Professional Development

During the last couple years professional development has been impacted by web 2.0 tools because of the easy of communication, collaboration, and creation.  For example, my job requires me to fulfill certain tasks for my performance review year.  My supervisor and I discuss what I should do, creating goals and objectives.  These objectives deal with professional development, and 3 our of the 5 goals are watching or attending webinars.  Webinars interactive meetings based on using the web to transmit information to a wide range of people. Webinars are a great and convenient way to communicate, collaborate, and create ideas and solutions.  Web 2.0 tools has changed the ways businesses conduct meetings.  Instead of using a conference phone, web 2.0 tools allow for greater participation and delivery of content.

     The advantages of using web 2.0 tools are:

• collaboration 
• proximity doesn't matter
• content delivery is quick
• professionals need the interaction with technology

     

     The dis-advantages of using web 2.0 tools are:

• technology does fail at times
• proximity could matter depending on the connection
• modern applications are still being developed (techniques like goto-meeting webinars)

In most cases I believe the pros definitely out weight the cons.  Simply put - professional development and web 2.0 tools have to co-exist.  Applications for collaboration are being included in many mobile devices.  Take the iPhone for example.  The new iPhone 4 has a high definition video camera built directly into it - Apple recently released FaceTime HD for the iPad 2 and for the Mac.  How many iPhone 4 users are there now? and how many iPad 2 users do they expect?! Collaboration, and meetings; anywhere at anytime.

Finally the communities of practice is simply defined as a 3 dimensional view of how a group of learners come together collectively engaged in common activities. The 3 dimensions are joint enterprise, mutual engagement, and shared repertoire (Solomon and Schrum p.104) These dimensions are engaged together as a whole, first by being responsible for how the community is defined collectively, secondly the community functions to bind together into a social entity and third, the culmination of all information, data, and developments wrapped up into a shared experience or shared repertoire.  This kind of community is essential to any kind of professional development - professional development isn't something that is bound to just one person, professional development is about exploring different communities of thought and experiences to better your thinking.  Professional development is a great experience so far and having web 2.0 tools functioning to make the experience better is something we should all look forward to.