Jeff was instrumental in making the thing work. I learned a ton about civil rights. All the teachers and facilitators had to work together to make the forum viable. The planning was an important key to whatever success we had. The Teacher Professional Development Institute is a thriving online community designed to meet both informal networking and more formal professional growth needs of K-12 teachers on their own terms.
Membership is free.
For example, Professor Ron Bailey of Northeastern Uni-versity was so impressed with the level of discussion and potential of online conferencing, he invited me as the forum facilitator to train a group of teachers in Boston at his NubiaNet Institute, a Web site being developed with collaboration of teachers across the country. Some Outcomes Brian has expressed an interest in using online conferencing within his class as a tool for furthering group work, especially since his students can work on their own without him yet be monitored via a virtual recording device that creates a transcript. BJ Berquist and Pam Wilson, who were relatively new to the community at the start of the process, have since lead their own online sessions with colleagues on topics of their own passions. Michael Hutchi-son, the Indiana teacher, recruited his student teacher, Margaret Clark.