Reimagining Personalized Professional Learning
Personalized learning best practices apply to professional learning.
Effects of Personalized Learning
The teacher's role changes in profound ways in a strong blended learning program. Both students and teachers report that they can't imagine returning to a traditional model once engaged in a blended learning environment. Students are hungry to show up and learn. And, because schools are able to deliver content through online platforms, teachers have more time and energy to devote to creating the most positive, interactive learning experiences possible for their students. This is an exciting time where educators are thinking beyond a role that has time and lecture-based elements, to one in which teachers are answering questions, facilitating discussions and mentoring students.
So how are educators personalizing their own learning to hone their craft?
There is less emphasis these days on "sit and get" professional development and more of a shift to expand access to high-quality, ongoing, job-embedded opportunities for professional learning for teachers, administrators, and other education professionals. Digital Professional learning communities, peer-to-peer lesson sharing, and better use of data and formative assessment allow learning to happen anywhere and at anytime. The ever-increasing online resources offer teachers and administrators new opportunities to collaborate, learn, share, and produce best practices with colleagues in school buildings across the country.
Learning that change occurs when people work together
Empowering Educators Through Professional Learning Toolkit
This Future Ready toolkit from the U.S. Department of Education provides leaders with a multi-step decision-making process, practical tools, and numerous examples for setting a trajectory of positive change, moving assertively toward achievement of student learning and improvement goals.
Rhode Island Specific Professional Learning Opportunities