Gorilla PD - a noteworthy platform for teacher professional development

 I came across the platform Gorilla PD (https://gorillapd.org/) by chance some time ago. It's a platform for teacher professional development, and there were some features which looked promising. This afternoon, I signed up, and took some time to explore the platform. Below are some quick observations. 

The platform is mainly for online PD. An interested teacher: 

1. signs up for a free account, 

2. browses the units available, 

3. enrolls, and choose a mentor from the provided list, 

4. starts learning working through the materials, self-paced, 

5. produces evidence of learning, 

6. submits it to their mentor for feedback, and

7. completes the course (presumably with endorsement of the mentor). 

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Each course is like a learning journey, which consists of: 

- reading materials

- videos (from Youtube, for example)

- tasks

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The design of each course reminds me of other apps like: 

- GoConqr

- Loops Education

- or even Google Forms (with Sections)

    However, one major difference is that with Gorilla PD, to get the course 'credits', one needs to work under a mentor. If the mentor approves the work submitted by the mentee teacher, then the teacher will get the official credit. 

    That is the case with the workshops run by the NET section of EDB on this platform. A teacher who completes a NET section course on Gorilla PD with the 'assignment' approved, will get the requisite CPD hours from EDB. 

    This is particularly a useful arrangement as currently, because of the pandemic, few PD workshops can be held face-to-face. 

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Currently, there are a few major course providers on Gorilla PD, and the NET section is a very active one. Even if you do not enroll on a course, you can still look through the course content to get some useful materials or ideas. For me, one benefit is of course getting inspirations for designing my own PD workshops for teachers. (But at the moment, the platform is still not 'open' enough as there is no arrangement for non-official course providers to create their own course.)