Serving Up PD

For the the past few years, I have been exploring the idea of professional development. While the mindset of helping educators has always been the same, the methodology has evolved.

There are a number of people out there who are doing the same thing. We are attempting to inspire and connect by using models that include edcamps and TEDx.

My first exploration started a few years ago when I ran across TEDx. In my mind, TEDxNYED and TEDxSFED were meant to be the answer, TED like events that brought inspiration to educators. These are powerful opportunities but these are once a year.

Over the past few months I have been thinking about the idea of community, learning, and innovation.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that TEDx as a one day event, while inspiring, does not bring the type of results I have been seeking. The real goal is to create opportunities for sustained interaction between educators, innovators, and designers.

What got me to this mind set was at first the TEDxNY salon. Then there was Detroit Soup. And finally, today I read Glen Lubbert's post on Jeffersonian dinners.

These events all have something in common: bringing people together to connect, share, and explore what is possible. They are not difficult to produce and they are not time consuming. They are simple methods to connect and create opportunities that can transform education.

As I move forward, my goals are to:

1. Provide a platform for educators to connect on a regular basis
2. Introduce the worlds of education and innovation to each other

That is possible by:

1. Following the TEDxNY and TEDx Tuesdays at SMU models and create a regularly scheduled salon that bringing educators and innovators together to inspire, learn, share, and create opportunites that will transform education.

2. Create regularly scheduled dinners like Detroit Soup or the Jeffersonian Dinners that provide opportunities to inspire, connect, and plan over a meal.

I know these ideas are not new but I do not see many opportunities that connect the worlds of education and innovation. My goal is to bridge the divide of education and innovation by creating opportunities for the two worlds to meet. Far too often educators are not included in these type of events.

Hopefully, by introducing these models, I will be able to help feed the conversation around how we can assist our educators, expand their network, and transform their teaching.

In order to give credit where credit is due, the ideas mentioned stemmed from the following models:

TEDxNY
Detroit Soup
Jeffersonian Dinners
edcamp

While TEDxSFED is on April 9th, I believe these goals are definitely ideas worth spreading and plan to move forward soon after our first iteration of TEDxSFED is over. I hope that you do the same and create your own Jeffersonian Dinners or something similar and help bring educators and innovators together in order to serve up better professional development.

Photo Credit: Ed Yourdon