Great and Not-so-Great Professional Development Webinars

The bad news is—at least from where I’m standing— the economy still sucks and my job search continues on its cold streak. The GOOD news, for those of us who are interested in education, is that there is an entire universe of professional development opportunities available online and much of it is FREE. Of course, such resources exist for folks in various disciplines and industries but I’ll be focusing here primarily on materials that are related to education and available online: Webinars, podcasts, open education resources (OER), online conferences, and so on.

In the past three weeks, I have attended five Webinars, all of which were free: Integrating 21^st Century Tools: What are some considerations for laying the foundation of purposeful technology integration?; The Common Core of the Whole Child; Peace Education from Theory to Practice; Ladders of Hate, Ladders of Peace; and an informational session about the NY Teaching Fellows program. It occurred to me, as I experienced the range in quality among the above Webinars, that I am in a unique position to provide a service for those of you who are working full-time. We all know that life-long learning is a must—not to mention it’s fun, enriching, and an excellent way to connect and collaborate with peers around the world. However, it also takes time to seek out and sift through these programs and you full-timers are likely not in a position to spend five, seven, ten or more hours a week exploring these resources. Too, when you do finally carve out a few hours here and there to learn something new…it’s a real drag if that time is squandered on a low quality, simplistic, or superficial presentation.

Here’s my gift to you: I’m going to hunt down, check out, and review as many of these resources as I can. Along the way, I’ll share information about the platform, the presenter (and his or her skill with the chosen platform), and the content of the program. Hopefully these reviews will help you save time by avoiding those I-want-to-jab-my-eyeball-with-my-pencil type presentations and seeking out those that are inspiring, jam-packed with useful information, and relevant to your work and interests. Since many of these resources are available in real-time and as recordings, you might use the reviews to influence which presenters you might be willing to pay to see (some folks—for example, the Curriculum 21 team—offer series that are kicked off with a free Webinar but which cost a few bucks for the remainder) and which archived sessions you might want to etch out some time to watch. And now, a quick review of the first two Webinars listed above.

As it goes, kicking off my tour de Webinar-ville with the first episode of the Integrating 21^st Century Tools and Skills series was pure kismet. Why? The presenters were top-notch, highly skilled with the platform (they used Instapresenter as their Webinar hosting platform), and the content provided was fascinating and relevant. Michael Fisher and Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano co-facilitated the Webinar, which was carried out as a dynamic exchange among presenters and attendees rather than a lecture-like presenter-reading-from-script-and-talking-at-a-monitor approach. In part, this more conversational and dynamic approach is supported by the Instapresenter platform, which has a chat box along the bottom of the screen that all participants can type into and read from throughout the Webinar. However, it was the hosts’ skilled use of the technology that really created the open and collaborative dynamic. (It would be infinitely more helpful if I could share a screen shot with you—I will collect screen shots from future Webinars.) Participants can see, on the top left of the screen, live video of the presenters, who can choose to keep all cameras open or to switch back and forth according to who is doing most of the talking at any particular point. Seeing the presenters faces—even if just for a few minutes at the beginning of the episode—helps to create a greater sense of connection and proximity.

Silvia and Mike did an excellent job collaborating throughout the presentation. As they delivered information about various 21^st Century Literacies—information literacy, media literacy, global literacy, and digital citizenship—one of them would type relevant links and names of resources in the chat box and respond to participants’ questions in real time as the other presenter spoke. The speaker was also watching the chat feed and incorporating and responding to attendees’ feedback as it came into view. This Webinar is an excellent resource for any educator—whether you are working in a formal or informal program—who is interested in creating learning opportunities that will better prepare students to practice the “5 ‘C’s”: critical thinking; communicating; connecting; collaborating; and creating.

I have only one complaint: I cannot find an archived version of the Webinar on the Curriculum 21 website (Episode title: What are some considerations for laying the foundation of purposeful technology integration?). Hopefully, it will be made available soon. Notably, there are three more Webinars in the series: Thoughtful task consideration: It’s not about the tools; Curation and Implementation; and Automating, Informating, and Amplifying. You can register for one or all three of the Webinars at the Curriculum 21 website.

The second Webinar—The Common Core of the Whole Child—was recorded and you can view the archived episode online if you are interested in watching a living example of how not to host a Webinar. Unlike the Curriculum 21 episode, which opened fifteen minutes early so that the series host could explain to attendees how to use the platform and to iron out any unforeseeable technical glitches—the Common Core of the Whole Child started ten minutes late. The total Webinar was slotted to last one hour—so watching the presenters wrestle with the technology for ten full minutes kicked off the episode on a very sour note. Teachers are very busy people, it’s simply not nice to waste their time.

The presenter, Molly McCloskey, used the GoToMeeting webinar-hosting platform, which is much less collaborative than Instapresenter. Attendees are not able to see one another, and the chat box is a pop-up screen and does not stream all participants comments only those input by each user. For example, if I input a question or piece of feedback into the chat box, I can see my own question. If another attendee types a question or statement, only he and the hosts can read his feedback. Other attendees’ feedback is only visible to all attendees once a presenter responds to that question and makes it visible to the group. I resented this host-controlled conversational (power) dynamic. In fact, it was not conversational at all. The dynamic gave me the eerie feeling that I was at the end of a long dark tunnel and that somewhere, far away, someone was talking into a horn in a tinny radio voice. Essentially, it was an old-school approach superimposed on a new-school technology. Had this been my first Webinar experience, I can’t imagine I would opt to seek for more.

It was very clear from the start that neither the presenter nor the person who was in the room “supporting” her was comfortable with the technology. During the first ten minutes, attendees watched as the presenter wrestled with the sound, the screen (at one point her Outlook inbox was made available for all to see). Finally, when Molly started the presentation, she did not move her slides forward. I typed feedback notifying the presenter and her tech support person that I could not see the slides. I was told to download a Java update. (The problem was not on my side.) Apparently, other attendees complained that they also did not see the slides moving forward. Finally, about twenty minutes into the Webinar the sound was working, the speaker was presenting, and her slides were moving forward in line with her words. Unfortunately, the logic of the presentation mirrored the fumbling with the platform. At one point Molly said “The key word is each because when we think about education we don’t want to talk about all children because that doesn’t reach every single child. We want to think about each.” (This is a paraphrase but it’s damn close.) Uh, I think I get the point…we don’t want to lose sight of the fact that each kid faces a unique set of circumstances and that we want all students—every individual student—to be considered when we plan, deliver, and assess teaching and learning…but would you mind rephrasing that? In short, it appeared that the presenters were either unprepared or overwhelmed by the platform. Honestly, if I didn’t have so much free time on my hands, or if I were required by my work to watch this Webinar for “professional development,” I’d feel aggravated. Frankly, I was expecting a much higher quality Webinar from ASCD—their newsletters are excellent and many resources on their website are very useful.

Hopefully, future Webinars in the ASCD Common Core series will be more professional, content rich, and less painful to watch. It can be very daunting to communicate across a new and unfamiliar platform. My guess is that Molly is super-smart and has a lot of insight to share with educators. Sadly, this didn’t shine through in this Webinar. A great reminder to us all to be sure to practice practice practice and familiarize ourselves with new media before going public with a presentation. The good news is, fumbling leads to learning. I bet Molly’s next Webinar will run much more smoothly.You can review the schedule and register for future Webinars here.