Volume 27, Number 1
January/February 2011
Like Teacher, Like Student
Online PD helps teachers learn to collaborate so their students will, too
by Dave Saltman
Lauren Kenney (center), a technology teacher in Fremont, N.H., takes and teaches courses through Open NH, one of a number of new online professional development websites.
In Robbinsville, N.J., fourth-grade teacher Linda Biondi helps teachers share and critique each other’s essays on the National Writing Project’s digital writing websites. Back in the classroom, she works with her students to do the same thing—encouraging each other to dig deeper within themselves for details as they master their writing skills.
Meanwhile, middle school teachers in Arizona work together via a video link, sharing materials, ideas, and feedback as they learn how to teach a new community problem-solving unit on highway safety, uploading their finished unit materials to a state-sponsored portal. As part of the unit, students in these teachers’ classrooms engage in similar collaborative activities, uploading their finished work to the district’s website.
This is an excerpt from the Harvard Education Letter. Subscribers can click here to continue reading this article.