Virtual Professional Learning Communities

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About three years ago our school's administration implemented the concept of "Professional Learning Communities". Now, as I noted in a previous posting, I am pretty cynical when it comes to any edubabble repackaged as the next great innovation in teaching. I'm convinced that there are no new ideas in education, only new fads. This approach encourages collaboration between members of the same academic department as well as among different disciplines. I must admit however, that, in spite of my skepticism I picked up a few new tricks,especially from my younger colleagues.

If this approach works in a small face to face environment, why can't it work in the much larger world of the web? Inspired by the benefits of doing this in my department, I embarked on a search for teacher blogs in my discipline. Wow, there is a cornucopia of resources out there in cyberspace. One treasure trove I discovered is this blog sponsored by Multimedia Learning which serves as a repository for teachers to share resources by topic and time period. I downloaded the image below.

This is simple diagram developed by a teacher which could serve as a rich starting point for a class discussion on the topic.

Another great blog I discovered is HistoryTech a rich site listing all sorts of technological resources for teaching history divided by medium, topic, and grade level.  Another really great blog is Speaking of History. Eric Langhorst, an eighth-grade history teacher, runs this blog, which offers discussions about history, technology, and education in general. There are podcasts, lesson plans, videos, links, resources, and more. I must admit that I have frittered away a good part of this snowy day searching for blogs related to my discipline and "borrowing" some of the materials.

Hmm.....maybe there is something to this professional learning community stuff.