How can we build meaningful online learning experiences for educators?If you're active in the tech and ed space, you might be thinking that this need has been fulfilled by the many tools that have filled the marketplace over the last few years. There is certainly an abundance of technology available and so much of it for free, that it seems practically impossible that anything would be missing. However, upon closer examination, it seems like a lot of the tools being developed fall into the following categories:

• Classroom Management & Data (e.g. Edmodo, Echalk, Datacation)
• Content Management, Lesson Planning (e.g. BetterLesson.org)
• Assessments (Adaptive / Formative) & Student Centered Learning (e.g. Acuity, Achieve 3000)
• Communications with Parents (e.g. SnappSchool)
• Content Sites (e.g. ReadWriteThink.org, Edutopia.org, PBS.org)
• Teacher Evaluation & Professional Learning (e.g. MyLearningPlan, Teacher Compass)

(There are of course other buckets and even these could be defined or grouped differently, depending on what you see the core functionality for these products. In some cases some of the applications above fit in more than one bucket e.g. Edmodo which has collaboration, community and planning functionality).Many of these resources were developed to help teachers save time so they can focus on the most important aspect of their work - teaching! This is not only happening in education but in all industries where everyone is adopting new tools, new apps, new ways of organizing our work/to-do lists etc. Then, there is another bucket, which is largely driven by the state and federal reforms around using data to inform instructional decision making. Race to the Top (RTTT) has spurred a lot of growth in this industry, with companies looking to capitalize on the new expectations that all teachers, schools, districts are collecting and analyzing student data to ultimately impact changes in classroom practice. RTTT has also set expectations for teacher performance management and evaluation, which has also spurred a lot of growth in the tech-ed world. A new group of online platforms are being developed now to help schools and districts implement teacher evaluation systems that do everything from recording notes from principal or peer observations to filing formal teacher ratings. These systems also provided related online PD to help teachers refine their skills/content against pre-determined rubrics for effective teaching practice and in some cases also provide collaboration spaces.The last group of teacher evaluation/professional learning tools may seem like they are the best response to the question I posed above, but I will respectfully disagree. I'm not convinced that the learning experiences in these online environments is going to necessarily have lasting or meaningful impact for two reasons:

• they are situated within the context of an accountability system that requires the teacher to fulfill some set of online courses to show "growth" in their knowledge and skill within their subject/content area and/or pedagogical practice.
• they are tied to rubrics/definitions of effective teaching that don't necessarily include the perspectives of teachers and educators within the schools, so they are not authentic to the schools' needs.

I will have more to say on this topic, but this is laying the foundation for a subsequent inquiry into this question.