Dallas McPheeters, Education Leader for ImmediaEDU, will present the refined professional development model at the annual SITE conference in San Diego this spring.

SITE (Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education) gathers over 1000 educators and IT experts each year to discuss trends and developments for technology integration into curriculum.

View the brochure which explains the model by clicking here.

This year's annual SITE Conference to be held at the San Diego Sheraton.

Mobile delivery of professional development is critical in our mobile age and ImmediaEDU is testing platforms for delivery. Here's an example below of our test site at http://greenbananablog.org/pln/

The tensions resonating within the educational system remind me of so many "professionals" who opined their varied diagnoses and prescriptions yet without a hint of resolution in sight. Why?

What's worse is that a cursory overview shows nearly all the experts agree on the current state of affairs and the necessary goal we should have in view. But finding a solution to target is the challenge. In other words, the solution is the problem.

Three points summarize the deluge of data streaming the blogosphere:

1. All are interested in education.
2. The future is unpredictable.
3. Kids have an extraordinary capacity for innovation.

The solution should be self-evident. What is needed is Professional development of teachers that is focused on creating impactful, intellectual communities that will grow and emerge with the unknown future innovations as they develop.

The old static, boxed in knowledge-bases become irrelevant too fast to use any longer as our structural paradigm for instructional design. The desperately needed changes are slow coming because the old top-heavy, hierarchical institution is resistant to change and would rather remain in its entrenched state, feeding on the public dole.

Professional development is key. Timing is of the essence. Change IS inevitable. The only question is, who is willing to embrace the solution?

Here's the link to a custom Google search we created that limits your query to some of the top educational technology blogs available on the web. Remove the superfluous results by bookmarking our custom search engine.

28 Best EdTech

Pew Research has an excellent PowerPoint on SlideShare.net for those needing to understand why knowledge management is a key pressure point driving Web 2.0 innovation today. This image here is from slide 4. Very insightful and worth perusing.

Administrators would do well to steer their staff to this site in order to bring everyone on board the data-overload train and help them see their place since we're on in this together. You can view the presentation here.

Following present trend lines enable us to track some firm expectations for next year's classrooms and educational institutions regarding interactivity, information deluge management, mashups, real-time web, and multidimensional inputs.

The major shifts affecting learning and teaching today and in the near future are outlined below, in no particular order...

1. Interactivity. Historically, compliance has been the watchword of classroom management. However, new technologies have introduced the disruptive learning trend being experienced today. Since youth today are living in a disruptive world where spaces are ill-defined and ever-changing day by day, applying disruptive Web 2.0 technologies makes sense to tech-savvy faculty.
2. Information overload is now in our hands; at our fingertips, and must be managed wisely in the classroom. Opportunities for critical thinking skill development abound as instructors lead students to deciphering the true from the false.
3. Mashup APIs are appearing worldwide at an astounding rate of no less than 2 per day. The data Cloud is being mined for all sorts of combined effects. Though much is redundant, expect a distilling of smarter apps as crowd sourcing applauds the winners and dismisses the irrelevant.
4. There are hundreds of real-time web app startups; at present count, over 200. We are not just managing archived data but navigating real-time data streams as well. Teachers must explore the critical and avoid the distraction of the trivial. A big challenge?
5. Traditional classroom inputs were the lecturing professor and the textbook; two dimensional at best. Today, inputs come from a multitude of directions and include both real and virtual, live and electronic. Integrating many dimensions of input and output into standards-based curriculum can be time consuming at best, forcing educators to band together and create repositories of ready-made ideas for immediate implementation.

The best conclusion we can draw is that any man who remains an island can expect to be swept away in the technology tsunami. The techno literate who can read the signs of the times will form nodal communities of networked learners who sift and sort within their personal learning environments and spontaneously share best practices with their community.

Wanna have impact? Wanna make a difference? Consolidate yoru resources now. Connect your bookmarked and blogged treasures with a community of trust and watch your community emerge with the technology rather than in spite of it.

Given the trend line shown in the graphic at left, it's understandable why teachers are curious to learn the how-to's of online education. In fact, the competencies of an online teacher have well been established. What has yet to be formulated is a well articulated model for training teachers in those competencies.

For this reason, ImmediaEdu.com has been developing the delivery platform and mapping the strategies required for teachers to learn the requisite skills.

What were you expecting?