If you are a teacher then you inwardly or outwardly groan at the mention of professional development. While it is always put out there with the best of intentions many teachers view much of it as a waste of time. Many times we are sitting as an audience in a large room in the traditional “sit and get” delivery. Sometimes, it is good content but there is little to no support in implementation.
I came upon this article on Twitter today, “Can Micro-credentials Create More Meaningful Professional Development For Teachers?”. The article shares the idea of micro-credentialing for professional learning. As I read the article, I thought this is what we are all about with the COVA approach in my DLL graduate classes at Lamar. In a nutshell, through micro-credentialing teachers decide what they want to learn, apply it, get feedback and then credit if they submitted evidence of their learning through how they applied it in class. Wow! What if we model what we want our classrooms to be like in our PD? The articles evens points out that this is equivalent to differentiation for teachers.
My current district has self-paced online classes but the learning and method is still dictated by someone else. I curious to learn more about this process and how it has impacted teachers in these districts. More to come….
References:
Harapnuik, D., Thibodeaux, T., & Cummings, C. (2016.). COVA Learning Approach, DLL Program
Schwartz, Kristina. (2017, February 17). Can Micro-credentials Create More Meaningful Professional Development For Teachers? Retrieved from: https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/02/15/can-micro-credentials-create-meaningful-professional-development-for-teachers/
A Digital Learning Journey 