by my comments too. A simple comment
helps bloggers know that their efforts matter and it helps me as a reader engage
deeper in the content presented, as well.