Mad Tech Skillz

I recently had an interesting conversation with our principal. I had been thinking a lot about PLC (professional learning communities) and how we implement them in our school which is mainly just meetings. Sometimes meetings are very useful but, I feel that if PLC is really time set aside to improve as a professional educator in a collaborative environment (my KISS definition)then maybe meetings should be "as required" and PLC time should focus on either learning from or contributing to the global PLC found online.

To me, the only issue is that most teachers don't posses the technical skills required to tap in to this (that may be changing in some ed prep programs). Someone must teach them after sifting through all the options and do so from an educator's perspective.

My principal, a stellar guy (even if he doesn't read this...) agreed and after I introduced him to Twitter and touched on blogging as PLC tools he got pretty excited and gave me a few Friday afternoons to introduce teachers to it all.

I call it 21st Century PLC and it basically focuses on finding topic threads (twitter and blogs), following them (RSS) and tying on more string (adding web content via blogs, wikis, twitter, etc).

Ive posted a slimmed down set of slides here on the blog (top right corner) for your viewing enjoyment. If you want the full set (not much more than what is there but a few cheese effects) email me.

If a few slides don't "talk themselves" post up and Ill clarify. I hate slides that talk for me so...

If you have some personal insight on the topic, Id love to hear!