A Volunteer Run School of Education?
20 Sep
Reality:
Many educators in the world…
- Don’t receive sufficient teacher training.
- Have little or no ongoing professional development.
- Work in schools that suffer from chronic lack of funding.
Vision:
What if edu-passionate volunteers from around the world banned together to…
- Build an open licensed, free, multilingual virtual school of education driven by the principles of peer learning.
- Facilitate the free exchange of knowledge and ideas between educators in a context that positively transforms teacher and student practice, learning and engagement.
- Codify existing educational best practices into a series of experiences that provide foundational knowledge of how to be an effective teacher.
It’s Happening:
Using Web 2.0 and Social Media to Encourage Deeper Learning from Bon Education on Vimeo.
Now get involved:
- Check out the Peer to Peer University School of Education Pilot. For example, view “Using Social Media to Promote Deeper Learning,” “Differentiated Instruction,” or “Student Engagement”.
- What if we expanded this pilot into a Global Teaching Certificate Program? What practical educational experiences (or courses) would need to be created to help multinational cohorts of pre and in-service educators become phenomenal teachers?
Help think through the tricky details:
- Design—How do we design a program whose requirements are realistic and practical for all involved?
- Accreditation—Do it? Dump it? Redefine it? Teaching certificates vs. badges? FYI – Many school principals, parents and students don’t want “certified teachers” per se, they want “great teachers”. Great teachers come with and without certification.
- Sustainability—How do we sustain a program run by 99% volunteers?
- Marketing—How do we get volunteer curricula writers, course facilitators, coordinators and teachers from mountains of Oman, to the valleys of China to the beaches of the Seychelles to get involved?
From one P2PU School of Ed fan to another,
Images Available Under CC Licensure by Thelonious Gonzo and Casey David
Response to: http://computinged.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/what-if-you-built-a-volunteer-run-school-of-education-and-nobody-came/
Thanks for reading my post and replying (your comment has been moderated as ‘yes’ btw). As a professional development provider in the Middle East, whose done work with teachers across North America and Asia… We work with many educators and in schools where having a “teaching certification” is not the norm. We provide a number of PD courses (face-to-face and virtual) where teachers don’t pay to come, are not paid to come and in fact volunteer to come during their evenings and weekends (local Foundations, companies and govts fund the courses). Thousands of teachers come out. Because they are thirsty for knowledge, new skills and a chance to exchange ideas with their peers. Whereas in the USA where teachers have the fortune of having too many PD offerings at their fingertips, this just isn’t the case in many (if not most) countries.
We are in the early stages of the P2PU School of Ed pilot, but so far many people have volunteered to both teach and participate. Change is a gradual process. So, it will be interesting to see how early adopters use the materials and who comes next. Regardless, there are enough “active,” “excited” and “passionate” educators (and volunteer teacher educators) in the world that don’t have access to ongoing PD, that there is much work ahead spreading the word and providing opportunities for this cohort of “early stage adopters” to engage. Thanks for reading. – Anna