Community Training Follow Up: Using the LINCS Groups as Professional Development

Dear Colleagues,

Please welcome new members to our community who participated in today’s webinar on how to use the LINCS Communities for professional development.

This is an opportunity for those who participated to explore strategies and ask questions about using the LINCS communities as PD. It’s also a chance for all of us to join the conversation; share and benefit from each other’s experiences and ideas.

Whether or not you joined today’s webinar, please tell us your thoughts on any one of the questions below.

Webinar participants:

What stood out to you?  What did you enjoy most learning?

What question(s) did today’s session raise? 

What’s one thing you are going to do as a result of our webinar session together?

To All:

How have you used any of the LINCS Groups to maximize your own professional learning?

What are ways in which you’d like to see the LINCS Groups used as professional development?  What may be your role in that?

 

I'm looking forward to hearing from you,

Jackie

Jackie Taylor

EBPD Group SME

Comments

After viewing today's Webinar, I feel better equipped to share the four types of participatory roles one can take in the LINCS community with attendees at my adult ed workshops and Webinars. I also appreciated that the "reader" has a significant role.  One of the common issues that arises when I bring up the importance of CoPs or networking is the difficulty instructors have investing the time to participate. I think it would be great to have a YouTube featuring interviews with LINCS users from different contexts sharing how they acquire and manage the information from the resources.

 

 

Hi Jayme, All,

Jayme, thanks for kicking off our discussion, I appreciated seeing you on the webinar and I was also glad to see such a full room of participants. I too enjoyed hearing the "Reader to Leader" framework. (For those interested in learning more about it, see: http://aisel.aisnet.org/thci/vol1/iss1/5/)

And what a great idea for a YouTube video!  I'm wondering, how do you respond when a practitioner mentions how difficult it can be to invest time to participate in COPs?

PD group, I'd also like to hear how you make time to participate online, search for online resources, and/or how you manage "capturing" the kernels of professional wisdom and research for use later. 

What are your strategies and how well do they work for you?

Jackie

Jackie Taylor

EBPD Group SME

Great idea Jayme! I'm glad you enjoyed that portion. The article that really explores the different ways people participate in online social platforms is really interesting. If you want to see the whole article you can get it at http://aisel.aisnet.org/thci/vol1/iss1/5/

Thanks for joining the discussion!

My main thought ~ what a great resource you have made available to all of us! Thank you LINCS. You have brought together a community of practitioners that otherwise would have very limited means of networking. Sharing professional wisdom and resources, etc is more vital than ever in these difficult financial times. My goal is to begin to use the LINCS community of practice frequently and take advantage of all the wonderful opportunities you have made available to the field.

Kim Rossman

PAACE President
Tutors of Literacy in the Commonwealth Executive Director

In addition to increasing my knowledge about the substance of the LINCS site, the webinar served another purpose for me. I don't know about others but I hadn't taken the time to eliminate some of those "digital hoops" that seemed to be keeping me from referencing LINCS as much as I would like to.

First problem/ hoop: when I received email updates with hyperlinks to LINCS webpages and clicked on them, no page opened. My default web browser was Internet Explorer and it was not working with LINCS. Yes, I could have cut and pasted the link into Google Chrome or some other browser, but I admittedly did not do that often. Sure, I went out of my way to find the new CCR standards, but I was missing those "kernals" Jackie mentioned by not visiting with the regularity that comes with ease of use.

Potential solution: I changed the default web browser associated with my email program on my computer. OK, I am not a tech whiz nor responsible for what you do with this information, of course. For me on my new-ish Windows machine, I went to the Windows button, then Default Programs, then Set Your Default Programs, selected by internet browsing and email programs, and re-set those to connect a more compatible browser.

 

Second problem/ hoop: out of sight, out of mind, just not maintaining a close enough virtual relationship with the information in an on-going basis.

Potential solution: setting LINCS as the homescreen I see when I open the internet browser. Steps to do this will vary based on the browser.

 

So, after the webinar I did make these adjustments and wanted to offer that as a reflection to this community!

--Kate Nicolet

PD Coordinator, Adult Education and Literacy, Vermont Agency of Education 

Kate, and others,

I find that the best way for me to keep up with LINCS is:

1. To save the LINCS password in my browser

2. To bookmark  the MY LINCS webpage in my bookmarks/favorites toolbar

Then I see the LINCS page in my browser toolbar when I open the browser, click on it, and it takes me to all the recent posts in all the LINCS communities in which I am enrolled. I can also reply to any of these posts if I like.

 

David J. Rosen

djrosen123@gmail.com

Hi folks!

I'm grateful to Kate for describing -- and proposing solutions for -- some of the exact same "hoops" that have been keeping me from participating in the CoPs more substantively. I'll add one more that I believe will also soon be addressed -- the need to use multiple passwords to access different parts of the LINCS resources site. You won't believe (and I'm fairly embarassed about) how often I have had to change my password because I get messages that the one I'm trying to use is not valid...:-). So yes, access has been a big issue for me, and I think there would be great virtue in making it as smooth and easy as possible.

While I fully appreciate the information that was shared, my big takeaway from the webinar was a wish that it had included input/reflections from practitioners who are already using the CoPs in specific ways in professional development. I'm thinking this would be especially useful from -- and for -- those of us who are doing content-area pd right now within a rapidly changing and challenging landscape.This may go to the earlier comment about YouTube videos? I like it!

I am wondering if perhaps I'm wanting this too early, given that the webinar was meant to be introductory. Maybe a good followup activity, then, would be to put together and make available some collection of experiences and suggestions from real users in the field? And then use the CoPs to continue/extend/enrich the "database"?

Many thanks for the opportunity to learn, reflect and share!

Peggy McGuire

Peggy, that is great feedback. While this was an introductory webinar to get acquainted with using LINCS for professional development, gathering information from actual users to illustrate ways the site contributes to their practice is a great follow on to the conversation and would help other users. We encourage all community members to share with us how you have used LINCS as a professional development tool and the LINCS team can gather those experiences and further disseminate them.