21st Century Learning

Why Are We Here?

Photo credit: http://thenewpostliterate.blogspot.com/2009/01/dr-john-m-bennetts-solo-and.html

In the PLPNetbooks community (Australia work) this blog post surfaced after my interview with Steve Hargadon on The Future of Education

The Title of the post is the same as mine.. Why Are We Here? It follows:

Ok ... Now I've got your attention :)

I've just finished listening to the lastest episode of the "Ed Tech Live" podcast in which Steve Hargadon interviewed our very own community leader Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. This is a great interview in which Sheryl talks about the PLP and also her background in working with communities and some of her journey in education.

So if you need a re-charge or need to be re-affirmed why we are all here, I'd suggest you take a listen (at least the first half of the podcast!) Well done, Sheryl!

Elluminate Full: https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2009-09-08.1709.M.ACE02B5F35...
Audio: http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/sherylnb.mp3
Portable Video: http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/sherylnb.m4v
Chat: http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/sherylnb.rtf

To which I responded-- (trying to model community leadership)

Aww thanks! I had a great time. Glad you enjoyed listening. Maybe you would like to start a reflective discussion here about anything that we discussed during that interview that resonated with you... maybe a question or two!

He followed with several well formed questions that I thought you might interest you- my blogging community. Here is my response to him.

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Thanks for asking such powerful questions. I hope others will weigh in with their experiences as well.

You ask...
Like should I respond to as many posts as possible?
(Does this dis-empower other members? Does it scare them off?)

As the community leader you should make sure in the practice posts and introductions that 100% of member posts get a response from you or someone else. The thrill of getting a response encourages more participation. After the initial building of capacity it is a give and take in trying to balance your community building efforts and posts.

Remember as a community leader your role is facilitator/instigator-- not teacher. I think if you respond to posts with questions and use your replies as ways to bring others into the conversation, that your time is well spent. You do not want to be seen as the info giver here, rather you want to be the person that helps community members identify what it is they do well and what they have to add to the conversations and then help them do so.

Here is a public post from a past PLPer that highlights the feeling of getting a response.

From Lisa:
Boy, they weren’t kidding when they said this would be powerful! From the very first, I’ve done nothing but learn. I would admit, though, that a lot of what I’ve learned I had not expected to.

I figured that, by now, I would have gained a great facility with the tools. I’d know how to maneuver in the Ning; post to forums, read and organize blogs, create my own blog, etc. Full disclosure demands that I admit that I’ve never been much of a tool person. I’m not the type to get a new tool and play with it until I’ve got the whole of its applications down. But without really knowing what PLP would bring, I assumed that it would be the tools I would learn – how to use various features and how to apply them to my learning.

What I’ve come to realize is that, through PLP, we are gaining exposure to the world that our kids already inhabit easily – and learning in that environment is not neat and tidy. I wrote my first ning post about ambiguity and how learning to live – and learn – in an ambiguous world is not easy. It requires openness to new experiences and letting-go of my tradition-based ideas of what schooling is. Learning is not linear, and while I’ve espoused that for years, it wasn’t until this experience of PLP that I was able to live the non-linear, sometimes frustrating, always interesting world of a 21st century learner.

I’ve come away from these first two months with a more sophisticated view of teaching and with a growing empathy for our digital immigrant teachers, who are wrestling with change and how to navigate themselves through it.

I’ve also experienced the very powerful feeling that comes from having a ning colleague read my posts, find something in there of use, and respond in a thoughtful, serious way to my thoughts. Authentic assessment! Wow, I always knew it was an important concept, but I didn’t know how it would feel to receive authentic feedback from people I respect and admire. It feels great!

So, the lessons I’ve learned from PLP have been important ones – and I’m sure that Will and Sheryl intended for me (and the rest of us) to have the opportunity to share these same kinds of experiences. For those who are wondering, “what’s next?” or “when are we actually going to do something?” I would have to argue that, if you really take a learning posture – give up your control and your need to feel industrious – you will find that you are learning. And you have been all along!
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Should I be sending out reminders about contributing and participating?
(Does this annoy people people or prompt people?)

It can be annoying-- but out of sight--out of mind. It is great when you send out periodic links to great content being created by the community. What we do at PLP in our year long cohort is to have the community leader post a blog post on our PLPnetwork site or in a quarterly e-newsletter and we send those links out in NING. That way we are celebrating and recognizing folks for the good work they do which usually makes others want to participate more.

When you think of community as a place where a group of people make a commitment to each other to grow together and improve over time in their practice (teaching) and each team and each team member understands their role in collectively making the community successful, then the reminders are a welcomed intrusion.

Shepherding a community is different than being part of a network. Network connections have no expectations in terms of collective inquiry and improvement. They are what they are. But community is different. Communities have a purpose and understand that the best way to accomplish that purpose is to reflect, build, and grow together.

During norm setting with your community you could offer that regular reminders would be sent as a courtesy and in return the group agrees to not get annoyed.

Should I be encouraging members publicly or through private messages? Or both?

I love this one. You would NOT believe the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes in communities. You should encourage, recognize and celebrate often in f2f, synchronous and asynchronous ways. Also, find those in your community who have a gifting in encouragement and dub them with the role of Encourager. In a healthy community, you create a loose governance in the beginning and then part of the role of the leaders is to nurture leadership from the members. Natural leaders emerge over the months and designated leaders should recognize their abilities and share the load of shepherding. Community leaders should quickly become community members.

Bottom line-- We look at who is in the room and what strengths and gifting they bring to the table. Then we decide, as a community, what possibilities we want to tackle and who has the capacity to help us. The purpose of team's sharing projects is so that others who have wisdom, time, experience, or resources can offer to help. A team problem becomes a community problem. Transparent, deep, reflection nurtured through critical inquiry is what learning in a community is all about.

Bielaczyc & Collins (1999) identify the defining quality of a learning community as one in which:

...there is a culture of learning, in which everyone is involved in a collective effort of understanding. There are four characteristics that such a culture must have: (1) diversity of expertise among its members, who are valued for their contributions and given support to develop, (2) a shared objective of continually advancing the collective knowledge and skills, (3) an emphasis on learning and how to learn, and (4) mechanisms for sharing what is learned. If a learning community is presented with a problem, then the learning community can bring its collective knowledge to bear on the problem. It is not necessary that each member assimilate everything the community knows, but each should know who within the community has relevant expertise to address any problem. (Bielaczyc & Collins, p. 272)

Should I be adding lots of content?
(What effect does this have on member contributions?)

You add a little as a way to model and to be a good community member. However, your more important role is to build into your community design ways for others to add content and co-create and evolve over time. The reason we use community leaders, fellows, experienced voices, team leaders, and team members is so we are all sharing and adding content in different ways.

Your intuition is right. If you have one person always adding content, then it is seen as a top down initiative and members will slip back into the 20th C pattern of passive learning.

As to your last comment--

So I suppose it's about trying to work out the balance with participation that best grows the community. And I wonder if it's different with a group of adults? I assume we'd do more modeling etc with students? What do you consider 'best practice'?

Adult learning theory is different and new notions are emerging as our learning landscape shifts. But in a participatory culture and as we shift our classroom structures to community structures, I think we will find that community is community, and while the passionate interests and discussions may change the model holds true for kids or adults.

Here are some graphics that I created  for some work I did with Intel that may help in your understanding. (The pics are copyrighted- so please give attribution if you use them.)

I sure hope others will weigh in and share what they know or believe to be true from their experience or-- maybe ask some more questions. I am a co-learner in this and VERY interested in what you have found to be true.

The Fabric of Community- The Key to Transforming Education

I have been thinking a lot about how to manage the needed change process in education. Looks like a lot of folks have been playing with that idea as well. ISTE released their new NETS for ADMIN framing it as having the potential for -

Transforming Education- Administrators play a pivotal role in determining how well technology is used in our schools. The NETS for Administrators enable us to define what administrators need to know and be able to do in order to discharge their responsibility as leaders in the effective use of technology in our schools.

And take a look they are NOT too shabby when thinking about the characteristics leaders need to reform education in today's fast changing world.

The rub for me comes in when I try and look at these and other efforts to "transform" education and wonder if we aren't really just talking about reform- small principled changes that look at change as we always have - through the lens of problem solving.

In Phillip Schlechty's new book, Leading for Learning: How to Transform Schools into Learning Organizations  (great read btw) he distinguishes between reforming and transforming a school.

REFORM usually means changing procedures, processes, and technologies with the intent of improving the performance for exisiting operating systems. The aim is to make existing systems more effective at doing what they have been always been intended to do.

TRANSFORMATION is intended to make it possible to do things that have never been done by the organization undergoing the transformation. It involves metamorphosis: changing from one form to another form entirely. In organizational terms, transformation almost always involves repositioning and reorienting action by putting the organization into a new business or adopting a radically different means of doing the work it has traditionally done. Transformation by necessity includes altering the beliefs, values, and meanings- the culture- in which programs are embedded, as well as changing the current system of rules, roles, and relationships- social structure- so that the innovations needed will be supported.

REFORM in contrast, means only installing innovations that will work within the context of the existing structure and culture of schools. 

During a recent PLP Bootcamp I posed the following question to the attendees.

So as you develop your vision for leading in the 21st Century how do you see it- should you be a reformer or a transformer and why? Make a case for using one or the other as a change strategy.

I was really surprised at the passion in the responses supporting reform. Here is a sample-

Transforming, without careful consideration of a vision and steps required to achieve the vision, can lead to chaos and be counter productive. I recognize that change can and will emerge from chaos. However, I am cautious in placing students and staff into situations, without some insightful thinking and an understanding of an explicit goal(s), because the implications of change without thoughtfulness and explicitness, even in the short term can be detrimental. Change requires careful and responsible thinking to inform action.

And another-

I think for my school and the circumstances I find there, I am more a reformer than a transformer. The school has an ingrained culture that is sort of self-satisfied. But I think there is a desire by many to improve the existing system, and that includes the uses of these technological tools.

Interestingly enough not one educational leader in attendance spoke out for transformation. Probably because transformation is so risky. Whenever leaders tinker with values, technique and skills things get messy. But is reformation of our schools enough? Will 21st Century reform bring schools to where they need to be to meet the needs of the 21st Century citizen and learner?

Peter Block in his new book, Community- the Structure of Belonging
suggests that transformation is the only way we will create a future distinct from the past. Peter suggests that the current context supports the belief that the future will be improved with new policies, more oversight, and stronger leadership. However, creating a future is different from defining a future.

PROBLEM SOLVERS
As reformist we typically ID a problem we want to address, fix, or improve. Next, we study and analyze the need by gathering data and making a compelling case for change. Then, we search for solutions, looking for examples of how others have addressed this issue. We bring in experts, consultants, academics to offer advice. Once that is done we establish goals and initiate a pilot project to validate our strategy. We bring others on board creating buy-in and the launch the program. Next, we measure and hold people accountable for results and showing outcomes. Finally, we loop back. We take what we learn about what's not working and adjust, starting the problem solving process a new.

Block feels that these classic problem solving steps are fueled by the belief that "to make a difference in the world is to define problems and needs and then recommend actions to solve those needs." This resonates with me as I think back to my days as a district administrator and remember a culture that demanded that each meeting I attended (and they were seemingly endless) had to end with an action plan type "to-do" list. We wanted measurable outcomes that somehow justified the time we spent solving problems. We believed that only if we had better or more leadership, programs, funding, expertise, studies, training, and master plans then we could reform education in ways that prepare this next generation- digital citizens of a global economy fueled by connections and collaboration- for the world that awaits them. But is anything really changing?  For all our conversation and sharing and meetings and action plans are we seeing a significant shift?  We keep trying harder at the very things that just gives us more of what we already have. These are the steps to improvement but not transformation.

So I am curious- what do you think? Should we be focusing on a different conversation than the one we are having? Should we be reinvisioning education in ways that are radically different? And if so- How do we move from talking to doing? Or is that important?

Personally, I believe that the secret to change lies in developing the social fabric, capacity and connectedness found in communities of practice and learning networks. I believe that by focusing on a strengths-based model of education, looking at possibilities rather than problems, by using inquiry to ask the kinds of questions that reveal the gifts each of us bring to the table, by realizing that "none of us is as good as all of us" and somehow leveraging all of that to shift the conversations toward building a new future- one that focuses on the gifts each teacher, student, parent and leader has, that we have all we need to create an alternative future for schools. One that focuses on the well-being of the whole and uses diversity as a means to innovation.

What do you believe?

NSDC and TQ Research Outlines Strategies for Spending your Stimulus Dollars

This was posted on the NSDC Website- felt you might find it s interesting as I do.

The Department of Education has outlined initial guidelines for three components of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding: the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, Title I, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). You can find detailed information about the guidelines and the distribution of funds through www.ed.gov.

In addition to distributing monies quickly to avert layoffs and stimulate job creation, a key principle that will guide the use of ARRA funds is improving student achievement through school improvement and reform. The Department is emphasizing improvements in teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution of qualified teachers as well as providing support for the nation's lowest performing schools. Specifically, the legislation identifies developing teacher leaders as coaches and instructional leaders as one possible strategy. Therefore, these funds have the potential to significantly impact the reach and quality of professional learning for all educators. Given the time constraints surrounding this legislation, the funds must be used on one-time investments vs. programs with ongoing commitments. Most importantly, these funds must be applied in ways that demonstrate to the investors --the public -- a significant improvement in teaching and learning in schools.

In consideration of these parameters, NSDC has outlined some strategies that we believe have potential to meet these expectations:

• Prepare more instructional coaches by developing the knowledge and skills necessary to support improved educator practice and student learning.
• Prepare more teacher leaders to advance the NSDC definition of professional development.
• Contract with one or more external consultants to provide one-on-one technical assistance to principals to create new master schedules that enable collaborative teacher teams to engage in professional learning two or more times each week.
• Identify and support demonstration sites to serve as models of excellence in implementing effective professional learning.
• Provide two-years of intensive coaching and instructional leadership support for principals in low-performing schools.
• Provide two-years of intensive technical assistance and support for leadership teams in low-performing schools.
• Conduct a Professional Learning Audit; organize a local task force to critically review and assess the purpose, form, and results from professional development in the school district. Similarly, administer and use the results of NSDC's Standards Assessment Inventory.
• Organize, facilitate, and support volunteer teams of teachers who want to pilot the continuous cycle of improvement described in NSDC's definition of professional development. Contract with one or more external consultants or institutions of higher education to document and assess each team's experience.

Special Edition of TQ Research and Policy Update
http://www.tqsource.org/publications/specialEditionMarch2009Update.pdf

Excerpt from this edition-

Providing Quality Professional Development and Career Options
Professional Development
Although there are many professional development opportunities made available for educators, the question remains whether these opportunities are targeted to improve teacher effectiveness. Targeted professional development requires the creation and implementation of a quality teacher evaluation system, as discussed below. The remaining challenge in professional development is to determine what opportunities states should offer and require. If a quality evaluation system is in place, information should be available to guide the offerings based on areas of challenge within the teaching community—either areas of individual challenge or topics from which a larger teaching population can benefit.
Examples of professional development focused on individual challenges include the following:
•Training and support to strengthen content knowledge
•Training in pedagogical techniques

Examples of professional development beneficial to a larger teaching population include the following:
•Research or technological advances or brain research advances that could affect teaching and learning
•Information or training specific to the context in which educators are functioning—large populations of English language learners or schools with a large population of culture/ethnic diversity.
Consistent findings enumerate the characteristics of quality professional development. When analyzing their professional development offerings, states should ensure that they embody these characteristics:
•Intensive and ongoing
•Job embedded
•Job relevant
•Linked to school vision and mission

Career Options
Too often career options for teachers mean that advancement in their careers takes them out of the classroom. School districts and states should implement career opportunities that provide roles and opportunities for expert teachers that allow them to share their experience, knowledge, and skills to benefit the school and classrooms.

These types of roles could include the following:
•Creating teacher leadership opportunities in which teachers have a voice in policy and practice
•Utilizing excellent teachers as mentors

Creating Learning Communities
Numerous content- and pedagogy-related professional development offerings already exist in states. Increasingly, however, the creation of learning communities or communities of practice is identified as a positive professional development experience for teachers. States should work to analyze the policies and requirements in place for professional development and the processes by which they determine what professional development to offer and whether it has the characteristics listed above. In addition, states should consider whether they are too narrowly defining professional development in a manner that precludes the creation and support of learning communities and other collaborative learning opportunities for teachers.

Powerful Learning Practice Meets the Mark
The work Will and I are doing through Powerful Learning Practice meets most of these requirements. If you are looking for a strategic way to spend your PD dollars this may be a way to do that not only meets the NSDC's criteria for best practice but is grounded in Teacher Quality research and results in transformational change.

21st Century Workforce Readiness

I had the opportunity recently to facilitate a group of business, education, political and community leaders in a discussion about developing a workforce ready group of graduates in the 21st Century.

I was given the task of relaying the experience. I have decided to share with you to see if you agree or disagree with these leaders' ideas and action steps and why. I encourage you to read and weigh in in the comment section below. I look forward to your responses.

Executive Summary

Newport News Public Schools is moving quickly to address learning in the 21^st century, its barriers and its possibilities, and kicked things off for 2009 with a 21^st Century Leading and Learning Conference.

As a precursor to the conference, held Jan. 9-10, 2009 at Heritage High School, global and regional leaders in education, business and religious organizations met to brainstorm together 21^st century learning concepts in a Global ThinkTank. 

An electronic global panel discussion kicked off the day’s events with an impressive group of thought leaders from Scotland, Thailand, and the U.S. logging in to Elluminate, a webinar software platform, to share their ideas and answer questions. Bios of the guest speakers can be found here. An archive of the conversation that took place can be found here.

In the following facilitated discussions, leaders were given a chance to voice their opinions about what they saw as barriers to implementation of 21^st Century workforce readiness and a re-culturing of our curriculum to meet the needs of today’s changing student.

Through the economic lens, business leaders expressed a need for 21^st century students to not only be prepared for the technology of the changing world, but to still grasp soft skills needed in the workforce, such as problem solving and leadership skills.

Education leaders saw disconnect between teacher preparation programs and the changing learning environment. High stakes testing was seen as another barrier to learning in the 21^st century.

“That accountability hinders the changes in curriculum and teaching practices needed to impact instruction, problem solving, literacy…”

“If pass rates are high, teachers/students feel a certain sense of fulfillment, but the SOLs are a minimum competency assessment. They are not enough to prepare kids for the future.”

A major theme from the breakout sessions was the disconnect between education and relevance.

“Students need to have the tie in – that what they are learning has relevance to the career they choose.”  

“When kids fall in love with learning it’s because they see the relevance.”

Leaders in the sessions admitted fear as a big barrier to 21^st century learning – the fear of change, of trying something new. This fear hinders the modeling necessary in 21^st century learning.

“Everyone needs to model from top down. . . .Principals model to teachers, teachers model to students, etc.”

After the facilitated discussions, leaders were asked to come up with proactive recommendations to the barriers addressed. From this long list, leaders filtered and organized their recommendations under different categories and then ranked the categories by the most important in their opinion. Some of the top ranked categories included leadership development, cultural awareness, professional/teacher development, partnerships/community involvement and student curriculum.

Empowering educators through leadership development, building relationships and cultural awareness, training and modeling were some of the most recommended steps to overcoming the barriers.

Out of the discussions recommended action statements emerged:

- Inventory the technological skills already available in the division to identify and address gaps. 

- Ask students to teach the teachers how they use technology and how they see these tools being used in a classroom.

- Allow teacher experts to train other teachers so there is no additional cost involved in the training. The business community can also provide in-kind support by providing training in these technologies.

- Build cultural awareness and infuse relevance into our instruction by teaching educators and students the facts of our global economy and community. 

- Teach educators the importance of and how to build their own online personal learning networks as a 21^st Century networking literacy leveraged for student growth.

- Teach students how to develop their own personal learning networks and discriminate information value and organization.

- Use technology to access and examine current events from various world perspectives through original sources and global connections.

- Teach the whole child by using inquiry driven approaches that reexamine curriculum through a 21^st Century lens.

- Work on belief systems, so that they produce citizens who can meet the challenges of this world with confidence and embrace all its people with compassion.

- Develop leadership networks that collaboratively function as professional learning communities to address and solve barriers to learning. These networks would include administrators, teachers, school staff, community and business leaders, and student leaders in the district, state and world.

Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Lead a Group
In addition to the facilitated focus groups that addressed 21^st Century issues, one group of community leaders also had the privilege of interviewing a special guest and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Rebiya Kadeer. A copy of the transcript of her interview can be found in Appendix E.

To review all data collected at the Global ThinkTank please refer to the following appendices:

Appendix A – Participants List- Removed

Appendix B – Round Robin Discussions

Appendix C – Categorization of Ideas

Appendix D – Crafts of Recommendations

Appendix E – Interview with Rebiya Kadeer

Appendix F – Panel Discussion Archive

Appendix B – Round Robin Discussions 

After breaking down into groups, participants engaged in round robin discussions of the barriers to 21^st century learning. They responded to the question, “Thinking in terms of the skills, knowledge, abilities and opportunities needed to prepare today’s students for the 21^st century workforce – what are the barriers that are currently keeping this from happening in our classroom and community?” One participant acted as scribe for the group, recording responses, while another facilitated the discussion. The notes from these discussions are reprinted below.

Group A

Round Robin Notes:

Financial Constraints are a barrier especially when we look at the technology budget. 

 There is not enough investment from all of our organizations.  Exposure and experiences are another part of 21^st century that our students are not getting.  Critical and Creative thinking is a big part of children’s learning.

We got away from the basic skills.  We still need to be able to read, write and do multiplication tables.  Attitudes start at home and are nurtured at school regarding the importance of learning. No matter whether their disposition is to go to college or not, these skills are important and you are not a failure if you don’t go to college.  And students ought not be stigmatized because they want to be a carpenter.  We ought to help kids know what they want to do and then help them do it and not stigmatize them if that means they don’t go to college. 

We are only allowing kids that can’t do to go to vocational classes. 

NNPS has the burden of raising children because of societal issues.  So now schools have to be responsible for social development too. 

Skills, Attitude and Disposition don’t cost a lot of money.

We underestimate kids’ ability to learn.  Expectations build the attitude that is needed. 

There needs to be a better cultural awareness across schools and business and finances need to be available.  Students need to be geared towards their interests not just college.  Tools to help students know their interests are needed and the finances to provide them need to be there.  

You can’t just work with the students and then send them back out in the community.  It needs to be a community effort. 

Young people have built their own community through technology.  Social networking, texting, etc.   We need to pick up on the skills our kids have and build on that with kids. 

As an instructor and parent, I am dealing with fear, not knowing what the kids are doing.  Amazement at kids’ ability to write a report, listen to iTunes and  text all at the same time.  How uncomfortable are educators and parents. 

Importance of educating our community…

Money is a problem.  We don’t have enough equipment.  Teachers are afraid that they are going to break the equipment.  They have to have critical thinking skills.  We are bad about the SOL’s but they have to be able to think.  It is more than rote memorization. 

 Consensus Issues:  Money issues, Critical Thinking, Tapping into the knowledge base of students around technology.

Group B

 I asked the question in the classroom of how our bureaucracy hinders us.  “Every school should be looked at as an independent franchise.”  So students and staff in the building has a sense of ownership.  Mediocre has become acceptable in this country.  I’m a stickler for more independent in the public structure.  Empower the individual school.

The current structure is interrupting the learning potential.

I’m coming from a different background.  I’m new to education.  “My insight is four years out of high school.  I wish I had this in my high school.  Why didn’t we have smart boards in high school or college?”  A lot of school board members are stuck in how school s use to be.  If we focus on that point that people are still involved in this process.  Teachers and students will be more willing to learn. A fear of learning something new seems to prevent the progression of the 21^st century concept.  A Student’s perspective.

Kids who start of in school are excited in the elementary level and by the time they get to high school they are brain dead.  “Why am I learning this?” Teachers have technology in front of them, but they don’t have the role models to know how to use it in the workforce arena because the have nothing to relate to. “We have to train our teachers to learn and teach in a different way.”  Relationship, relevance and investment.  When kids fall in love with learning it’s because they see the relevance.

A lot of what kids learn in the old way of learning is not relevant to what is happening in the real world.  It doesn’t mean necessary learning technology it means teaching kids so it’s meaningful. “We tend to teach kids how we were taught.”  Change is feared. Our perspective is what limits our growth.  One of the largest bearers is not teaching kids collaboratively. 

“For us to see this type of education is amazing.  We do not sit and discuss education in China.  In US a child can study any subject they chose.  That is not the case in China.   The Chinese education system only praises the Chinese government.”  Embrace change! American students should understand how fortunate they are and become global citizens to see how they can make the world a better place.  Later I was in prison for speaking about lack of human rights in education.  It is very important for me to let the children know in America how fortunate they are.

Besides the global competitive gap we need to get our kids to understand the global haves and have-nots.  We have to compete and support in service projects, awareness projects, etc.

Change is the wall that we need to overcome. “If we introduce it the right way it enables one to overcome the obstacles.”  Everyone needs to model from top down. . . .Principals model to teachers, teachers model to students, etc.

What points of consensus emerged in the discussion? The need to learn, teach, train and communicate not only within our community but throughout the world.

On which points were the participants’ responses divided?  none

On which points did participants reveal a wide range of responses?  Student learning, cultural awareness, exposure and appropriate modeling, best practices

Group C

In the classroom, too much emphasis on lower levels of learning due to standardized testing occurring- incredible peer pressure for kids to fit in instead of being individuals. “Kids need knowledge” but we teach facts, but not how they connect to their world.”

A barrier for SPED pop is transition. I like European out of the box thinking. “Keep the bar up, but we know were the students is heading.” Look at the child’s ability and go that track. Train them so they are vocationally sound by the time they exit school (rather than pushing them to be college bound – when we know they may not be). 

A barrier I see is a conformative mentality. We have lost the sense of being an individual. It is not sportsmanship or working as a team. WE have lost a sense of civility. We are not working in teams or offering assistance. Emphasis on SOLs, NCLB, - schools, teachers, principals are evaluated on how kids score on a mc test – critical thinking skills is missing. “The soft-skills of team-work and problem solving need to be part of our education to be ready for the work force.  We need situational leaders in addition to supervisors, etc. Know when to lead, when to step back, be cross-functional”

Barriers:  homelife – a major part for students who don’t have the support structures at home = community issue

School issue = playing the blame game on parents/community

Not all children learn the same way – we teach like they only learn one way. We teach in the same classroom environment as the one from the civil war. We need to convert the methodology of teaching to using the tools kids use today. = relevance!

Kids don’t believe their teachers care about them. So many distractions/baggage in the classroom. Teachers need to be thoughtful and think in terms to being able to relate to a particular student who is different or struggling…the teacher is influential –one of the most influential people in children’s lives. Engagement between teacher and student is critical piece. All the kids aren’t likeable – but they are all human beings, need to have a future. I am not casting aspersions on all teachers, but teachers need to get into the lives of kids – go beyond the content.

Kids cannot relate what they are doing in the classroom that day to the future. There needs to be a connection – this is why dropouts occur. Serious systemic challenges

Serious concern with the SOLs being the end all, be all of education. And it shouldn’t be.  If pass rates are high – teachers/students feel a certain sense of fulfillment – but the SOLs are a minimum competency assessment – they are not enough to prepare kids for the future.

Not enough articulation between colleges and public schools – teacher prep programs. 1^st year teachers often enter the teaching field ill prepared for the reality of teaching and learning in the 21^st century. There is also a disconnect in the classroom in the classroom to the real world = relevance.  There is no questions about the fact that we have different societal practices as before but we cannot let community “situations” interfere with teaching kids.

Global, 21^st century is exciting, but we have to pedal furiously like ducks on a pond.

Lack of training, experiences and connectedness between teacher prep training and teaching reality.

From a SPED perspective, one of the barriers is isolation. If you are the only teacher certified in a certain disability in a building, it can be very isolating.   The emulation exercise could be an interesting way to connect people via technology.

Lost sight of vocational side of education (for SPED students). Unrealistic expectations for students based on their abilities.

The preparation of elementary school teacher = 20 hours of elementary ed. We only test knowledge, not can the teach the knowledge. Does that teacher know how to communicate to that kid and teach him?

Deficit model – we cannot give up on the children, let them drop out and it becomes a community problem.

 Teacher quality is critical – do they know the content? Do they know the pedagogy?

Key barriers

“Trust, communication, team work, caring and vision are missing”.  Issues: “we can’t give up on kids”

We can predict a roadmap of a student (in school, in community) – we see it coming – there needs to be something we can do to prevent it from happening.

Prisons predict future jail population based on 3^rd grade reading pass rates of the SOL.

Most issues were agreed upon by all----

Group D

Barriers to 21st Century Learning

 Guiding Question: Thinking in terms of the skills, knowledge, abilities and the opportunities needed to prepared today’s student for the 21^st century workforce, what are the barriers that are currently keeping this from happening in our classrooms and community?

Respondent 1:

Part of barrier in our community – most of the businesses in our community are not global minded at this time – fear if school system goes ahead, businesses are not going to be ready for the students when they come out of school, her company builds buildings and the global market doesn’t impact what they do on a daily basis – is a progressive student going to be satisfied with what her company has to offer,” I can see there being problems”, students coming out today seeing everything as flexible time as opposed to working standard hours – doesn’t feel there is currently a demand for a supply of technologically advanced students – are they going to be more attracted outside the city of NN – not opposed to what the education system is doing just afraid of the outcomes

Respondent 2:

Colleges and university teaching 1950’s education – works with leadership and universities to redesign teacher and leadership programs – colleges and universities not training teachers to teach in 21^st cent mindset – works with school division leaders as well – just redesigned the principal leadership program – school districts are far ahead of colleges and universities – until we get colleges and univ.’s in line with school divisions, were not going to get there

Respondent 3:

One barrier is our history and educational bureaucracy – not preparing teachers as we are preparing students – 21^st cent. Learning is larger than just the tools – values and work ethic – that is part of the 21^st century skill set as soft skills – schools are still subscribing to minimum competency based standards that is scary concept– economy is a barrier to the success of 21 c learning over the net few years

Respondent 4:

– this area loosing many of its best and brightest – the numbers support that concept that there isn’t as much of a demand – we loose a percentage of our brightest college candidates to other states because the jobs aren’t here – while we focus so much on the tools of technology, there is a loss of values, social skills, personal interactions, teaching respect, but we can’t loose sight of trying to help our students learn how to get along – the heart of how we learn to move our schools forward

Respondent 5:

Education is critical to him – rapid technological advances – cultural lag in applicants that come forward, technology advances exponentially and inversely with students who can use them, analytical abilities not there, lack of motivation – problem with work ethic – no long term goal setting – need to have desire to excel and overcome learning shortfalls, lack of emphasis on why a solid education is important, students need to have the tie in of what they are learning has relevance to the career they choose, need to have long term goals and objectives instilled in kids early, HS diploma doesn’t guarantee students have the skill sets to perform the tasks, students having difficulty passing national exams, goes back to elementary school and the parental support system – we need to look globally, technology is just a small sliver – more emphasis needs to be placed on the soft and human skills – need to have long term objectives and goals, need to realize that college is not a universal goal

Respondent 6:

-emphasis on values and work ethic cant be overstated, starts in preschool with the early education and early intervention, spend years trying to catch up, in many cases they don’t have parents who are educated and realize the importance of all of these skills, reading comprehension and math are critically important need to have other skills before you can really use the technology, people who don’t have the confidence to learn the technology are always playing catch up need to be able to play catch up through self-directed learning, we need to be teaching are children make sure you have enough money to make good decision

Respondent 7:

Key barriers – high stakes accountability testing, when you look at needed competencies that accountability hinders the changes in curriculum and teaching practices needed to impact instruction, problem solving, literacy numeracy, people are beginning to see the importance of that

What about the children who are not going to need 21^st century learning sk

Appendix C – Categorization

After a round robin discussion of barriers to 21^st century learning, participants tackled the task of coming up with proactive solutions and steps to addressing those barriers. They were asked to think in terms of the questions: What’s working now? What’s missing? What can individuals/organizations do? And other innovative ideas not related to overcoming barriers.

Participants then paired up to discuss their steps and find common ideas. After sharing in pairs, participants organized their ideas with sticky notes under different categories, from leadership development to finance and budget issues, among others. After the steps were categorized, participants voted which categories were most important or pressing. These ideas and categories, as well as the weight each category received, are reprinted below.

Leadership Development - 16 Dots

·         Empowerment

·         Great leadership team

·         What about kids who won’t need the tech (21^st) skills to make it in life?

·         Basic skill sets missing: 1. Reading comprehension 2. Math skills 3. Analytical capability

How to motivate students? Need to have desire to overcome

·         Communicate, trust, teamwork

·         Leaders should be able to identify with subordinated as peers

·         Rapid technological advances- cultural log to utilize the advances need to have students

Cultural Awareness - 26 Dots

·         Relationship building

·         Give students an understanding of world

·         Cultural awareness between teachers and students who all “other”

·         Involvement in local and global community

·         Engage stakeholders in global conversations with other cultures to learn from each other

·         Solutions: 1. Create pen-pals in other countries 2. Websites/email/chat with foreign students live under dictatorship countries 3. Teach students about the unfortunate situation of children in other countries 4. Invite representative of foreign student groups to speak on campus 5. Visit the countries of less fortunate children 6.create a textbook on the lives of third world children

Professional Development/ Teacher Development - 27 Dots

·         Training

·         Professional development is learning differently

·         Individuals do- pair with each other to learn new strategies

·         Missing- knowledge of new ways of teaching

·         Teacher internships in business

·         Professional development that is on-going

·         Continue to focus on ways to develop good teachers

·         Teach adults how to be willing to accept empowerment

·         Top-down modeling

·         Overcoming barriers bring higher ed teacher prep programs into 21^st century

·         Teacher training that models that “one size does not fit all”

·         Create teacher candidate residencies in classes of highly effective teachers known for 21^st century skill teaching

·         Must start with the teachers

·         Professional development commit to lifelong learning

·         Develop appropriate professional learning programs for educators

Partnerships/ Community Involvement - 15 Dots

·         Effectively integrating community based programs into schools (mentors)

·         Community participation in schools- let students know what employers expect

·         Higher ed partnering with school districts to solve problems through data collection, analysis and research. Using college students in a clinical model and fieldwork based learning.

·         Increase utilization of social workers and community workers in collaboration with educators

·         Community partnerships are working

·         Invite community members to solution focused meetings

·         Increase community partnerships

·         Build more business partnerships

Student Curriculum - 18 Dots

·         Reprioritize education goals- career goals. Focus on students interests, abilities vs. only “college” goals

·         More class time

·         School-wide global awareness projects

·         Use other tools of assessments (e.g. something different from SOLs) that don’t bog down actual creative teaching- make classroom learning fascinating not repetitive.

·         Basic computer classes in elementary schools

·         Allow students to “educate” students

·         Development of career pathways

·         Expose our students to the human network by giving them a chance to interact with others and the world around them including the use of technology of course but also giving them the chance to see the outside world physically not only on a screen

·         Continue efforts toward differentiation of technological learning

·         Distribute lap tops to students

·         Let kids finish course as they learn it and do something more

Critical Thinking - 10 Dots

·         We need to teach critical thinking skills

·         Focus on lifelong vs. finite/terminal degrees

Engagement of Legislators/ Policy Makers - 9 Dots

·         Work with state legislators and policy makers to change ideas and needs of schools to prepare students

Parents - 8 Dots

·         Increase parental involvement

·         As individuals- learn what’s new- pay attention engage in the unknown

·         Encourage parents to keep in touch with teachers all of time when things are going right or not

·         Telephone call from each teacher to each parent at the beginning of the year

·         Parent involvement

Data Driven Decision Making - 5 Dots

·         Collection of data- not good at analyzing the data

·         Missing- assessments that truly measure what’s important- critical thinking

·         Allow more “independence” for schools

Collaboration - 7 Dots

·         Organizations, educators and community leaders must be open to what works for individuals

·         Teach openness-be open to new ideas

·         Business leaders to help contribute to school computers

·         Create action plans centered around skills needed for success in a society

Finance/Budget - 4 Dots

·         To look at the budget differently

·         Rally public support for our public school initiatives for 21^st century technology

External Resources - 4 Dots

·         Apprentice programs

·         Get rid of textbooks

·         Lap tops to be signed out just like books

Character Development (Soft Skills) - 2 Dots

·         Missing: Soft skills, etc, needed in place? Early development and continued emphasis

·         What’s needed? Etiquette classes as a “required” elective

Early Childhood Education - 2 Dots

·         More early childhood education

Set the Stage-Defining

·         Acceptance of change

·         “21^st century learning” needs to be defined so that everyone can understand exactly what it is without misunderstanding. Misunderstanding=fear=conflict=not productive. Must understand in order to implement and be successful.

·         Reduce the fear by giving a global definition of 21^st century learning

Relevance - 15 Dots

·         Real world education. Relating curriculum to jobs.

·         Organizations make their needs as employers known- join the conversation- help shape the education of their future work force

·         Establish a career emersion program to highlight career opportunities in a non college career path- i.e. Fire Cadet Program

·         Making teaching relevant to today’s learner. i.e. technology/flexible schedules

·         What do/will business need? Now and for the next 100 years!

Communication - 11 Dots

·         Explore learning through collaboration with and without use of technology

·         Effort of teachers/administrators

·         School districts are working together and sharing ideas

·         Open line of communication parent/teacher

·         Now? Kids can “text” 24/7 and think it is the best way to communicate

·         Proliferation of virtual schools

·         Communication between the community and school

·         Home visits

Appendix D – Crafting of Recommendations

 As a final activity, participants again formed their groups to craft specific recommendations for the school system to address barriers to 21^st century learning. Each group’s notes and recommendations from this discussion are reprinted below. Group B interviewed Rebiya Kadeer at the conference and their notes are included in Appendix E.

Group A

Inventory the technological skills already available in the division so that you can then identify the gaps. 

Have students teach the teachers how they use technologies and how they see these tools used in a classroom.

Allow teacher experts to train other teachers so that there is no additional cost involved in the training.  Also, the business community can provide in kind support by providing training in these technologies.

Group C

Cultural Awareness:

Build cultural awareness by teaching educators and students the facts of our global economy/community and infuse relevance into our instruction.

Teach teachers understand how to build their own personal learning online networks so it can them be disseminated to the students.

Teach students how to develop their own personal learning networks – discriminate information

Use current technology to examine current events from various world perspectives.  – ie. Change up the URLs to see what other countries’ perspectives are about the same issue.

Clash of values – disenfranchisement – look beneath the jacket – from disadvantaged to ‘different”

Teach the whole child….

Work on belief systems – can every child learn

Group D

Leadership network,

recognizing leadership qualities

community leadership

educational leadership

Objective

Develop leadership network that includes administrators, teachers, school staff, community and business leaders, and student leaders; that collaboratively function as professional learning communities to address and solve barriers to learning

Action Steps – Option I

Research current models of PLC’s and compare information             

Develop a school and/or district leadership team

Develop a clear communication system to share information, etc. with all stakeholders

Empower leadership team members and distribute leadership responsibilities

Build capacity within the school/district that encourages and ensures sustainability

Action Steps – Option I

Identify the stakeholders in the school community who should be invited to participate in the network.

Identify barriers to the target

Empower members of the network to lead data collection analyze the results to network and all stakeholders

Provide recommendations/approaches to solve the problem or remove the barrier

Appendix E – Rebiya Kadeer

Rebiya Kadeer, Chinese businesswoman and political activist, attended the conference and participants had a chance to work with her in a small group. Participants interviewed Kadeer, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, about her life, which included being tried and imprisoned in 1999 until 2005 when the United States pressured for her release. The following are notes from that discussion.

Concept: Reform

We would die for freedom in China.  I think that’s why your people take things for granted.  We take nothing for grant in my culture.  It’s a very unique culture.  We have our own music.  In our culture women are trained to cook.  We have respect for animals and we have stories related to these animals imbedded in our culture. 

The Chinese government could wipe us all out.  People would be detained if they learned a foreign language.  By being multi-cultural students can learn about any cultural.  They have the opportunity and privilege.  There are less then 1,000 Uyghurs in this country.  The government separated their people throughout China to keep them from forming strength.  Her two sons are in prison because of what she is doing in this country.  All her grandchildren were kicked out of school.  In China the entire family is punished when one family member does something wrong. 

Were you limited because of tracking or because you are a female?  I was limited because of my families’ social class. 

The government strips you naked of your freedom, your religion, your rights to force you to become Chinese.  The Chinese government is trying to wipe out our language.

Professors, teachers, professionals were fired and forced to become janitors or unemployed because they could not speak or teach in Chinese.

How was she able to create a business?  When the former Chinese president was in place he allowed for a few lower class citizens become business owners in an attempt to become wealthy.

Appendix F – Panel Discussion

 An electronic global panel discussion kicked off the day’s events with an impressive group of thought leaders from Scotland, Thailand, and the U.S. logging in to Elluminate, a webinar software platform, to share their ideas and answer questions.

 Biographies of the guest speakers can be found here:

http://21stcenturylearning.wikispaces.com/NNPS+Symposium

An archive of the Elluminate session can be found here

https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/recording/playback/link/meeting.jnlp?suid=M.B35EA4F8E3D03B8032D6C429C65CB0

Finding Balance

 

In this new year many of us have promised ourselves to try and find more balance in our lives. I personally vowed to spend more time connected with the earth through hiking, walking on the beach, and playing hard with my four 20-something kids. And yet with all of the meaningful work I am engaged in online I often find it difficult to unplug. How does one balance their personal and professional lives, especially while living in a world where often those in the communities to which I belong contribute to a significant part of my personal growth and constitute a great deal of the human interaction I receive each day? How do I draw the line in the sand between have-tos and want-tos when because of the personalness of the connections the lines have become grayed?

TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP
Some folks tell me that if I buy the Life Balance software for iPhone and iPod touch that it will help a multi-tasking mobile professional like me who struggles to keep up with the demands of their busy life. Life Balance(TM) is personal coaching software that helps you to decide what to work on, so that you can put your effort into the goals, projects and tasks that really matter to you.

Scott Elias, Expert Voice in the New Jersey cohort of Powerful Learning Practice is looking closely at this issue of balancing our real and virtual lives. He gives a powerful tip for keeping up with the deluge of email you are receiving.

"First, if the very idea of having an empty inbox sounds absurd to you, check out Merlin Mann's "Inbox Zero" series (complete with a video of a talk he gave at Google). The most useful idea I took away from this series if the idea of scheduling short email "dashes" where you process what you've got and move on."

Scott also shares a tool for helping to managing your "to-do" tasks called Remember the Milk. Scott likes RTM (as those "in the know" call it) because adding tasks is super-simple. "You can add directly from the web interface, you can follow @rtm on Twitter and "Tweet" tasks to yourself from your cell phone, or you can email single tasks or lists of tasks to a special, top-secret RTM email address. Once you've sent your tasks, they show up in your inbox."

Technology is willing and able to help us keep us organized and accountable. More than ever before  we have the knowledge management tools to help us keep up! Such as these--

So we have to ask ourselves is technology the problem when it can provide so many solutions? Or does true balance come from somewhere else?

My superintendent, a wise man indeed, once told me that technology only gives the illusion of saving time because we quickly fill the time we save with new tasks resulting in our professional lives being even busier than before. In many ways I think his perception is true. It as if we have this empty void we are all trying to fill. We are all looking for that sense of purpose in knowing what we are doing will matter in the end. It is the struggle of balancing the tension of change- wanting change, realizing that something different is needed and yet being terrified of losing something valuable in the long run. John Connell once told me that it isn't change we fear, but loss.

ARE WE FOCUSING ON THE WRONG THING?

Stephen Downes says, "The difference between the physical and the virtual is illusory - it is a distinction that has been marketed hard by companies that want to keep selling you paper. But the virtual is the physical - the people online are real, the computers are real, the impact of your words is real, and it all happens in the physical world to people with physical bodies."

Maybe that is why balance is so hard to achieve? Maybe we have been focusing on the wrong thing? Maybe the tension isn't between balancing our real and virtual lives, but more about balance in life in general? What I do online is very much a part of my real life. I am building real connections with people around the world from whom I am learning a great deal. My life is richer and I am a better person because of the relationships I have built online. The work I do is purposeful and meaningful and very much a part of my real life. Maybe the answer to making it all work comes in understanding how to integrate it all and realizing that by letting go (change) I will have loss, but what will follow will make me more effective in reaching my big picture goals. The secret is realizing that virtual is part of our real world now and it can't be thought of as "one more thing" added to our already impossible day, but rather it needs to become a seamless, embedded part of our normal day. Kind of like how families adapt when a new child is born. Somehow we find time to incorporate all the new things that have to be done in caring for a baby into our busy lives. We fumble at first thinking we will never adapt and then before you know it is becomes "business as usual."

I look forward to learning with you this year as together we try and find balance in our lives and turn business as unusual to business as usual.

Planning for 21st Century Instruction

In his book, Shirky describes a "ladder of activities that are enabled or improved by social tools" in which "The rungs on the ladder, in order of difficulty, are sharing, cooperation, and collective action." (Here Comes Everybody, p.49).

While I am sure Shirky never intended for anyone to use these steps as a planning tool for scaling lessons and helping students own their own learning and build their own networks, I do think the four verbs work nicely for 21st Centuryizing (if you will) what we could be doing in the classroom.

I suggest that these constructs should be used, if used at all, as a scaffolding or spiraling framework. Online we can be sharing-connecting & collaborating at the same time and at different levels.

Basically, my current thinking is you can take any of the current 21st Century skills lists-- for example Wagner's "7 Survival Skills" or Linda Darling Hammond's "Changing Expectations for Learning" and you still get individuals publishing and sharing at best.

The ideas I am playing with now take the highest level of the new Bloom's Create and move it out from there to community. Living in a participatory culture (Jenkins, 2007) suggests that we need to move from a traditional classroom framework to a community framework and that in doing so the focus moves from the individual creating and publishing to the community collaborating and taking action.

It isn't enough for my colleagues or my students to be engaged and sharing with each other in the isolation of the classroom. Instead we need to understand how to publish our work and ideas to an authentic audience (teachers first and then model, once they own it, for students).

But it shouldn't stop there- because once we share our thinking online, others will find it and begin to connect to us via the medium. And from those connections we will find others with passionate interests similar to ours. We will begin to build a professional network of learners. And from that network we may decide to collaborate around a shared interest or passion as a means to learn and grow. And who knows-- from there we may find a project that will address the common good and bring even more caring individuals into a situated learning community which is starting to develop around our shared interest.

What I am trying to do is find a way teachers and students can think about/explore their passions and take them beyond the walls of a classroom to the community. A place where kids can learn what they need, when they need to learn it- rather than learning according to some artificial curriculum plan (Papert, 2004). And from those connections begin to understand how to build and leverage the potential of their PLNs and CoPs in ways that will take them through life.

Currently, I am trying to place these ideas in a grounded context while at the same time conducting some action research to see how they play out as a planning tool for teachers in "21st Centuryizing" their instruction.

http://abpc.wikispaces.com/21st+Centurizing+Lessons

Learning to Learn

My life has been a whirlwind of activity since NECC and I have found it hard to keep up with blogging. I don't know why, but I feel guilty blogging when I have other deadlines looming. Do any of you experience that? Is it illogical? Should I blog anyway, much like we still get the day to day things done at work or home, even when we have extra tasks on our "to do" lists. Or should I put 100% of my attention toward the deadlines and follow Grandmas' rule of "work before play"?

I'd love to hear your take.

Disclaimer: Blogging is like play for me- sheer enjoyment. Not necessarily the writing, as for me the writing doesn't come easy, but the thrill of the hits and conversation that follows does.

Community Driven System
The purpose of stealing moments away from my already full agenda this morning though to share my experiences of the last week. I came to realized more than ever that I am a community driven woman. I believe in the power of the community, the wisdom of the crowd, that the network is more powerful than the node and that none of us are as good as all of us. I believe that School 2.0 means moving from a classroom system to a community system. And now more than ever I also believe that about PD and I mean all PD- conferences(e.g. K12Online08), workshops (e.g. most recently CABOCES Summer Instititue), ongoing, job embedded sync and asysn (e.g. PLP) and as a result I am going to change my keynotes even more to flow from a community model as well. As I reflected over the last week, I realized even my family operates as a community. I am no loan wolf.

CABOCES Summer Institute
One week ago I landed in Buffalo and was greeted by Rick Weinberg who took me to Selemanca where I would be spending the next week working with educators from the surrounding area. When the day drew closer to the conference Rick shared that unexpectedly numbers were down. I gave him the opportunity to cancel rather than bring me out for just a few people, (I am knee deep in buying my first home in Va and could have used the time) but Rick was firm that they wanted to move forward. I am so glad he made that decision because this week was an incredible week of learning for me personally.

Here are my take aways...

1. When you are focused on educational reform from a community perspective- more is not always better.

 Monday- I had 10 administrators who were with me for one day. The small number enabled me to spend time personally getting to know each attendee. I invited Karen Richardson, Chris Lehmann, and Jon Becker to attend a panel discussion answering their concerns and questions. You can listen to the panel discussion here. The strength of intimacy because of such a small number of participants in the room made me realize that relationship is a more powerful tool when trying to leverage change than having large numbers of people in a room who are passively listening to you talk.

John Norton's wine glass metaphor rings true here- (He was drinking a glass of wine when it occurred to him- hence the name) that it is better to have small numbers of highly engaged people when influencing school reform than hundreds of folks who show up but walk away unchanged by the experience.

Also, on Friday when we knew our numbers would be minimal and we had such brilliant panel members coming from the community (Darren Kuropatwa, Kevin Honeycutt, Allanah King, and Mark Clemente) we made it a teachable moment. We spontaneously opened the Elluminate session up to the world (and the world indeed showed up) and we used Ustream and a chat channel as well to show if you offer quality the community will come to you- no matter how rural or small you are.

2. My belief was reinforced that for most newbies, teaching tools in isolation is too overwhelming and a waste of time.

Tuesday I tried to lay the foundation and set the context. I also wanted to help attendees understand today's digital learner. Wes Fryer (Oklahoma), Laura Deisley (Atlanta), Meg Ormiston (Illinois), and Sue Waters (Australia) talked about personal learning networks and the tools that support them (listen in here) on Wednesday. On Thursday my plan was to look more closely at tools and their pedagogy and how they best relate to various instructional activities and then on Friday to create inquiry based instruction with an interactive model of building a PBL mini-unit. For the most part things went according to plan, but Thursday's tools, tools, and more tools left me feeling overwhelmed and tense. I know if I had been a newbie in that audience not having been given the opportunity to use the tools in a meaningful application, I would have been frustrated. The idea was to create an awareness of the tools, not mastery, so that on Friday when we created lessons using the TPCK model we would have a web 2.0 list of applications from which to choose. The result though was painful, at least for me.

I brainstormed with Rick Weinberg and Tim Clarke afterward and what we felt would have worked better was to have four tables- with one of us at each table presenting a tool. Our presentations would include the tool, an activity using the tool, and a chance to reflect on best uses of the tool. Then after 45 minutes we would break for 15 and then could present another tool. We would do that three times (12 tools) and participants could choose which tools they wanted to learn.

I really believe that the best examples of tool instruction are within the context of what you are learning. Like our heating and cooling system they should be invisible. The only time we focus on our heating and cooling is when they aren't working properly. Then we have to focus on the tool itself and decide why it isn't working.

Even Bill Fitzgerald (Funny Monkey) after his discussion on Open Source tools left the attendees with the idea of forgetting the tool- focusing instead on what you want kids to know and be able to do- then figuring out the right task and tool for the job to help kids achieve their goal.

3. What is most important to 21st Century educational reform is to listen to kids.

On Tuesday, I decided to create a panel of kids from 11th grade to college juniors and talk to them about their reflections on technology. It was the most inspiring part of my week long work. I am still learning from all they taught me during that hour. Meet Gracie, Maegan, Ryan, Jay, Danny, Christian, Thomas, Will and Jesse. You won't be sorry you did.

4. Teachers need time to reflect, explore, and build in the safety net of your workshop.

Teachers, like kids, need you to model and then let them explore authentic use with you there to help. They need to understand how to create lesson plans that use the tools in meaningful ways, but then they need to actually collaborate together to build activities that they can use in school; activities that leverage the potential of these new mediums for connecting and collaborating.

Typically, in my workshops I only have time to present the shift and the tools- never to actually jump to the most important step of helping teachers contextualize what they are learning. I walked away from this week realizing that this step is what is missing in school reform and is why in my opinion, that change is happening so slowly.

The most exciting time of the conference for me personally was to watch the groups choose a topic- create a concept web, a curriculum web, choose appropriate standards, an essential pedagogy, an appropriate tool and develop several lessons that all integrated not only core disciplines but fell together under a theme, project or problem. The creative juices really began to flow as we constructed together a killer initiating activity that would usher in our year long project and the lessons we would use to teach state mandated content from a passion-based perspective. The tools made sense because they were merely a means to an end- helping students learn about things that interested them from the perspective of a scientist, historian or author.

I am thankful to CABOCES for being willing to invest the time that allowed their educators to not only gain an awareness but to deeply reflect, discuss, and wrestle with the concepts- while facilitators and their newly formed PLN stood by to help them make informed choices about change.

ABPC 21st Century Learners Quarterly Meeting

While I obviously haven't been blogging- I have been fast at it. I would say I have been busy, but Dean Shareski (our new convener for K12Online)  has taught me we are all busy and I am not suppose to talk about how busy I am, but rather just talk about what I have been up to lately.

I keep a running "to-do" board above my desk. Lately, there have been too many "to-do" items to fit them all. My life is full of meaning, exciting and that word I am not suppose to say (whispering ...busy). So busy in fact that I forgot to share about one of my most passionate interests.

ABPC 21st Century Learners- Year 3 Culminating
Anyone who has followed me knows that one true passion I have is the incredible work I am helping to deliver in Alabama around 21st Century literacies. On May 1 we had our culminating celebration for this year's 21st Century Learners journey.

What Was Different in Year 3?
In a word-- students. ABPC's leader, Cathy Gassenheimer felt this year's project with schools needed to have an clear connection to student achievement.  We wanted to developmentally move teachers along the continuum of use and understanding of the transformative potential of 21st Century teaching and learning strategies to actually applying them in the classroom.

We created a student strand and added students as members of the team. Together we looked at how to change teaching to a self-directed process tied to student passion and rigor, as well are core curriculum standards.

During the culminating event students and other team members were led in a fishbowl exercise that turned out to be the most enlightening experience I have had so far in working towards 21st Century educational reform. Students were asked hard questions about how they learn best and evidence of those strategies used by teachers in classrooms. They were asked what do teachers need to change to be the kind of teachers that would help you learn best? Their answers were profound and I realized for the first time I think-- if we would just ask kids what they need, they know and would tell us. Wow. What a concept.

Here are some of the projects from Alabama this year:

WinterboroSchool
Our theme is:  Taking Technology to the next level- The competitive level. Our teachers have worked in harmony to help our students take their individual projects to the competitive level.  We decided to encourage and help our students to compete on the local and state level using 21st century skills we have introduced and use in the classroom throughout the year. Winning at this level helped validate that we can compete in the local and state arena using these newly acquired skills.  The publicity has also been great for the entire county.  It has been a great success.  We will display our students’ medal winning projects along with the bling bling they have won in the process. 

West Blocton
For our student project, we created a wiki. On this wiki, the students would choose a book to read that they wanted to carry on a conversation about in the wiki. Then, they would rate the book. Next, they would write why they rated the book the way they did. The next few sentences had to include a comprehension strategy that they used while reading the book. Whichever strategy they used, they had to support it with text and tell what detail from the story made them use that strategy. Then, they would write a sentence to try to encourage others to read the book, even if they gave it a low rating.

Finally, they would look at other responses other students had made and carry on a conversation about their book.

Hewitt-Trussville Middle School
Our team created a wiki as a resource for the teachers.  The wiki contains descriptions, examples, and uses for 21^st tools in the classroom.  The wiki also contains information about project based learning. 
You can find out wiki at http://21centurylearners.wikispaces.com .

Challenger Middle School
Challenger 21^st Century Team Group project:
Our professional development project is called "iTeach 2.0" and we invited the middle schools in our district to become a part of iTeach 2.0. Each school sent two teachers to a workshop we sponsored to learn about 21st century tools. We established a wiki for our team and participants to use to share ideas. Our April face to face meeting was a type of fair where each school shared a tool or project that they successfully used this semester. Our computer will display screen shots from our wiki and our display board will define data collected and cool tools explored during this year’s iTeach workshops. Our wiki is http://iteach2-0.wikispaces.com .

Student Project:
We invited 18 students to commit their own time to work on a project they would select. Twelve saw the project to completion. We gave three basic guidelines: the students must develop their project around an issue that affects teens, the project must help someone, and the project must be communicated using technology tools.  Our students brainstormed on their own private wiki and were very passionate about teen issues! They decided that they wanted to work on a project related to poverty. The students then researched and decided that they wanted to adopt an impoverished school in another country, which led them to Uganda. They formed an Invisible Children Club to raise money.

The students created posters, a website and a multi-media embedded PowerPoint to present to the student body. They learned so much about war torn

Uganda and the suffering of the children there. They have a basic knowledge of how this war started. The amazing part is that we have not taught this information to our students. They have taken a project with very few guidelines and have learned so much! For this year, the project culminated in a fund-raiser, which raised $1778 in 3 days! This has become a project that encompasses many of the 21st century skills. Our students are learning about society, geography/history, communication, discernment, teamwork and many other skills.  We will display a computer with a timeline/info about their project work and their presentation.  We will have an additional computer with screen shots of their webpage. Their website is http://www.freewebs.com/guluschoolproject/

George Hall Elementary
Collaboration is the main thesis for our project. This year collaboration projects includes Skype interview with Janis Kearney, diarist for Bill Clinton and author of "Cotton Fields of Dreams",  Elluminate session with children from the Dominican Republic and a weekly Skype collaboration with 5th grade students in West Blocton Al. We continued the wiki field trip project using Scaling where the students were proactive in the production of the projects to go online.

Blossomwood
Blossomwood Elementary's team project for 2007-2008 has been to obtain more technology resources for classrooms and adequately train teachers on how to use these resources.  Promethean ACTIV boards have been purchased for all classroom units and teachers have attended both training at school and online training from Promethean.  Today, Blossomwood is displaying some sample classroom flipcharts, as well as flipcharts that were used to train the faculty.

Clay-Chalkville High School
We will be presenting a Power Point presentation that highlights some of the work that our teachers have created with their classes to enhance student learning, as well as to promote communication between the classroom and the home.

For instance, we have teachers that have created wikis with the main purpose to keep the students and parents updated on assignments and projects that are coming up. At the same time, other teachers use blogs to allow the students become more involved in the learning process.

Discovery Middle School

Middle School will showcase our journey from local to global connections through a photostory.  We will highlight our challenges and how we have overcome them.  We will also share our current projects that will lead us to district wide integration of Web 2.0 tools.

Mt. Laurel Elementary
Sharing Web 2.0 Tools
Mt Laurel Elementary School is a K-3 school right outside of Birmingham. We are in our second year with the 21st Century Learning Team.

Our team's focus project was sharing Web 2.0 tools with our faculty. We conducted a survey to determine awareness and use of Web 2.0 tools and found that very few were aware of Web 2.0 tools, and even fewer were using them.

As a team we compiled a resource list of Web 2.0 tools. We held a meeting with our teachers and presented an awareness training to share the uses of each tool. We shared examples of how we had been using these tools and how students could benefit from using Web 2.0. We also encouraged them to let us help them set-up any of the tools they would think they would like to use in their classroom.

As of today, the number of teachers that are using Web 2.0 tools has changed by 60%, compared to when we initially took our survey. We now have grade levels participating in projects and teachers using these tools to create works with their students. We have teachers participating in book studies using Wiki’s, classes and parents blogging, podcasting galore, but most of all the awareness of the many tools that are available to each of them to enhance their class lessons and projects.

Cullman Middle School
Collaborative project-based teaching aligned to state content standards, reviewed by students. That is our lofty goal with this wiki. For 2008, we have selected 4 courses to focus on: Social Studies, grades 7 and 8 AND Computer Applications, grades 7 and 8

This project is designed in conjunction with the Alabama Best Practices Center's 21st Century Schools professional development. The project will be developed by a team of teachers and students from Cullman Middle School.

We hope that this will be a treasured resource for educators across the state, the country, and the world. Depending upon the success of the site, we hope to add additional areas of study in the future. We recognize the level of learning and retention of learning that project-based lessons hold for students, as well as the interest it adds to classes. On the outset, this seems like a project designed to aid teachers, and it will do that, but more importantly, this project will aid students in fostering a deeper interest in learning. With the Computer Applications courses, we are fortunate to be embarking upon new territory. At this time there are not specific standards for grade levels, only grade bands. This project will assist us in focusing on learning objectives and organizing those objectives in a sensible format. The student team will be comprised of students involved in

Cullman Middle School's SWAT (students willing to assist with technology) team. The teacher team will select a student team leader that will serve as a liaison to the teacher team.

Dean Road Elementary School
Our team sought to showcase the various ways we use the Smart Board to communicate more effectively among staff members and students. An immense part of our daily communication begins each day with our morning broadcast, WDRE, which features fourth and fifth grade students as broadcasters. Other grade levels are involved by reciting the pledge of allegiance and sharing the daily weather. All parts of the broadcast are viewed through the use of the Smart Board.

Not only do we begin our day with the Smart Board we also use this valuable learning tool in many other ways throughout the day. We display our morning messages, share interactive websites embedded in our daily lessons, and research an endless amount of information that can be easily displayed for all to see. This beneficial tool as helped foster communication through shared lessons created on the Smart Board software that assists teachers in planning and presenting the curriculum in a way that increases the students’ motivation to learn. The Smart Board, found in all classrooms, has become an irreplaceable learning tool that teachers and students just can’t seem to live without.

Fayetteville High School
The Fayetteville High School team has led a 21st Century Learners initiative for 10 schools throughout Talladega County. Modeled after the training sponsored by the ABPC, the FHS team, along with other teachers from Winterboro School, have served as mentors to over 20 teachers in their school system.  The team will display the materials used for this project as well as evaluations from some of the participants in the program.

Wrights Mill Road Elementary
Tech-Know Expo
5th grade students brainstormed topics related to technology that interest them.  Then, they volunteered to teach those topics they felt they were “Tech-sperts” in.  The students prepared presentations for the younger grades and invited parents and members of the community to attend.  Topics ranged from “Lights, Camera, Pinnacle in Action,” to iPod 101 and “How to Convince Your Parents to Let You Get A Cell Phone.”  Students taught about blogging, making avatars, using Blabber, and the latest and greatest in text messaging.

WNY-Powerful Learning Practice Culminating Celebration

What does music, film, live performances, laughter, passion, reculturation and blogging for charity have in common?-- Western NY's Powerful Learning Practice's culminating celebration!

Holland's team performing a remake of "This Land is my Land" into a Web 2.0 Song

May 22, 2008- 20 school teams in the Western New York region came together to celebrate their learning journey that took place over the last 6 months through a job-embedded professional development opportunity called Powerful Learning Practice. Schools met as teams to master the following outcomes over the course of the year:

Knowledge: An understanding of the transformative potential of Web 2.0 tools in a global perspective and context and how those potentials can be realized in schools

Pedagogy: An understanding of the shifting learning literacies that the 21st Century demands and how those literacies inform teacher practice.

Connections: The development of sustained professional learning networks for team members to begin experimenting and sharing with other team members and online colleagues from around the world.

Sustainability: The creation of long term plans to move the vision forward in participating districts at the end of the program.

Capacity: An increase in the abilities and resources of individuals, teams and the community to manage change.

The culminating celebration is one of the two face-to-face meetings that take place in PLP. It is a time when the schools teams come together and share what they have learned with each other through learning displays, presentations, informal sharing in groups, and a facilitated process that results in bulleted action plans.

PRESENTATIONS While all the schools teams had an opportunity to share their team projects and what they had learned from being involved in PLP this year, three projects were asked to share more fully from the stage. It was very difficult to decide who should present because most of the projects were just incredible. Those that presented were: Webster Teams, Holland Team, and Niagara Academy. But the presentation that stole the show was given by Laura, the 5th grader who authors the blog: Twenty Five Days to Make a Difference.

Will writes about her presentation,

She talked about how she started her quest to get donations for charities by finding sponsors for her daily good works, how surprised she is that over 30,000 people have visited her blog since last December, and how she’s been able to donate over $1,600, 50 pairs of pajamas, and over 400 books to charities in her area. It’s a great story and example, one that I’ve shared with Tess on a number of occasions."

Another PLP participant Mike Maloy adds,

I’ve written on the group’s Ning and in comments on various blogs about how my learning has been completely transformed. I’ve written on my own blog about how inspiring and “human” the web can be. I’ve been awed by Jill Bolte’s “My Stroke of Insight” and Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture”.

I can honestly say that Laura’s presentation was one of the coolest, most enlightening experiences of all my years in education. Since her presentation I’ve been wondering…If Laura can do what she is doing as a fifth grader, what will she be able to do in the future? If Laura can do what she is doing as a fifth grader, why the heck can’t I be doing more? Will my daughter be inspired do something so special.

I was also incredibly impressed with the creativity in Western NY. For example, Holland's team opened with a Web 2.0 remake of This Land is My Land and closed with Eric Lawton singing an original song he wrote entitled, You've Got to Learn Web 2 Point Oh. You can listen to 2 minutes of that here--> Download youve_got_to_learn_web_2_point_oh.mp3 What a hoot! Not to be outdone Holland's superintendent followed in "American Idol" style with a song he sang A cappella to Will and I. All in all it was as touching as it was entertaining.

Reflecting on how PLP has impacted participants
When asked how has PLP impacted or changed your professional or personal practice those who attended the WNY celebration give many reasons. Here are a few of their responses.

• The resources shared and the connections with the community...I have started to build my network outside of my building.
• Broadened exposure to web 2.0 tools beyond personal use.
• Facilitated collaboration with colleagues within my district (but outside my building) that was little-to-none prior to this.
• It gathered all of the teachers using tech together to work on one common goal. Otherwise, we would have just kept working independently on our own path. It really pushed our district to start a plan to implement and educate others in our district.
• It gave importance to technology and gave those of us with a passion and knowledge around technology a voice with our schools.
• Working with other members from my district that I usually don't get to see. Their ideas and perspectives during this learning process were greatly valued.
• I am no longer embarrassed about what I don't know and I am excited about learning and moving forward.
• I am using tools I didn't even know existed before this year. I modeled in a regular meeting and taught other staff through the process enough for them to say they will go back and use it in their classrooms. I want to learn more and use it to help teachers in the district support one another to excellence.
• The level of support that is available in this network is comforting. There is a lot of knowledge among the PLP community.
• Thanks for the opportunity. It has been an excellent, life changing learning experience. I hope we can sustain and spread our learning. If I can inspire one other person like I have been I would consider it a great accomplishment
• You've opend my eyes to the potential of 2.0 and have created a more technologically literate individual! I felt both Sheryl and Will's support was awesome very encouraging and empathetic.
  
  

  Kickoff Meeting

Culminating Meeting

Powerful Learning Practice- Powerful Indeed

This post may be premature as I have only seen 2/3s of the PLP Independent Schools' team presentations of their impact journey through PLP and team projects- but I must say, Will and I were more than impressed. It was more on the level of WOW.

From extensive summer institutes with a Web 2.0 registration process for other schools to attend (all taught by the team members) to an 8th grade project that will utilize the best that Web 2.0 has to offer in a project based format implemented by all 8th grade teachers next year to a creative Lunch 2.0 project or school-based wikis with all digital curriculum shared and more, we found ourselves renewed in the faith that schools can make principled changes in the way we "do" school as a way to remain relevant in the lives of the students we teach. Independent school culture is such that teachers need to make certain they build on the rich heritage of what works and yet make room to rethink delivery of AP courses and such so that these kids not only get into some of the most prestigious colleges around, but they are fluent in the new literacies when they arrive.

All the project plans will be shared on the Independent School wiki after the remaining 1/3 of the teams present next week.

Cohorts are forming for next year's Powerful Learning Practice opportunity. If you are interested in learning more visit http://plpnetwork.com