PLN Week 7: The Professional Learning Network- Creating New Professional Development Opportunities

            This week’s readings had me thinking about how social technology has changed for the professional learner.  Living in a state where it can take over an hour to travel from one town to the next and over three hours to travel to a major university with a music program can be a challenge when seeking quality music professional development.  Budget cutbacks have also become a constraint toward travel and in-house professional development does not always provide toward the music educators’ professional needs.  With these concerns, I started thinking about the personal learning network that we went through during this course.  Getting the chance to read blogs and many articles posted on Twitter gave me quality ideas that I believe will help me during my teaching career as well as I had a chance to give my ideas that may be beneficial to whoever read my posts.   The online personal learning network was something new to me.  However, I believe it to be beneficial in professional development.

            Bauer (2014) writes that professional development (PD) should meet the needs of a person’s interests.  He continues on in his writing saying that PD is a social process, whether informal or formal.  I believe the personal learning network is a unique way in providing both an informal and formal PD where we can reach out to our colleagues for professional advice or conduct an online PD seminar.  The use of Twitter and Facebook are perfect technological examples for the informal experience.  I do not see these social networks going beyond the informal stages.  However, as we connect to many of our colleagues on these two platforms, this is available at our fingertips daily.  On the other hand, I was intrigued when reading about the capabilities of Google+.  While it can be informal, features in Google+ such as Communities and Hangouts made me think of the possibilities of collaborative PD at the district and state level.  In Google+, users are able to create circles that allow those users to be sorted into categories of their interest such as general music, band, choral, and orchestra.  I think this goes well with many professional music associations being able to gear their professional toward specific music departments.   It is in those circles that music educators can receive quick and easy PD through becoming part of a community or hangout.  A community can be an everlasting PD experience as it similar to a message board.  This is nothing new to our professional field as many professional music associations have their own online message board containing many topics of interest.  Videos and other resources can be uploaded into the message board where users can respond at any time.  Hangouts however, allow for a more unique approach to PD.  Bauer writes that a Hangout can bring up to 10 members in a circle together to video chat.  Videos can also be archived for later viewing into YouTube.  I see Hangouts as a way for music educators in the district or state to have collaborative teams where they can create professional learning opportunities or invite academic clinicians including educators in that district or state to share a small PD forum.  While the user number for Hangouts is limited to a small number this is where the community message board can be used to continue sharing that archived video.  I can also see Hangouts as a collaborative approach that can be used for mentoring programs between veteran and new music educators.

            In the past seven weeks, I have written blogs on how technology can be used to benefit student learning.  This week, I was able to reflect upon my own learning and my own professional development needs.  In many ways I seek professional development whenever I have the opportunity.  In the past ten years my state music association’s professional development opportunities has greatly improved.  As a nine-year teacher, I now look for opportunities that I can show more involvement in.  I do not consider myself as a great speaker to contribute those services.  I do feel like I can help incorporate multiple PLN’s into our district and state associations where music educators in the state can have ongoing professional experiences from their own colleagues.

Bauer, W. I. (2014). Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. [E-reader version] New York, NY: Oxford University Press.