 Hi everyone, this is Brendan Murphy, and this is my presentation on using a Connectivist Professional Development, using a CMOOC, basically a CMOOC model for professional development. And I guess the first question most people will be asking is, what is a CMOOC? and so we'll go to the source right here for what is a CMOOC, and that is David Cormier, who who coined the word in I think it was 2005 and basically that it's harder connectivist MOOC is the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network yada yada yada hyperconnected world of this 21st century where social media is in our pocket all the time and everything can We can communicate with almost anyone at almost any time If I want to know something or I want some help with something I broadcast that question out to my Network and they respond with an answer Usually pretty quickly and the stronger my network the more active my network the faster they respond and the better the responses so I may know a lot but If I have a strong vibrant personal learning network, then I become that much better This connectivist theory the idea that the connections we have make us Enhance our knowledge or who we are has led to Were led to the creation led directly to the creation of the first MOOC And it was the study of the connectivist theory that was the world's first MOOC and in where the word MOOC was coined the massive open online course because it was a a course by Dave Cormier and George Siemens and ugly Stephen Downs who About connectivism and and they open it up for anybody who wanted to whether they were a credit-taking student or not and they ended up having two thousand people joined and those two thousand people and they realized that this massive part was really became an important role in the course because when you have so many people and There's no content, but rather the participants are creating the content as they go No single person Can learn everything that's going on no single person can follow everything that's going on so it becomes important for the Participants and and even the facilitators to Choose what part of the course they're really going to follow in participating in and and so For each person that will be a little bit different you and I may have similar interest and we may follow or Communicate or connect with a lot of the same people, but it will not be the exact same people And and so what you learn from the course and what I learned from the course will be completely different And so I've taken this connectivist model and develop the open online experience And it's not completely original. I really borrowed a lot from a connectivist course in 2012 in 12 early 2012 late 2012 I borrowed a lot from the etmoo group and The idea that there's a weak center this this This website here is kind of the center of the hub almost everything What will somehow or another funnel through this website here? And you can see it on the about us I really talk a lot about the philosophy and the structure of the course and The main thing about this course is I Work at a high school and the teachers are the students all the new freshmen are getting Chromebooks and the teachers Obviously have never taught a one-to-one environment So they needed some help and support and it was part of my job to build professional development There's support for them. So I developed this framework and I said that I Can't teach them a course What I need to do is support them through the entire school year. So I'll start When the school year starts and I'll go all the way until the end and Yeah, these are working professionals So obviously I can't have too much thrown at them on a regular basis because they just don't have this hopefully would Bring Continuing conversations about education and technology in the classroom for the teachers on a regular basis but not so much at one time that it would be overwhelming for the teachers and Because I only have 50 teachers at my school That's not enough to be massive in its own. So I brought in In invited teachers from all over the world to come and in from at MOOC and from Designing new learning environments at MOOC. I took out of Stanford last year Well, I have a lot of people who have joined in Literally, we have almost 200 people from, you know, a couple of dozen countries around the world and All of these people are sharing their Experiences and not all of them are high school teachers because it's important to have a Diverse background So, you know, some of them are high school teachers and some of them are elementary teachers and some are college Professors and and and whatnot, but they're around the world and they're all working together for the goal of Better integration of technology in the classroom. So You know, that's basically the course I mean a weak center of teachers coming together on a regular basis to talk about Specific topics in education and all the other stuff is is really the nuts and bolts of how those conversations work, you know Blogs are obviously very important because that's what people Reflect and share their learning. So if you're writing your own blog, you're teaching us What you've learned you're reflecting on your own learning And if you're reading blogs, you're learning from someone else the Twitter feed is really starting those conversations or Continuing those conversations Quick ways of sharing resources We try and have a Twitter chat every other week and just have a topic going on, you know This month is connected educator. So how is Connectivism and how is being connected? How does that change your your classroom? we have groups and I think groups are extremely important being a member of a group gives you a Not only a built-in support structure, but it also gives you a responsibility You cannot just be a leech in a group. You have to be a participating member of that group to be a member and So it keeps you coming back for more and and yes The open online experience is designed so that people can Are not overwhelmed by the work and and we even encourage people to drop out We if the work is too much right now drop out for a little while and come back when when you have more time and more energy and Being a part of a group helps in that because your group will stay in contact with you And and when you've been away for a couple weeks, you may get an email from somebody saying hey look at this blog post Or I know you'd be interested in this and it pulls you back in and you'll do the same for other people and the learning continues But going back to our Connectivist professional development and If you could change something about education, what would you change and and for me it would be everything? And that isn't to say that as a teacher and some of these school improvement days or or Institute days There have not there have been some awesome speakers and and I've learned some stuff, but And maybe I've learned stuff that I would not have chosen to learn so that's I'm not saying to dump all of that but You know the idea that professional development should always be Created and delivered to us. I think it is just wrong. I think professional development should be more decentralized that You know we should be able to choose What it is that we want to learn because we know what is important to us and and as a middle school teacher or an elementary school teacher or a high school teacher your needs are different and You know, how can you say? You know, if you're a K through 5 building you can bring in one speaker who meets the needs of all of those people or if you're a high school building Even if you split up into departments, you know, how can you say that one speaker brings to everybody in that department? What they need at that time? You know we as the participants in the in the professional development need to determine what the focus is for us And that's what a connectivist MOOC does it allows you to Choose the focus because you're creating the content the content of what you learn is the research papers that you decided to read or the blog posts that you read or wrote or the Twitter Conversation that went on if you've ever been in a Twitter chat I've been discussing this with a person who's a newbie to Twitter and she's like how do you do this? I thought I was a good multitasker and you're like got 12 conversations going on at once and and you're following them all and and you know That's the way these Twitter chats work and I'm not focusing on everything that goes through in a conversation But only the parts that really make sense or have meaning to me And that's you know differentiation at its finest so The content is created by the participants and those of us who are facilitators We're not here bringing you contents because the content is cheap instead We're just helping Push it along where it needs to be keeping people from getting too emotional if that happens encouraging people to share The occasional bit of technical help, but most of all I can Say with confidence that every single person who is a facilitator in the open online experience is there first to learn They're not there to teach they're there to learn because they know that as a facilitator They'll be learning as much or more than anybody who participates in it But this whole online open online experience and I'm trying to take it one step farther Than just to construct of this move As I've said from the beginning This program was developed For my high school teachers for my teachers who have to deal with going transitioning to a one-to-one environment And they not only do they need support from me and from the teachers, but you know They're learning a whole lot of stuff on a regular basis and They need the To they need the school district to understand that what they're learning is Directly applicable to their classroom is changing the classroom and that needs to be recognized and supported and They need to participate not only am I teachers participating, but I'm also pushing hard for my administration to to Participate and that's almost as tough as getting teachers to participate in this but you know if the teachers are learning something completely new and Integrating it into their classroom. What happens when they get evaluated by a professor by a principal Who wasn't part of that learning and doesn't recognize it as a new innovative way of teaching But thinks it's just plain wrong So the administration needs to be a part of the learning going on to it Education in this century is being disrupted Education is being disrupted more than at any other time in the history of the world and It's changing so fast it it really becomes impossible for One individual to stay on top of all the changes in education but we need to try and The way that I think the best way to do that is through a connective this environment If you have a strong vibrant network, then you don't have to stay on top of everything You just have to stay on top of what you're really passionate about and when your network asked you for more information on that then it's your responsibility your obligation to teach them and Then on the flip side You need to ask and your network needs to teach you about stuff that you're interested in but not necessarily Super passionate about not necessarily keeping up on 100% and we do do that This open online experience is one way of doing that, but there's other There's other Alternative professional developments, you know Ed camp is an awesome grassroots Unconference where where teachers get together on a Saturday and they have a day Plan they don't have anything planned But they have a day blocked out a day of learning and when they get there they plan it and teachers are like I know about this I can teach this I want to learn about that Who's teaching it and and we go from 200 educators in a room to? 20 rooms with 10 educators each and they're talking about completely different topics and everybody in that room is interested in that topic and if the topic isn't making If it's not what you thought it was you're encouraged to get up go to another room You know That's how more democratic can you be about that? and Ed camp home is kind of an offshoot of that where They did the exact same thing only they did it through Google Hangouts, and it was amazing thing to watch And I'd like to see another one happen So as I'm nearing the end of this conversation, I'd like to say What what I'd like to see open online experience Happening in the future and and obviously it's still going on until May of 2014 and please join us The more people really the better it is But I don't I don't want to see it just end after this year I believe that this can be an excellent framework to to continue on for years, and I can see Whether it's you know It's something that's a grassroots thing that that districts kind of join in and support in that way or maybe there's a central thing Where somebody gets paid to line up speakers and organize and do all the network stuff like that and you know Maybe districts pay a fee to be joining join into that quality learning or whatever happens however it goes I believe that it can be something that is of value for for many many many more educators because this is connected educator month in the u.s. And And this is the topic in our open online experience And this is one of our Collaborative projects, and this is just a Google doc a Google presentation and and this is the rules and I Open this up to the open online people just a couple of days ago, and this is what they've put in already And you know they take on their own Their own Slide and work on it and then some people have collaborated on slides We were working on part of this. I had opened it up while we were in the middle of An online session so a lot of people were jumping in on slides together at the same time But it was it's just amazing to see and I hope that by the time This is published in late October that there'll be more slides and that Those of you watching this presentation now We'll come in and look through the slides and maybe add a couple of your own on the end or add some notes To the slides that already exist and and if you add a note to the slide if that already exists put a couple of Speaker notes at the bottom. Why did you add a bit on well? What do you think makes it better? so There's a blank campus go ahead and get started