
Photo of Dan’s own whiteboard (Dan Baines @QuietBitLoudBit)
If you regularly observe other teachers, you must have often asked them to save their boardwork to discuss later. How about taking this idea further and use it for professional development of the whole teaching team? This is what Dan Baines recommends in his guest post in Sandy Millin’s blog.
He tells a story of how pictures of whiteboards helped him make professional development relevant and accessible to a very busy and diverse team of teachers, offer them something that they would be able to do in their own time and not find too taxing or intimidating.
What he did was upload pictures of boards and discuss them with teachers in a Facebook group (comparisons seem particularly effective!). Sounds simple, but Dan has reflected on what worked and what didn’t and describes a very useful and practical model (do check the original post for more interesting details). I hope his whiteboard discussion group is still alive!