Teacher-to-Teacher
Collaboration
|
The primary purpose of this Website is to
identify and describe sites
that support teacher-to-teacher collaboration, particularly
teacher-to-teacher exchanges focused on professional development by
teachers for teachers. Some sites are included that foster
classroom
project-oriented collaborative exchanges between teachers.
About
this
Site | Contact
Information
Updated May 15, 2007
Site Contents
1. Teacher-to-Teacher
Collaborative Sites
2. Selected
Teacher-to-Teacher and Resource Sites
A. Resources Shared by Teachers for Teachers
B. How-to and Other Information About
Teachers' Collaboration
C. Discussion of Teachers' Roles in
Professional
Development
D. Organizations Supporting Teacher
Collaboration
1.
Teacher-to-Teacher Collaborative Sites
The following group of sites promote teacher-to-teacher
collaborative exchanges for the purposes of improving classroom
instruction or providign peer-to-peer professional support. These
communications between teachers foster the concept of
the teacher as reflective practitioner. Some sites specifically
recognize
the "professional development" aspects of these collaborations.
- The
Alive! Education Network
- Subtitled "Alive! Education.Net -- Excellence in Internet
Education,"
this site provides a variety of links, some having to do with
organizations
and content issues, but it also provides for teacher-to-teacher
connections.
[Site: Alive! Education Network]
- Collaborative
Learning -- Communities of Practice
- This site identifies and defines key terms in
collaboration
between peer to share learning. [Site: Commmunity Intelligence
Labs]
- Communities
of Practice -- A Review of the Literature
- Although the information about communities of practice on
this site is oriented to collaboration among business peers, the ways
in which collaboration can be viewed as the best of practice kind of
professionalism is true of teachers as well (i.e., teachers doing
collaborative work are doing de facto self-directed professional
development). [Site: John Sharp Associates,
business applications developers]
- Online
Professional Development
- This article identifies the "peaks and valleys" of teachers
using online collaboration and/or participation as members of a
community of practice as self-directed professional development.
[Site: eLearn Magazine]
- Pioneering
Partners Foundation
- The Resources button (top of page) on this site goes to a
teacher-to-teacher
collaboration area. Teachers are encouraged to share resources in
instructional
technology via gathered connections -- by curriculum, by type of
technology,
by state, etc. Teachers can also look at the "Success Stories" for
ideas.
[Site: Pioneering Partners Foundation]
- Teacher
Chat Center
- On this site, you can read messages or post messages to
other
teachers. [Site: Teachers.Net]
- The
Teacher's Corner
- This site invites teachers to use contributed
instructional materials (click the Teacher Resources link) -- mostly
for primary and intermediate grade levels -- but also hosts a moderated
teacher's forum message board (click link for The Teacher's Lounge) as
well as message boards. [Site: Commmunity
Intelligence
Labs]
- Teacher
to Teacher
- This site -- Teacher 2 Teacher -- helps teachers
contact
other
teachers; it also provides links to teaching resources (such as lesson
plans, "5 micro-activities" and so on). [Site: Shiney Communications]
- Teachers
Helping Teachers
- This site, posted by educator and consultant Dr. Scott
Mandel,
aims
to connect teachers to teachers for the purpose of providing
improvement
to educational practice. [Site: sponsored by Pacific Bell]
- Teacher
Talk Home Page
- A long list of lesson ideas related to a variety of
curriculum
subjects.
[Site: The Center for Adolescent Studies, Indiana University]
- TeachNet
-- Talk with Teachers
- This site offers direct connection with teachers, either
via
bulletin
boards (asynchronous) or chat lines (synchronous) communication.
[Site:
TeachNet.org]
- Teacher's
Workshop
- Professional development resources for the teacher, with
links
to help
you find a variety of resources for (1) teleconferencing, (2) finding
email
partners, (3) summer courses, (4) guest speakers, etc. Although many of
the services offered have fees, there is a teacher-to-teacher listserv
offered. [Site: Teacher's Workshop]
- Back to top
2. Selected Teacher-to-Teacher and Resource Sites
A. Teachers' Shared Resources
- These are a group of sites where --
primarily -- teachers
are sharing
resources with other teachers. Some of these "resources" are simply
lesson
plans,
but some of them also help teachers talk online to other teachers about
teaching,
particularly about integrating technology into the curriculum.
- TeacherLINK --
Teacher Resources
- This is site that offers links to resources for
teachers, including NASA educator resources. Click on the
"TeacherLINKS" connection to get to
a search engine for teacher resources. [Site: Utah State University's
College of Education]
- Archive.Edu
- This site is -- as advertised -- an archive (using a
treasure-chest
metaphor) of instructional resources for teachers, primarily of the
"lesson
plan" variety. ArchiveEdu is a continuing and on-going project
developed
by Instructional Technology students at the University of Houston.
[Site:
Education Dept. at the University of Houston.]
- Collaborative
Lesson Archive
- This site contains an archive of lessons by teachers
for
teachers, with
an easy-to-use method and encouragement of teachers to collaborate,
meaning
share by posting, their lesson plans. [Site: Education Dept. of the
University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.]
- Education
Resources
- This site provides a extensive list of
instructional
resources for teachers,
primarily of the lesson plan variety. [Site: Education Dept. at
the
University of Houston.
- Federal
Resources
for Educational
Excellence -- FREE
- This site is the federal response to President
Clinton's
1997 request
to Federal agencies that they determine what "resources you can make
available
that would enrich the Internet as a tool for teaching and learning."
More
than 30 Federal agencies formed a working group to make federally
supported
education resources available through this web site. Partnerships with
Federal agencies are also offered through this site, as well as
listings
for a variety of other resources. [Site: US Department of Education]
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B. How-to and Other Basic Information Sites
These sites provide instructions about how to produce
multimedia
or Internet-based materials for instruction for the "ordinary"
classroom
teacher (as if classroom teachers who are building multimedia resources
were in any way "ordinary"!)
- Create
an On-Line Project
- This site contains a slide show, created by Dr.
Helen
Johnson, that
very succinctly lays out the steps for teachers to create (or join)
on-line
projects, plus suggestions on how to connect to other teachers and/or
classes.
[Site: University of Rhode Island.]
- Global
On-Line Project Connections
- The purpose of this site is to encourage and
facilitate
connections
between teachers -- and, more especially, their classrooms -- around
the
world. [Site: i*EARN -- the International Education and Resource
Network]
- Instructional
Strategies for Two-Way Video
- This site provides suggestions and direct information
about using videoconferencing
for teacher collaboration. [Site: sponsored by Packard Bell]
-
- On-line
Project Suggestions: Keypals for Kids, Correspondents for Teaching
Colleagues
- Contains a posted list of on-line activity projects,
labeled by the
suggested grade level of the participating students. Classes can join
on-going
projects (contact info provided) or these activities can serve as
suggestions
for teachers to create their own projects for their classes. [Site
owned
by Houghton-Mifflin]
- Instructional
Professional Development Coaching
- This site provides a look at how one school district
envisions ways in which teachers can -- for all practical purposes --
do their own self-directed professional development through use of a
peer-to-peer coaching model. The point is that most school
districts will probably allow groups of teachers to carry out a
self-directed program of professional development if they can propose
it to administrators in a manner similar to the framework outlined
here. In other words, the next time you (as a teacher) are
sitting in yet another boring lecture-type "professional development"
session foisted on you by your school district, think of how you might
propose with your fellow staffers a session that all of you would
probably find much more useful. That just might work!
[Site: Bellingham (WA) Public Schools]
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C. Papers Discussing Teachers' Roles in Professional Development
These on-line documents discuss various aspects of professional
development, including recognition that teacher collaboration and
reflective
learning are important factors in educational improvement plans.
- A
British Teachers' Reflective Circle
- Here's how this group describes themselves:
"Chreods
is an electronic
journal devoted to exploratory writing about education to provide a
forum
for practicing teachers of pupils and students of all ages engaged in
research
into their own practice. The name Chreods was borrowed from the work of
Waddington. He used it to describe `developmental pathways in
space-time'."
[Site: Southhampton University, UK]
- Rethinking
Professional Development
- A discussion of how "new" professional development must be
teacher-centered
is found in this online article. [Site: US government web-site: Part of
the Improvement of America's Schools Act of 1994 website.]
- Teacher
Collaboration paper
- This paper(1993) describes teacher collaboration and the
state
of collegial
relationships between academic and vocational teachers. In discussing
why
more collaboration is necessary, issues relevant to the subject of
general
teacher collaboration are discussed. [Site: National Center for
Research
in Vocational Education, University of California, Berkeley]
- Teachers
Take Charge of Their Learning
This report recommends self-directed professional development
as
a key to educational improvement. [Site: National Foundation for the
Improvement
of Education -- see, too, their discussions of and suggestions for creating
teacher-led professional development within the current system.]
Back to
top
D. Organizations Supporting Teacher Collaboration
1. Ideas for Where to Get the Money for
Professional Development
- Funding
Suggestions for In-Service Proposals
- This Education World article (1997) lists a variety of
"put it
in action"
funding sources for professional development projects -- presumably,
some
teacher-to-teacher projects would also be covered. It has hot
links
to other resources. [Site: Education World, sponsored by American
Fidelity
Educational Services]
2. Organizations
Supplying
Ideas and Support for Teacher Collaboration
- Pathways
to School Improvement
- This site lists development resources as a service to
schools.
Click
on the Professional Development link. [Site: The North
Central
Regional Education Laboratory (The North Central region of states
includes
Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin)]
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