Jun
10
Lenora’s Pro-D
Posted by: Thomas Kritikos | June 10, 2009 | Comments Off on Lenora’s Pro-D
Lenora is a grade 4 teacher at the Eliza Archie Memorial School, located on the Tsq’escenemc Canim Lake Band reserve. Last year she attended an anti-bullying professional development (pro-d) workshop offered by SD 83 (North Okanagan). There was a lot of valuable information in the session, but Lenora felt it often wasn’t culturally relevant for her community. When she discussed her experience with peers in the Cradleboard Teaching Project Teacher’s Circle (http://www.cradleboard.org/), others agreed. And many had stories to share about bullying in their band schools.
Indigenous online communities of practice like Cradleboard have really helped Lenora develop her own reflective practice. She’s decided to create an online anti-bullying resource for band teachers – a sort of online pro-d day – that offers support and suggestions from other Aboriginal educators and their allies.
But Lenora’s web access is dial-up only. It can take a really long time to upload and download files. Plus she’s never created a web site before and doesn’t know anything about where one puts a website.
- Is a website the way to go for Lenora ?
- Why or why not?
- Be sure to explain how you came up with your answer.
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I don’t necessarily think a web-site is the way for Lenora to proceed. A web-site is a static document where there is no opportunity for teachers to share/post information on the site itself. If she is to utilize the expertise and knowledge/stories from her peers who volunteered their bullying experiences, then she is going to need a platform which permits her to collaborate with others. She would be advised to have a platform that is web-log in nature with some sort of threading with respect to online submissions. I believe that this online threaded discourse, developed synchronously or asynchronously would be more dynamic as users could actively monitor their postings and respond to the postings of others.
In the scenario outline, there is information that states Lenora is already immersed in the electronic Powwow model whereby her use of technology to communicate with her colleagues is already honed. Having her pro-d content online where other teachers can access it and then communicate/collaborate with each other in a discussion forum would be a very productive and rich use of their time.
My answer was generated from my recent experience within the MET program. I have found that the volume of discourse that occurs with all course material is extremely rich and rewarding for my personal growth as an educator. I find it rather tedious and dull, and not very inspiring, if I am engaged in an online experience and cannot communicate with the other ‘party’ in a timely and efficient manner. I, therefore, believe that Lenora would also benefit from utilizing a platform to share her content, where her colleagues could build knowledge and understanding(s) from the diverse discussions that would take place on the site.