Session 2

Title: Online Professional Learning: Anytime, Anyplace, Any Pace

Session Description:

Successful professional learning provides choice, flexibility and authentic, integrated, learning experiences. Promising practices therefore include ongoing interaction with peers and colleagues; customization of the learners’ experience to fit each individual’s way of learning; and collaboration through communities of practice. Such practices, however, assume that professional learning occurs through a series of sustained activities, in a variety of formats, and is an ongoing process, as opposed to one or more events locked in time. The integration of technology enables such practice and allows professional learning to take place independent of time, place, and pace. Just-in-time professional learning versus traditional just-in-case approaches are required, as are blended modes of delivery that incorporate face-to-face elements and information and communication technologies (ICTs). In this session, participants will learn about promising practices to online professional learning and explore ways of integrating web 2.0 technologies in their own professional learning activities, whether it be for themselves or for a group of adult learners.

Presenter: Hélène Fournier

Hélène is currently the Director of Professional Learning Services at Curriculum Services Canada. Her main responsibility to source, develop and manage a variety of e-learning projects to support the learning needs of educators and other adult learners using a variety of e-learning modalities and format such as video production, web conferencing, social networking, online courses and interactive learning sites. Hélène previously worked as Project Director of Alberta’s Distributed Learning Strategy for Alberta Education. Prior to this, she played a leadership role in the design and development of e-learning materials for K-12 students, teachers and parents in Alberta. She has also worked at Red River College in Winnipeg as a Program Officer of the Distance Education Division, as well as at La Cité collégiale in Ottawa where she held various positions in the areas of e-learning and information management. She has worked for a variety of Canadian and overseas institutions as a trainer and consultant in the areas of distance and distributed learning. Hélène has both a Masters of Educational Technology and Post-Graduate Certificate in Technology-Based Distributed Learning from the University of British Columbia, and a Bachelor of Commerce Double Major from the University of Ottawa.