Constructing an Online Professional Learning Network for School Unity and Student Achievement

"This book is a testimony to true transformative practice. The whole school community pursued a single vision, with multiple checkpoints, while providing incremental support to the staff."
―Cheryl Steele Oakes, Teacher
Wells High School, ME

Advance your professional learning community into the digital age

What if your professional learning community was available 24 hours a day, every day of the year? Would you like to have a place to share lesson plans, student work, a new curriculum, and to provide a discussion forum for all stakeholders? You can, even with only a basic understanding of technology. The authors explain how they created an online professional learning network to share a new core curriculum, providing a framework for constructing such a network to fit your school′s needs. The many benefits include:

• Enhanced communication among teachers, administrators, and the community
• Easy access to professional development for many more participants
• Implementation of best practices and instructional strategies for improved teacher performance
• Increased understanding of and commitment to educational goals

Included are checklists, flowcharts, screenshots of an actual learning network, case studies, and a glossary of terms. This book provides all the tools you need to build a successful and motivating professional community online.

Robin Thompson is curriculum coordinator for Manatee High School. Prior to this position, she served as reading coach and an intensive reading teacher at the high school, and taught various elementary and middle school grades. Thompson enjoys the process of designing, building, and launching professional learning networks. Her degree is in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in literacy, and she is especially interested struggling adolescent readers.

A graduate of the University of Florida in educational technology, I lean towards the concept of connectivism when it comes to educating adolescent and adult learners alike. In today’s digital environment it is more important than ever to explore the biology of the human mind as well as the tools that exist outside the human mind that aid in learning. I have experience teaching both English and reading in grades 6-12. At the present time I am an assistant principal at Manatee High School in Bradenton, FL. Working with Bob and Robin has provided an exciting and rare experience of taking an idea and bringing it to fruition. We have truly synthesized our various levels of expertise to develop a personal learning network that has already reached beyond our initial expectations and that has the possibilities to steadily grow with the rapidly transforming learning environment.

Currently the Principal of Manatee High School in Bradenton, Florida, I have had the honor of bringing a D-rated high school on the Florida Department of Education school-rating scale to an A-rating. I have worked diligently to demonstrate leadership and believe firmly that through teacher empowerment and the modeling of effective guidance any school climate can be transformed and improved. Working closely with Robin and Laurie, we have truly achieved a monumental task that we will continue to build and revise to meet the vast needs of both our teachers and our students.