The Digital Learning Series: Developing a Professional Learning Community of Educators

In order to get the teachers in my middle school sharing and learning with each other, I have been brainstorming some ideas with the Technology Specialist in my building. Together, we recently developed a solution to this problem, by creating one blog for our middle school teachers to use. It is called the Digital Learning Series. Our hope was that our teachers will start to read the blog posts that we write, and slowly become motivated to contribute, by writing their own blog posts on the Digital Learning Series. What we didn't realize was how fast this would catch on!

Background Information

February 1, 2012 was Digital Learning Day and we used this day to kick off our Digital Learning Series. Each month we will have a new Digital Learning Theme.

We got started by utilizing our district's Google Apps in Education account. This allowed each teacher to have a Schoogle Account which comes with the Google Blogger App. I created the Digital Learning Series blog and then authorized every teacher in my building to become authors to the blog, empowering all of my teachers to learn and share with each other. I just created the blog this week and it is already spreading like wildfire.

How it Works

The Digital Learning Series Blog, created in Google Blogger, is a solution to learning and sharing with each other. Every teacher is an author to the Blogger Account, therefore every teacher can contribute to the Blog by creating a blog post about anything he or she finds useful. The great thing about this system, is that we can all contribute to this blog at any time. This creates one place to learn and share with each other and it doesn't have to take up any more email space.

Exponential Growth

After authorizing the technology specialist at the high school in my district to become an author of the blog, he contacted me yesterday about opening up the blog to the entire district. I immediately thought, "What a great idea!" This would ultimately expand the learning and sharing exponentially, creating a Professional Learning Community for all of the teachers in our district.

I decided to make him an admin to the blog, and he is going to authorize every teacher at the high school to become an author to the blog. This will put the Digital Learning Series blog over 125 authors, all within our school district.

Now, this is just our own Professional Learning Community. In order to maximize our learning and sharing, we are going to be sharing the Digital Learning Series via Twitter , Google+ and other social media applications to contribute to Professional Learning Network of educators around the world.

Application

I recommend all school districts to take this approach to digitally learning and sharing. Even if your district does not have a Google Apps in Education Account, all it takes is one person to create a blog in Google Blogger. Then, that person just has to invite other teachers to become an author by sending them an invitation via email.

Visit the Digital Learning Series to see our progress at http://www.digitallearningseries.com/

For more information

To check out my blogging tips, tricks, resources, and screencast on how to blog, visit my blog post: Get Your Teachers Learning and Sharing with Google Blogger