Learning Partners

Building Professional Partnerships and Pedagogy

Professional development has entered the 21st century via web 2.0 tools and networks and in response, individual educators are digitally re-mixing their learning to include global perspectives.  Educators are learning, experiencing, sharing, and growing in several different communities and as they do so, they bring their new found knowledge back to their own school environment.  However, sometimes at no fault of their own, educators become isolated in their school community and are unable to share their skills with colleagues.  A Teacher-Librarian (or any other teacher for that matter) can take on a lead role in terms of professional development within a school to help negate some of these underlying issues that pertain to sharing new skills and resources by providing a variety of different avenues for peers to develop their own skills through collaboration.

Image courtesy of Sullivan Heights Learning Partners

Collaboration is extremely important to me.  I would not be as successful as I have been without the generosity and support of several educators within my past school community.  While an educational member of Sullivan Heights Secondary, I was exposed to a great form of collaboration called Learning Partners.  A portion of Learning Partner's mission includes the following:

"We believe that supporting teachers as they strive to integrate innovative instructional and assessment practices, directly impacts student learning and achievement." (Sullivan Heights Learning Partners)

Learning Partners is a department that spearheads collaboration, inquiry, and resource-based teaching by providing teachers, whether new or experienced, with the motivation and support to explore information and communication technology related to specific curriculum and pedagogy.  Specifically, Learning Partners provides a support system by encouraging collegial collaboration through release time, inservice, and workshops such as "Teacher Drop-In Day" which involves "hosts" and "visitors" to observe a variety of different teaching practices within the school.  Associated with Learning Partners includes the following hashtags: #sullilearns and #learningpartners.  These hashtags are used in conjunction with twitter to connect educators and inform them of practices.  Sarah Garr of Sullivan Heights Secondary explains how to take Learning Partners to the next level in her blog Writing My Way Into Understanding.

Image courtesy of EdTech Magazine

In addition to Learning Partners, Pinterest is another good source of collaboration for organizing an online professional development hub within a school community.  "Boards" can be created for specific resources or categories making the information easy to locate for educators.  Once found, a teacher can "pin" the information to their boards saving it for later reference!  Edudemic provides an easy to follow guide equipped with an infographic to fully explain how and why Pinterest is a good tool to use when seeking to support teachers ICT development.  Edudemic has also published a library specific guide to using Pinterest.  The following are some local examples of Pinterest being used by librarians in the Surrey School District.

1. Sullivan Heights Secondary Learning Commons

2.  Elgin Park Secondary Learning Commons

As you can see, these librarians have done an excellent job of organizing their content for "pinners" to include innovative titles with reliable resources for both students and staff alike.

Image courtesy of Educators Technology

Using web 2.0 technologies to inform your own education practice as a teacher has enabled educators to tap into engaging networks like never before.  However, if these learnings are not shared, we are doing our students an injustice.  By sharing these resources with colleagues and promoting ICT skills through a variety of mediums such as Learning Partners, Pinterest, YouTube channels, iTunes U-Courses, school hashtags, and inservice, our educational community grows for the better.  

Bibliography

1. Learning Partners- Facilitating Peer-Mentoring, Collaboration and Teacher Inquiry: Learning Partners: Facilitating Peer-Mentoring, Collaboration and Teacher Inquiry #LearningPartners. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2015, from http://sullilearningpartners.blogspot.ca/2014/04/building-culture-of-collaboration.html

2. Garr, S. (n.d.). Writing My Way Into Understanding. Retrieved February 20, 2015, from http://teachergarr.blogspot.ca

3. The Teacher’s Guide To Pinterest. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2015, from http://www.edudemic.com/guides/the-teachers-guide-to-pinterest/

4. 20 Ways Libraries Are Using Pinterest Right Now. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2015, from http://www.edudemic.com/20-ways-libraries-are-using-pinterest-right-now/

5. Sullivan Heights Learning Commons (shshhrh). (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2015, from https://www.pinterest.com/shshhrh/

6. Elgin Learning Commons (epslibrary). (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2015, from https://www.pinterest.com/epslibrary/