Week Four Task

What PD happens in your workplace?
What strategies does your organisation have in place to encourage development, change and innovation?

Anne (HUANG Anni)
The organization concerns about professional development as a significant components of sustainable development, involving teachers competency, managers executive and also the support of other related communities. With the integrating of technology as I have mentioned in last session, the leaders in our faculty, the school of foreign language(SFL), think that it is important for staffs to learn what the technology can bring for us and how can we use it to improve students' motivation of English study.  Therefore, a lot of actions were taken:

1). They invite professionals to give lectures about the education overview and tendency of education. 

2). The teachers were required to join a series of training, workshops etc to strengthen their teaching experience.

3). To take advantages of technology, the staffs use Web 2.0 applications in their daily work.  

4). To cope with unexpected change, the detail schedule would be planed in advance and it is not keep unchanged, all staffs were welcome to point out problems and they would seek to address them together.

5). One of the major work by school of foreign language is to enhance students' motivation of learning English, hence, there are many activities were organized for example online discussion forum, English corner and so on. 

Generally, the staff would dislike the change of their behavior and routine as well. However, when they come to know and feel the advantages of innovation, results will inspire them to think more what problems existed now and how should we do to improve it. They think more critically and dig into deep approaches.

CC (XIE Yuchen)
“Professional development is all about making changes.”(Shirky, 2003) And the key institutional assets are people, inside and outside. So better using of these assets to help professional development is the core or the basic of making change in a institution.

1. With a sound management system(inside), the institution of college encourage people(staff, teachers, students) to make change, understand change, learn about change and adapt to change, even develop sustainable change. After getting the “energy” towards change, system will apply for the government help or corporation financial aid(outside) for building a better environment, which guarantees advanced technology and comfortable learning atmosphere.
2. Besides, the organization will provide a variety of training courses to help teacher not only learn new advanced skills but also develop brand-new insight into change.
3. After the change happens, organization will collect data that helpful to evaluate the effect of change. According to all kinds of research and interview, institution will make a completed assessment about change.

To conclusion, the Professional development needs help from: people, inside and outside. Additionally, professional group working, design, implement and assessment is definitely significant for sustainable change. Nevertheless, enabling teachers from accepting change, adapting change, understanding change to develop insight into change, even create a new change is the most difficult part. Consequently, PD is necessary for helping change happened in institution, embedded in each step of making change, moreover, help “change” happened among people.



Abby  (Yao Ruyan)
In the Faculty of Humanities in ZJUT, there are a series of work have been done to support development, change and innovation in professional development.

There is a national teaching training plan for using ICT in education every year. Our faculty offers financial support for the teachers who participant in the training to encourage teachers to get the training. This is a great opportunity for teachers to get to national level ICT implementation training and gain more technical skills to promote the changes in academy.

There is a professional institution in the Faculty of Information technology in education named Modern Educational Technology Research Institution, supporting the ICT implementing for the school and the faculty and doing professional research in the area of using ICT, designing educational software, etc.. This institution provides quality support for the whole school using modern technology software and ICT.

Seminars and academic forums are great resources for gaining more professional and advanced knowledge about ICT implementation.A seminar for universities in HK, Macao, and Zhejiang in campus and educational informationization was held in ZJUT in May,2012. Experts from HKU, CUHK, UM and Zhejiang got together to discuss the informationization in universities and shared ideas and information in technical problems in campus and educational informationization.The Second International Seminar for Smart Learning Environment was held in ZJUT in 2012 for the theme “form a smart learning environment and promote the implementation of ICT in education”. Experts from Canada, Beijing, Shanghai and Zhejiang gave reports and exchanged opinions on establish smart classrooms, reform for curriculum and teaching, ICT supporting for teachers, etc.. It helps a lot for exchanging ideas, sharing the successful cases in ICT implementation, acknowledging the advancing ICT development in education in foreign countries.

Janey  (Hu Jiani)
"PD is all about making changes.""We have to learn to embrace change in all forms and at all levels.""We have to take advantage of new opportunities.""We have to work and learn together in organisations that learn."(Shirky,2003)

In the organization I mentioned before ---- Faculty of Foreign Language has developed a innovative language learning system. My major is Japanese language and literature, so I was acquainted with the implement of this system in Japanese study. The leaders paid lot of attention on it and made series of strategy for implement.

1. develop series of training program for teachers, encourage teachers search and fine Web 2.0 tools which can support language teaching and learning.
2.develop cooperation with IT companies, invite them to follow this system.
3.do survey and get feedback from teachers and students termly
4.leaders and the company stuffs also take part in the online discussion forum in the system, they can experience the system as a user, know and get feeling directly.

At the beginning, some teachers objected to this kind of innovation, they preferred the traditional way of teaching and thought the ICT implementations were not that effective, students' attention might be focus on other things but not learning, and if there some problems on the system, especially in the class time, it might be waste of time. But after the training and a period of time for using the system, they said after being used to the system, everything become easier and more effective.