Online Communities

I got a message in my Flickr account this evening from a guy called Dave. He was letting me know that he used one of my photos on his Blog. I've never heard of the guy before, and he's probably never heard of me. However, the Creative Commons image search function means that guys like Dave can find photos by guys like me and use them. When I opened his blog up I was so please to see the line of text directly above my photograph (which is a stunner by the way!). What Dave is saying in that line is so true, and so often forgotten - particularly in schools.

Schools spend thousands and thousand of dollars sending their teachers away on professional development courses. Those teachers come back and - possibly - put a small fragment of what they learned into practice. A lot of schools exepect that teachers will share their knowledge, but this rarely happens. The most powerful professional development I have ever experienced was in-house PYP training. The power came from the fact that we were all together, learning together, talking about teaching together, identifying like-minds and challenging other viewpoints. We really grew together. I hope I can experience that again, both as a participant and as a workshop leader.