Gearing Up for Year 2

 
  Alabama Best Practice Center 

The Alabama Best Practice Center is gearing up for a busy second year of our professional development program that encourages powerful conversations and practice around 21^st Century teaching and learning. Working with my colleagues, John Norton and Cathy Gassenheimer, we have begun the application process to bring 20 more schools across Alabama into the work. 

Last year, with support from the Microsoft Partners in Learning grants program, ABPC recruited small teams from 20 forward-thinking schools across  Alabama to participate in a professional development program we call “Keeping Up with the Net Generation.” A second cadre of schools will be selected for Year Two of the project.

Educators in Year One’s participating schools and districts say our curriculum and related activities have heightened their sense of urgency about preparing students for success in a global, digital-based society.

We designed our curriculum to establish a context for why schools need to rethink and redesign themselves to prepare students for the 21^st Century. Our participants are learning about web-based tools and other strategies that can be used to help students become critical thinkers, collaborators, adaptive experts, and knowledge creators who are able to embrace ambiguity and thrive in the uncertain future.

Participating schools now have a higher level of comfort with virtual learning and are role models for the type of effective professional development that can be delivered without requiring educators to travel away from their building. They are also helping colleagues capitalize on free Internet tools (blogs, wikis, podcasts and more) and Internet strategies like Webquests to actively engage their students. For many participants, this immersion in 21^st Century learning has revolutionized their teaching.

To read more about year one please download the Spring 06 Working Toward Excellence journal. If you you like to see some of the products created by the Year One schools that they are using in their classrooms and as professional development tools click here.  We also have created a FAQ document about our work.

Year Two is shaping up to be just as exciting! We'll begin with a "21^st Century OctoberFest" — a face-to-face conference where our 21^st Century Teacher Fellows and many of last year's participants will help bring our new school teams up to speed. During the Fall semester, our new teams will also participate in an online curriculum that has been polished and fine-tuned, based on feedback from Year One teachers and principals. Meanwhile, our returning teachers will engage in an advanced curriculum strand, culminating in an Alabama 21^st Century Fair attended by state leaders.

The Advance Strand will be organized around a Learner 2.0 Bootcamp theme. The main focus will be the development of a plan for a Learning 2.0 project. Year 2 schools will work in teams (school-based or interest-based) and be led by a Fellow or other team leader to define a project idea, develop a plan, and deliver the plan as a podcast, wiki, vblog, screencast, social networking tool product or any combination there of. Conceptually, projects will likely take existing lesson plans and activities and re-develop them into new lessons based on Web 2.0 applications. The teams will document the project work on blogs read by all participants in both Cohort (year) 1 and Cohort (year) 2. And all projects will be reviewed and critiqued. At the end of the bootcamp they will walk away knowing how to apply Web 2.0 to typical classroom instruction and how to use these tools to create learner centered, collaborative environments!

Big News
The most exciting news recently is that three of our 21st Century schools that applied have recently been chosen to participate in the 2006 U.S. Innovative Teachers Forum! This event recognizes outstanding examples of educators working collaboratively to share expertise and build collective knowledge. A very large round of applause goes out to the following Alabama ABPC 21st Century school teams

Wrights Mill Road Elementary
Vestavia Hills East and
Calcadever Elementary School

Amazed and in Awe
I continue to be amazed and in awe of how Alabama is positioning itself to be a real leader of school reform in terms of 21st Century teaching and learning. The work of the center has spilled over not only in the participating schools but in near by districts as well. For example, I am going to do a two-day workshop at the end of the month for the Auburn Regional Inservice Center. Sixteen school districts will bring teams that include teachers, administrators, and district office IT professionals, as well as other educational leaders from the district office to talk about the following:

Day #1 : "Introduction to 21st Century Learning: The Digital Natives Are Restless" – What is 21st Century learning? Why is it important? This session introduces the research about why 21st Century teaching and learning strategies are critical to student learning in a digital age. How students need to be taking responsibility for their own learning. Session will help participants work toward a clearer understanding of how a networked, self-directed, social learning "ecosystem" works. Session will include access to multiple resources and the defining of 21st Century concepts and terms.

Day #2: "Cool Web Tools for Teaching & Learning" – This session move us from talking about 21st Century Learning to actually examining some specific tools and gadgets available on the Web. It introduces a sample of "what's out there" that you might use to enliven your teaching and your classroom participation. Participants will consider how these tools can support and enhance project-based and inquiry driven approaches to learning – there will be lots of examples and if a lab environment is available—we’ll do a hands-on “make and take” session with web-based tools.

Here is my draft agenda

Keep your Eyes On Alabama

I recommend everyone keeping an eye on the deep south for key educational reform around Read/Write web initiatives. There are some very exciting things taking place and the momentum is starting to build.