ESL Teachers: Proceed with your Professional Development Online

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Mona Younes
• April, 2008

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Success is to be measured not so much by the
  position that one has reached in life as by the
  obstacles which he has overcome
• Booker Washington

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your
Professional Development Online

• Part One
• What is professional development
• What is online education
• What?
• Why?
• Pre-requisites?
• Who?
• Forms of online education
• Formal learning
• Informal learning

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your
Professional Development Online

• Part Two
• A narration of a success story
• Steps and procedures
• Needs Analysis
• Search and data collection
• Decision taking
• Enrollment
• Engagement
• Graduation

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ESL Teachers Proceed with yourProfessional
Development Online

• According to the thesaurus of the Educational
  Resources Information Center (ERIC) database,
• professional development refers to
• activities to enhance professional career growth
• professional development may include
• individual development,
• continuing education,
• In-service education,
• peer collaboration,
• study groups,
• peer coaching or mentoring.

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Fullan (1991) expands the definition to include
  "the sum total of formal and informal learning
  experiences
• Professional Development

Informal
Formal
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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Current technologies offer resources to meet
  these challenges and provide teachers with a
  cluster of supports that help them continue to
• grow in their professional
• skills, understandings,
• and interests."

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Online Professional Development
• Formal versus Informal

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Informal Online Professional Development
• I might 'learn' about using Access, for eg, but I
  need 'training' to use it for what I want to
  properly!
• Learning tends to apply to knowledge acquisition.
• Training applies to a specific skill (which will
• almost certainly include new knowledge too,
• and therefore some learning!)

Training
Learning
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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• According to Training in America (1990), two out
  of three workers say that everything they need to
  know was learned on the job, rather than through
  the classrooms.
• Thus the workplace is the most frequently
  traveled avenue to education and training for
  most employed persons.
• Employer investments in workplace training
  around 210 billion annually
• 30 billion is spent on formal training,
• 180 billion is spent on on-the-job training

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Workers learn
• 75 of their job informally and
• 25 formally
• This means informal/on-the-job
• learning gets 86 of all learning
• investments

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Informal learning is
• a "lifelong process" through which people acquire
  attitudes, values, skills and knowledge mainly
  from the mass media, from daily experiences, such
  as those made at work, at play, while talikng
  with our neighbours and from various kind of
  interactions, in general.
• Informal learning is the unofficial, unscheduled,
  impromptu way most of us learn to do our jobs.
  Informal learning is like riding a bicycle

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Conversations are the stem cells of learning, for
  they both create and transmit knowledge.
• Open conversation increases innovation.
• Informal does not mean unintentional.
• Those who leave informal
  learning
• to chance leave money on
  the table.

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Then, why not engaging in professional
  conversationsonline?
• Forums, blogs, web-pages, e-books, online
  journals and magazines, chatting, audio-video,
  interactive counseling, interviews,.etc.
• (P.S. Handouts provide a list of some of these
  tools)

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Formal Learning
• ------? via the Internet Online
  Learning
• Online learning Learning delivered by Web-based
  or Internet-based technologies

Online Learning Web-based learning
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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Formal Learning
• ------? via the Internet Online
  Learning

Online learning
E- Learning
Distance Education
Online learning
Flexible Education
Online learning
Computer- assisted Learning
Online learning
INFORMAL PROF. DEV. 1/3
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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Online learning Why?
• Advantages
• Anytime Anywhere At your own pace
• Accessibility / Availability ------ anywhere
• Flexibility ------
  anytime
• Learner-centered / differentiated learning
• -------
  at your own pace

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Potential advantages
• Based on constructivism (CLE)
• Cost-effective
• High interaction
• Suitable for specific
• learning-styles

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Disadvantages
• Needs computer skills
• Needs internet connectivity
• Lack of direct (f2f) social interaction
• Multi-cultural environment
• Potential disadvantages
• Lack of accreditation
• Cost
• Time consuming
• Non-constructive

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• For whom is it suitable?
• Key elements for success
• Time Management
• Motivation
• Commitment and discipline
• Interpersonal Communication skills
• Special learning styles

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ESL Teachers Proceed with your Professional
Development Online

• Are you a good match for online learning?
• http//www.elearnersadvisor.com/advantages-of-onli
  ne-education.asp

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• P a r t T w o