I found the image on the left on Twitter tonight from @techgirljenny.  I love that it 100% promotes the idea of getting professional development through social media, specifically Twitter.  There is something absolutely thrilling about connecting with educators from around the world and sharing ideas and blog posts about everything from planning to formative assessment to the latest ed tech tool.

And Jenny nails Twitter on the head – It’s daily. It’s random. It’s frequently amazing.  Yes, yes, and yes.  It is all of those things.  But is that enough?  Is that what’s best for teachers and for students? I read Jenny’s Twitter feed and know her answer would be: Absolutely not!

Full disclosure: My career is professional development, so I have a vested interest in Twitter not being the only PD for teachers.  I largely went into PD because I was frustrated as a teacher because my PD needs were not being met.  Twitter was the one place I could go find like-minded people and learn constantly from them on my own schedule and at my own pace.  So my argument isn’t necessarily with the daily or the frequently amazing part.  It’s the random part.

This ties back into my previous post about measuring implementation.  There are times for random. Random is sometimes exactly what we need because of the serendipity of Twitter. I found this image because I just happened to be on Twitter when #edtechchat tonight was all about professional development. Totally random. Thoroughly enjoyed.  But I don’t think random is good enough.

Taking Twitter out of the equation, I think one thing missing from so much professional development out there is that teachers aren’t given the tools to be masters of their own learning. They aren’t taught how to create professional goals and then empowered and supported to go after them. So much was said tonight about giving teachers choice in their professional development.  I agree 100%, they should be in control, or at least have much more control than they currently do.  But let’s help them differentiate between times to be random about their professional learning from times to work on self-selected goals.  Let’s help them develop professional learning goals that they can focus on and improve in a specific area. I have seen time and again that if teachers give focused attention to one area, rather than a scatter shot approach to professional learning, it’s guaranteed other parts of their practice will improve as well.

And let’s not allow our professional developers to rely on randomness either. We, as professional developers, need to be having conversations and using data to inform us about the staffs we are charged with developing. Meet them where they are at, not where we think they are. We need to help them develop the skills they need to learn how to fish in the Twitter waters both purposefully and randomly.