23 things

The readings for this week were all about Professional Development (PD). I thought they were really interesting and actually a lot of what I read reminded me so much of what we are doing at Michigan Makers with the middle schoolers. The idea of continual learning, being able to tinker with something, create mentors for each other, and earn prizes for every bench mark made me so excited! Reminds me of learning badges ...

I also thought that Kristin's piece and the Wyoming piece did a great job of showing how you don't have to re-invent the wheel. There are already so many great ideas out there, that you should take advantage of them and use them (with attribution of course ;)). I really like how in the Wyoming piece that they were respectful and understanding of the teachers' time. One thing when I was first reading about the 23 things is it seems like a lot. But seeing how Kristin and the Wyoming public school worked with the basic framework, it was clear that when you do PD you don't have to do just 23 things. I also liked how there was a lot of choice in what the teachers could choose to learn about.