PD 5220 Resources

Welcome to the module on technology and teacher professional learning and professional presence

It seems that there are 2 main components to this challenge:

  • Determine your “digital footprint” and if needed, update your online professional presence, this could be a website (see below), LinkedIn, professional Facebook, Google profiles (if you communicate with someone using a Google account via Gmail, Hangouts or some other products, you may see a hovercard or info card with the person’s name, profile photo and some other public details), Twitter, or other social networking presence.
  • If you have avoided any online presence, this module is a chance to consider how you might enable safe and responsible collaboration online without putting yourself at professional risk. Having nothing about yourself online can be dangerous, and others with ill intent (think disenfranchised middle schooler) might gladly make a website that looks like it is yours, but with content that may not be ideal.

For the first component, if you are a 2 Summers student, you will be creating an eportfolio of artifacts from your courses as uploads to Taskstream. If you are a college teacher, you may look at how alpha numeric grades are not the thing that most students ask you to reference when they seek a letter of recommendation. In fact, in EPSY, several of our PhD comprehensive exams have been replaced by eportfolios, include the CILT program PhD comps.

NOTE: Be sure to put your name or initials in the filename of all files uploaded or emailed to instructors.

Consider Some Ideas about E-Portfolios.

Most standards and competencies for a “good teacher” include the teacher having skills to wisely integrate technology and to support their ongoing professional development as a teacher. Now in the age of hybrid and dual online and in-person classes, most educators will require a professional online presence.

The web is built to be two-way. Taking and giving, learning and contributing. Online communities of teachers can learn together by sharing both their successes and sometimes the lessons that go awry as well. Communities like Teaching Channel can be a place to learn from peers. Good teachers do not just take from the Internet, they engage, participate, share, and collaborate as well. To be part of teacher online communities like Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT), Instagram, and Teacher2Teacher, you have to establish an online presence. Of course you should have much MORE awareness of the issues with sites like TpT to be a good online citizens. Sharing with and learning from others in your field is a critical skill in support your lifelong learning as an educator. [Note you should consider the broader complexities of “free” Open Educational Resources and the impact of sites like TpT as well, such as plagiarism and no content standards]

With the pivot to Remote and hybrid/dual Learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly every educator has now had some experience teaching online. Online K-12 education is growing and to be prepared, teachers should be developing their online teaching skills. This Starter Kit for K-12 online teachers suggests you experience online learning as a student first. 2 Summers teachers certainly have taken further by acquiring an entire advanced degree online.

There is more to a success teacher professional presence than simply having a safe visible web presence. But it is a good start. Beyond that, the online instructor must have some facility with establishing their presence in each course. Experts have suggested that an effective online teacher presence is a large component of online teaching success (see for example Rapanta et al. 2020). You can further establish your teaching presence in online classes by sharing your experiences, strategically intervening in discussions, and modeling discussion style (see for example Lowenthal and Parscal 2008)

While you’d like for community members, professional colleagues, and prospective employers to find you online, you would probably prefer that they only see things that support the contention that you will be a great teacher. Superintendents often do Google and Facebook searches on teacher candidate finalists. Some schools like Ellington use Twitter and other apps to build the school community. Follow our Ellington superintendent, @SuperNicol (note, no “h” in Nicol) for a few days on Twitter if you have never experienced this.

Things that administrators find about teachers online can have devastating impacts on careers and job performance. Take for example the 2010 Teacher of the Year suspended in 2011 for comments about gay marriage he made on his own time and on his own private facebook space, and the Windsor Locks superintendent who was fired for Facebook comments. What should you think about when considering accepting a Facebook Friend request from students and how that might get messy when your neice or neighbor child are in your school (and here’s another thought on that)? Web communications are routinely used by schools to notify parents of school closing and emergencies. But what makes “good” uses of social media and what uses put students and teachers and school systems at risk?