Group items tagged

"But many of the problems we face today are COMPLEX, and methods to solve simple and complicated problems will not work with complex ones. One of the ways we addressed simple & complicated problems was through training. Training works well when you have clear and measurable objectives. However, there are no clear objectives with complex problems. Learning as we probe the problem, we gain insight and our practices are emergent (emerging from our interaction with the changing environment and the problem). Training looks backwards, at what worked in the past (good & best practices), and creates a controlled environment to develop knowledge and skills."

Presented by the Knight Digital Media Center, these presentations are described as "multimedia and internet technology training workshops," on topics like Digital Storytelling ("How to tell stories with Data (Reallly)") and Web 2.0 Training ("Digital Visualization Strategy and Workflow" or "Data Visualization on a Budget"). While the workshops are geared to journalists, many of the lessons might be relevant to those in other public-facing fields as well.

By Dakaria I. Aarons in Education Week, March 25 2010. The New Leaders for New Schools principal-training program has launched a new version of its online portal for the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC). The article reports that the portal is a "Web-based compendium of professional-development resources for principals, staff-development coaches, and teachers." The article links to the database. Full article is subscription only. For access, contact your local library.

Part of the National Institutes of Health, the National Eye Institute supports research and training, as well as the dissemination of health information, for all aspects of visual function, disease, and eye disorder. This resource page is a listing of NEI-based resources.

"ISC provides consulting, facilitation, network building, leadership development, and training services so that our clients can innovate, think strategically and take vision to action. We build the capacity of all with whom we work by modeling the behaviors and transferring the skills and tools of collaboration. Today, one focus of our work is on integrating technology and new social media to achieve greater social impact in all of our collaborative efforts."

By Janet Macdonald and Anne Campbell in European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning [n.d.] Open University (UK) tutors work from home. This paper describes a case study of an OU initiative where the tutors received their professional development in online communities. To date, some 2000 tutors have been thus trained.

By David Moltz, News column, Inside Higher Ed, June 21 2010. Jamie Merisotis (president, Lumina Foundation) and Stan Jones (president, Complete College America) urge President Obama "to prioritize the distribution of funds from the recently created Community College and Career Training Grant program to those institutions that radically remodel their certificate and degree programs to emphasize speedy graduation and job placement."

By Ian Quillen of the Digital Education (blog) in Education Week, September 2 2010. This study suggests that "Algebra I teachers who were trained in and used a program that allowed them to monitor students' progress on graphing calculators led to significantly improved achievement by their students on a researcher-designed test." This blog post (and the video link) both stress that it is the combination of technology AND professional development that has provided these positive results. \nNOTE: First link to Summary of Findings is a Texas Instruments report (TI produces the graphing calculator that is part of the study). However, the study was conducted with outside consultants, including SRI.

An online only grad school for teacher preparation in NY state helps teachers in their own classrooms instead of in a teacher prep class outside of where they work. Videos of teachers teaching and other techniques are used to train teachers.

By Stephen Sawchuk in Education Week, published online August 5 2011. A look at some new teacher training programs that have been recently approved by the New York (State) board of regents. The article also briefly discusses some of the debate about practical teaching skills vs. theoretical ones.

Posted by Tony Bates to his blog on August 1, 2011. Bates, who runs a consultancy to teach about e-learning, argues that online learning is ever more important in post-secondary education (he writes from Canada, but his statistics are for all of North America), but that most post-secondary teachers have been trained very little in pedagogy and "teaching" at all, less so in online teaching and learning. He seeks comments and feedback to his argument.

to see if I could fundamentally change the way the teachers related to technology, not just in the classroom as a tool for teaching learners, but as a tool within their everyday working practice.

By Claudio Sanchez on Morning Edition (NPR), April 22 2010. The Boston Teacher Residency program (BTR) models itself on medical residency programs. Prospective teachers take education classes and work directly with mentor teachers to gain on-the-job experience.

very interesting article on Forsyth County schools in GA (I just drove through there the other day and had no idea of their innovativeness!) encouraging students to bring their own technology to classrooms to use in project and inquiry based learning. Amazing openness by school district to open up learning.

Chapter 19: Evolving a "Third Way" to Group Consultancy: Bridging Two Mode3ls of Theory and Practice, Jean E. Neumann, Evangelina Holvino, and Earl t. Braxton, Group Relations Reader 3, pp. 421-441. Interesting study on bridging NTL (individual, interpersonal style of facilitation) and Tavistock (group as structural unit) practices. Need to read slowly with pen in hand to begin to apply to our online facilitation work.

on eduforge Open Source Learning Lab. Moodle Industry Training Management System (MITMS)