Teachers who took online professional development courses improved their instruction and subject knowledge, as well as produced gains in student achievement, says a new study by e-Learning for Educators, a 10-state consortium funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Ready to Teach program.

The 330 teachers in the study participated in three 30-hour online professional development courses developed by the Education Development Center’s EdTech Leaders Online, or ETLO. The teachers included elementary and middle school math teachers, as well as language arts teachers.

The series of four randomized controlled trials examined the effect that a series of three Online Professional Development (OPD) courses had on teachers’ knowledge and instructional practices, and subsequent effects on student achievement. Collectively, the four trials provide strong evidence that participation in a coordinated series of three OPD workshops has positive effects on teachers’ instructional practices and content knowledge.

“While a growing body of research demonstrates online learning’s effectiveness at the college level, very few studies focus on K-12 and track the impact of teacher professional development to student learning,” said EDC’s Barbara Treacy, director of ETLO, in a press release. “It’s extremely gratifying to see that the online model we’ve developed leads to such positive results across all states, grade levels, and teacher groups.”

The research was culled from 330 teachers and 7,700 students

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Complete the myfuture 2010 user survey to go in the draw for a chance to win a weekly prize of a Kindle Reader.

The myfuture annual survey seeks user feedback to ensure the provision of services and website information layout meets the needs of all users.

The user survey covers aspects of the site such as the quality of information and services, site usability – ease of navigation and look and feel, and user views of how the service could be improved. 

If you are a career practitioner, teacher or someone who uses myfuture for your own career development we would greatly appreciate your feedback.

The survey is available here

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A recent online forum that I led for over a week has brought me to the conclusion that the most essential thing for educators and educational librarians is to get some experience in using e-book readers and reading e-books. The cause needs some champions in their ranks, otherwise it will drown in the “which device?” debate.

The following shows the result of a mini-survey that some of the discussion participants responded to.

To be quite honest I had anticipated a much greater level of experience, and it certainly seems to me that educators are lagging behind the readers in the real world.

I know, reading a book takes time, and that is a pretty valuable commodity in the educator’s world.
But without experience there will be no vision, and there will be no experimentation with pedagogy. Changes in education, particularly the adoption of new devices and new practices, is a horrendously slow process.

But if anything, 2010 will be the year that the e-book in education became a possibility, whichever device you settle on. We desperately need people in our schools, TAFEs and universities who know what they are talking about when it comes to e-books. It is only from there that other issues can be identified and solutions found for their use in education.

This discussion is one that is going on around the world, so it presents an opportunity for Australian educators to be at the cutting edge about the use of one technology in their pedagogical practice, and to show leadership in their own local situation.

And at the very least it will help us with this problem:

As always, your comments will be very welcome.

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Every now and again the issue of school uniforms crops up.

This morning the Sydney Morning Herald claims that Australian students are “growing up in a society where the dominant and long-held view is that school uniforms instil discipline, a sense of self-worth and equality.” It says that strict uniform codes have been cited as a contributing factor for a growing shift to private schools in recent years. It also implies Australia might be out of step with the rest of the world. (Although perhaps the journalist has not observed students overseas, particularly those on school excursions.)

Certainly in my experience many Australian parents support the wearing of uniforms, and neat and tidy ones at that, until it comes down to a confrontation with their own rebellious offspring. Then it becomes the school’s problem.

Back in the dark ages when I was in secondary school we had a basic uniform, and, in my memory at least, most wore it with good grace. Then when I left my rural high school to go to a city one for my final year, I was horrified to find that the basic uniform had been augmented with hat, gloves, and stockings. (Year 12s at XXXX don’t wear socks!)  And all I could think of was that those accoutrements effectively stopped me from playing tennis at lunchtime.

Within my city school the uniform was definitely seen as a status symbol and I was constantly in trouble for forgotten gloves and hat, conveniently languishing overnight in my locker. I was paraded before Year 8s as a recalcitrant who didn’t have the good name of the school at heart, and tackled by former teachers in the street about where my hat was and what a disgrace to the school I looked!
Me, who was definitely amongst the most conservative of students!

Later, as a teacher, I was expected to enforce the wearing of the school uniform too, and monitor the length of hair, and the type of shoes (no sneakers permitted), and earrings - the list went on. Whether or not I could get my class to comply was seen as a reflection on my abilities to inspire.

So, a bit of a personal rant today - but this is what the SMH article brought to the surface.

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The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession.

The World Report series is a biennial report series that reports on the state of the world in terms of freedom of access to information, freedom of expresion and related issues. The reports are available online at http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/iflafaife-world-report-series and can be downloaded free of charge. The 2010 Report has been designed as a customizable interactive electronic publication and can be accessed in different formats through maps.

a country-oriented map interface allows users to produce a full or partial country report or comparative country reports, depending on choices.

A question-oriented interface allows users to get information on a single question for all countries that have participated in the 2010 Report.

There is a single report for Australia with selected facts supplied by ALIA (Australian Library and Information Association)

Population: 21,262,641 (July 2009 est.)
Internet users: 17033826
Internet penetration: 80.10% 
Estimated number of public libraries in the country: 1515
University research libraries: 39
Estimated School libraries: 9000
Government funded research libraries: 200+
Check the report itself for further information

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Book Week is the longest running children’s festival in Australia, celebrating its 65th birthday in 2010.

The date for Book Week 2010 this year is August 21st - 27th.
Each year, many schools and public libraries from all over Australia spend a week celebrating books and Australian authors and illustrators. Classroom teachers, teacher librarians and public librarians develop activities, offer competitions and tell stories relating to a theme to highlight the importance of reading.

2010 CBCA Awards

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Humanitarian Principles represent the foundation of humanitarian action. Key humanitarian principles include:

Humanity: Human suffering must be addressed wherever it is found. The purpose of humanitarian action is to protect life and health and ensure respect for human beings.

Neutrality: Humanitarian actors must not take sides in hostilities or engage in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature.

Impartiality: Humanitarian action must be carried out on the basis of need alone, giving priority to the most urgent cases of distress and making no distinctions on the basis of nationality, race, gender, religious belief, class or political opinion.

Operational Independence: Humanitarian action must be autonomous from the political, economic, military or other objectives that any actor may hold with regard to areas where humanitarian action is being implemented”. 

UN site.

In my news items today - reports of a North American university giving iPads away to its students, and another giving students a choose between a free iPhone or iPod Touch.

Recently Reuters commented “It’s the old razors and blades thing. You give away the razor and sell the blades in perpetuity“, commenting that the price war in e-book readers stil l has a way to go. Amazon is hoping the e-books sales will be the revenue driver, rather than the devices themselves.

Just recently Amazon announced that their e-book sales were booming, and the sceptics commented that it was probably not just the availability of Kindles, but of the Kindle App on the iPad, plus the Kindle for PC software for laptops and computers that have driven the sales.

 I see the which device?  discussion as a bit of a barrier at the moment.  The problem is that no-one really seems to have come up with a cheap enough device that will handle all e-book formats at the moment. The iPad comes close, but involves downloading a number of apps, and several different methods of acquiring books, none of which involves borrowing. Laptops and netbooks and tablets come close too, particularly if you don’t want to have number of electronic devices to cart around.

We really need two things:

1. a device that will read all formats
2. a vendor that will sell all formats

And after that we need to solve problems of lending e-books, copyright restrictions, geographic restrictions.

But above all we need to agree that e-books are a good way to go in education, and we need to recognise that we can be not just consumers, but creators of e-books.

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The Baby Boomers are categorised as those born between 1946  and 1964 - that means the first of them basically turn 65 next year. Many of them, like me, are on the cusp of retirement. Currently they constitute 36% of the workforce, and, from my own experience, may actually constitute a bigger percentage of the teaching workforce.

We have already noted the impact on schools, where some baby boomers who have been in the school for a decade or even more, have retired and left a giant hole.

An article headed Retiring baby boomers spur rapid change in workforce points out that Gen Y, the next generation, has very different expectations of their working life. It has often taken Gen Y longer to get qualifications and begin paid work, and they are often beginning their adult life already in debt.

86% of Gen Y expect a promotion within 2 years - as Baby Boomer teachers will know, promotion avenues have been absent for much of their working life, and it has often been a case of early promotion, and then nowhere higher to climb.

With the torch set to pass to Gen Y, employers are being encouraged to revise their workplace culture and initiatives in order to attract and retain the new work force powerhouse.

According to McCrindle research the top 5 attraction and retention factors for Gen Y are: 

• Work-life balance
• Workplace community
• Management style
• Broad job description
• Training & development       my source

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If you take a look at my personalised twitter Daily what you are looking at is an aggregation of twitter and RSS feeds from people I follow.

The Daily is divided up into “interest” categories and each displays a number of posts. In the top right corner of the categories a number tells me how many more items I can find there.

I do have Tweet Deck running on my computer, in the background, throughout the day but, like most of the people who read this blog, there is no way that I can justify doing more than glance occasionally at it, and sometimes contributing.

What Twitter Daily does is

1. aggregate in newspaper form items from a number of the people whom I follow on Twitter. You can see who they are under the snippet.
2. Every morning I get an email alert from Small Rivers to tell me my new “daily” is available.

So I probably do miss stuff, but the Daily at least provides the tweets in an interesting format and I can pick items that interest me at a glance.

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