Southeast Center for Education in the Arts

TEACHING AND LEARNING

How are the tools we use as learners, artists, and teachers changing? What adaptations to professional development do they require and offer?

Questions to address may include (but are not limited to):
•   How should/can we teach and learn at a distance?
•   How do we adapt teaching practice to students’ interests, strengths, and ....experiences?
•   How do we combine technological advancements with the need for live ....multisensory experiences?
•   How should contemporary environments of learning be designed?

ARTISTRY

Historically, artists in all disciplines have pushed the boundaries of older understandings of art in society and created new ones. What does it mean to be an artist today? How should arts education and professional development respond to changing artistic practice?

Questions to address may include (but are not limited to):
•   How are the traditional artistic forms changing?
•   How is imagination constrained or released by technology?
•   What opportunities and challenges do new ways of creating provide?
•   How are artists in various art forms using developing technologies in their ....work?
•   How are artists integrating technology into their creative practice?
•   How do we think through the aesthetics and practice of transmodal ....adaptation or transmedia crossings?
•   Do the skills we emphasize in arts education reflect the arts in ....contemporary practice?

COLLABORATION

Evolving technology offers us ways to communicate and collaborate across time and space in ways that impact how we structure our work. How should we respond to these new opportunities and challenges?

Questions to address may include (but are not limited to):
•   How do we work together without being together (asynchronicity)?
•   How does interaction between cultures (school and provider, teacher and ....artist, student and student) change the process and the product?
•   How do the ways in which we currently collaborate highlight new needs?
•   What new elements emerge from collaborating in ways that potentially go ....against more traditional forms of interacting?
•   What has emerged as missing for the traditionalist due to transformations ....in collaboration?

CONNECTED TEACHING

How do we employ the arts and technology to creatively connect teachers with students, and students with other students? Today’s educators should have access to technology-based resources that inspire them to provide more engaging and effective learning opportunities for each and every student. Leveraging technology can help build the capacity of educators by enabling a shift to a model of connected teaching. In such a teaching model, teams of connected educators replace solo practitioners, classrooms are fully connected to provide educators with 24/7 access to data and analytic tools, and educators have access to resources that help them act on the insights the data provide.

In connected teaching, teaching is a team activity. Individual educators build online learning communities consisting of their students and their students’ peers; fellow educators in their schools, libraries, and after-school programs; professional experts in various disciplines around the world; members of community organizations that serve students in the hours they are not in school; and parents who desire greater participation in their children’s education.

Questions to address may include (but are not limited to):
•...How can a teacher employ technology to plan and co-teach with a colleague at another school?
•...How can technology enable students and teachers to share what they are doing with a world ....audience?
•...How can teachers and students connect, communicate, and collaborate with colleagues and peers ....around the world?
•...How can technology provide students with opportunities for expressing understanding
....through.images, sound, and text?
•...How can technology help teachers reach students with different learning styles and abilities?
•...How can access to technology-based resources inspire and enable teachers to provide more ....engaging and effective learning opportunities for students?
•...How can technology help teachers assess students' knowledge, skills, and understanding?

CONNECTED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

How do we employ the arts and technology to creatively connect teachers with colleagues? By employing the connected teaching model, episodic and ineffective professional development is replaced by professional learning that is collaborative, coherent, and continuous and that blends more effective in-person courses and workshops with the expanded opportunities, immediacy, and convenience enabled by online environments full of resources and opportunities for collaboration.

Social networks can be used to provide educators with career-long personal learning tools and resources that make professional learning timely and relevant as well as an ongoing activity that continually improves practice and evolves their skills over time.  Online communities should enable educators to take online courses, tap into experts and best practices for just-in time problem solving, and provide platforms and tools for educators to design and develop resources with and for their colleagues.

Questions to address may include (but are not limited to):
•...How can updated models of professional development improve teachers’ practice?
•...How can technology be used in the preparation and ongoing learbning of educators to
....engage and motivate them in what and how they teach?
•...What will compel teachers to participate in online communities of practice?
•...How can teachers employ technology to make their work public and examine the work of others?
•...How can technology enable teachers to get feedback from colleagues on their instructional ....practice?
•...How can social networks make professional learning timely and relevant?
•...How can professional development providers mentor teachers without being onsite in their ....classrooms?
•...How can technology foster participation in communities of creativity and knowledge sharing?

ONLINE COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE IN EDUCATION

Broadening educators’ access to and participation in online communities of practice shows strong potential to support professional learning and collaboration. Changes in professional practice and significant increases in impact depend on teams of people working together, people empowered with knowledge and skills that are complementary, and that go beyond what any one person alone can bring to the table. Technology provides opportunities to scale educators’ interactions – broadly and efficiently – while enabling them to spend their time more productively.

Online communities of practice empower educators to access knowledge, share knowledge, create knowledge, and build professional identify, relationships, and collaboration. Connected online communities of practice – purposeful coordination of two or more communities – should be a goal for the education community. Cross-pollination of educators, activities, content, and technology could make professional learning and collaboration more productive, effective, and fun.