21st Century Learning

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

Need Motivation?

So I am on Twitter and looking at various posts. I see one about ScreenFlow and decide to Google it. I see a YouTube tutorial and decide to watch it. It is a Mac tool, but I like speaking both languages. So I click on the video above and like wow. Here is one of your students answering a question someone had about how to do something within the program. He is teaching it as well as any of us could. Why do we need to understand the shift in education? Because they can learn and teach themselves anything they want to know without leaving home. When you move from a classroom structure to a community structure- the students become teachers AND learners and so do we. 21st Century teaching and learning is about shifting classrooms to learning ecologies.

Here is another-

Can't get enough? Here is a 7th grader.

Let's quit talking about it and roll up our sleeves and change our classrooms and schools into meaningful learning nodes in our students' network of learning choices.

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.

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

Teacher Friendly Professional Development

In this day and age of school reform, many are looking to how we train teachers as the key to educational improvement. Research shows that on average school districts spend the equivalent of $200 per pupil on professional development and these learning experiences add both time and effort demands on a teachers already impossible day (Killeen, 2002).

The federal No Child Left Behind Act’s emphasis on results has prompted school system leaders, staff developers, principals, and
teachers to become much more deliberate about the professional-development choices they make.

While our profession more than ever needs to build capacity in its teachers, we also need to be sure that time, energy, and resources are used only on "quality programs that teach with and about best practice" (Dede, 2006, p.1).

The World is Changing
Today, new and emerging Web technologies are connecting our children in ways never before possible. Through blogs, social networking sites, multimedia and other “Web 2.0” tools, their worlds are becoming more and more networked and engaging, creating environments for learning and collaborating
that look little like our traditional classroom spaces.

Schools, Not So Much
Conversely, schools have by and large been resistant to these shifts. Teachers complain, maybe rightly so, that they simply do not have the time to master the needed strategies. Attempts to gain the knowledge needed through workshops are often fragmented and unable to provide the ongoing daily guidance needed as teachers attempt to implement needed change in practice.

The Role of Community to Bring about School Reform
However, the development of professional learning communities (PLCs) across schools districts is one solution experience has shown me really works. Using a combination of face to face, synchronous and asynchronous meetings in a variety of settings (school-based, state-wide, and global) professional learning teams can participate in professional development that is tailored to teachers' busy schedules, while drawing on the valuable resources/experts not available locally, and that provides work-embedded support.

My Contribution to Educational Reform
Using the experience I garnered from the pilot I helped to develop and lead in Alabama, Will Richardson and I have recently teamed together to connect small teams of educators from around the globe in 21st Century learning environments. Our approach is different than the work in Alabama, but the intended outcomes are the same- bring education into the 21st Century.

Will and I are also working with administrators within the participating schools and districts in the development of systemic plans that lay the groundwork for a three and five-year vision for principled change. Our Powerful Learning Practice (PLP) project is currently helping educators to experience the transformative potential of social Web tools to build global learning communities and re-envision their own personal learning practice.

Outcome-Making the World a Better Place
The opportunities for learning thus far have been incredible. But the one that simply rocked my world is a project that one of the teacher leaders involved with our work helped her daughter create.

Laura, a ten-year old girl in upstate New York started a blog Twenty Five Days to Make a Difference that in just a week’s time has caught the interest of a whole bunch of kids from around the world (media too) who want to make a difference as well. Talk about transformative! Laura offers a classroom challenge- as teachers you will want to check it out and get your class involved and there is an opportunity to match funds for the winning "Make a Difference" project too!

Laura on Day 1 of her 25 Days to Make a Difference Project

 

References

Killeen, K. (2002). School district spending on professional development: Insights available from national data. Journal of Educational Finance. 28 (1) pp 25-49.

Dede, C. (2006). Online professional development for teachers: Emerging models and methods. Cambridge, Massachusetts:Harvard Education Press

Be Afraid...Very Afraid.

Crossposted over at TechLearning. Drop by and add to the conversation.

Think all the buzz about school soon becoming irrelevant is just hype? Meet George Hotz, (geohot) a 17 year-old from New Jersey who blogs. What makes George significant? 

He has just “unlocked” the iPhone, finding a way to get around the device’s restrictions and allow it to be used not only on AT&T’s cell phone network but also on T-Mobile’s network and overseas.

George Hotz remembers taking apart his first computer, an Apple II, when he was 4 or 5 years old. He also dismantled an answering machine, remote control, vacuum cleaner and more computers. Now the 17-year-old from Glen Rock, N.J., has taken hacking to a scientific level. The sad part, at least to me, he had to do it over the summer  because cell phones are not allowed in school!

The 'George' in Your Classroom
I know, I know, you're thinking George is some child prodigy. That he is not typical of kids in your classes, and as an educator you have plenty of time to master digital and the other new literacies before most kids catch up.  Think again. Read this and tell me this is not the average student in your class. In fact, some, if not many teachers would read that assignment essay and label George as a troublemaker.

Looking around his Web site I read over and over again how bored he was. Bored at school (except for his freshman year), bored during the summer and yet look at the potential of this kid! Why aren't schools places where students are motivated to achieve their full potential? Why is the culture of school such that passion based learning has no place in the classroom?

A Sense of Urgency
We have a generation of students arriving in our classrooms that are more and more comfortable with technology, in fact, more comfortable than we will ever be. And that makes many of us very uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that we react with banning and filtering rather than modeling how to connect with content experts and teaching responsible net citizenship.

Living in the Dot Rather than Living in the Line
As educators we have to think of the impact of our teaching in two phases. I'm going to illustrate this with a dot and a line, a line that extends from the dot.

Our classrooms are the here and now. They are the dot and for each student we teach, the classroom experience has a beginning and an end. It’s temporary. And as teachers, we live in that dot.  But from our classroom there extends a line that stretches out for the life of the student. That line is the preparation we have given our students who will be living the line.

Right now we’re living in the dot (preparing them for normed tests) but if we really understood our role in the lives of the students we teach we would learn to live for the line (the new literacies and 21st Century skills-- the changing learning landscape.) There’s nothing wrong with here and now. It’s where we are, and it’s where we do whatever policy makers have given us to do. But the truth is-- with knowledge expanding exponentially-- much of the here and now will become irrelevant as our students get jobs and live their lives.

Creativity Counts
Michael D. Higgins, the former Irish Minister for Arts, Culture and Gaeltacht said,

The roots of a creative society are in basic education. The sheer volume of facts to be digested by the students of today leaves little time for a deeper interrogation of their moral worth. The result has been a generation of technicians rather than visionaries, each one taking a career rather than an idea seriously. The answer must be reform in our educational methods so that students are encouraged to ask about "know-why" as well as "know-how". Once the arts are restored to a more central role in educational institutions, there could be a tremendous unleashing of creative energy in other disciplines too.

We are at a crossroads in education. Mainstream society seems to be re-inventing everything - except the school system, which should, at least in theory, be leading the change. The main crisis in schools today is pending irrelevance. Our educational thinking is concerned with the "dot" or ' what is', when we should be concerned with designing "the line" or ' what can be'.

By providing rich and varied contexts for our students to acquire, develop and apply a broad range of knowledge, understanding and skills, that are tied to the very things that interest them and about which they are passionate, we will give the "Georges" in our classroom the opportunity to become creative, innovative, enterprising and capable of leadership to equip them for their future.

My Son and 21st Century Skills

When conversations turn to digital literacy or netgenrs I never have to look far for examples. I have several who live in my house. Noah is my soon to be 21 year old son. He is the only boy in a family of four young adult children. He has many passions: snowboarding, fishing, gaming, reading, Allison and technology (not necessarily in that order.) Currently, he is working his way through a computer science degree as a CADD tech at an engineering firm. Tonight we are grilling out fresh tuna he caught while fishing with his friends.

Last night he tells me, "Mom, I want to show you what I built, it's a TiVo." That's right, I walk in the room and he has built an open source TiVo system or a Myth TV PVR. It runs on top of Linux (you can use any distribution of Linux) and is completely open source. It supports backend and frontend (read server/client protocol) so you can have one master backend to do all the recording, watching, transcoding from one format to another (for instance a very loud, powerful PC capable of streaming and recording multiple channels hidden in a closet or the back of your house) then he put the box with just a motherboard, videocard and flashdrive hooked up to a TV in the living room to stream the content and control the backend from there. It supports multiple frontends- so basically you can do this from anywhere in the house that has a TV.

In addition, the backend has a built in webserver that will control any functionality you can do at the keyboard via a laptop or browser capable cell phone or other device. Noah can change channels, turn up or down volume, and stop and start record from any where in the world - including his sidekick/laptop which negates the need for a remote control (although the remote control is also fully functional LIRC project.)

Recently, he also custom built a water cooled PC. This monster machine has components that were huge in comparison to most. For example, his video card is an nVidia 8800 gtx with 768 mb of onboard gddr3 RAM. The power supply is a 750 Watt modular power supply with plugs that are detachable for removing unneeded wires for efficiency. The whole system is water cooled with a closed loop water cooling system that has two 120 mm radiators, cooling the water that flows through them. The reasoning behind such a machine is Noah wanted to build as powerful a machine as possible but didnt want to sacrifice noise and heat into his bedroom, so the water cooled system made sense.

Walking in his room might give one the feel of being a computer graveyard, with machines being parted out cluttered about and high end equipment everywhere you look. For example, he has a 42U server rack. Out of the rack he runs six machines one of which controls the network through a firewall distribution of Linux for our home network. He runs a Ventrillo server which is VoIp server for voice communication when gaming. He runs an Asterisk server which is an open source telephony tool that runs on top of Linux that connects a telephone via SIP protocol to the public PSTN and has its own phone number that can be dialed from any phone in the world. Overall, it has more functionality that most business PBX set-ups.

Noah feels, "If we don't fight to keep up with the latest in knowledge management tools- we are just going to be left behind." He uses the technology for pleasure and learning. His typical activities include web creation, gaming, and programming. Noah has also used his connectivity to learn Russian and some Mandarin.

His future goals include finishing his computer science degree and getting a job in open source development. Anyone looking for a gifted self-starter?

Geeks and Geezers:How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders

I figure in order for schools to experience the needed reculturing it will require strong leaders, change agents to emerge who understand the process of change. So lately I have been reading lots of books on leadership, which is a good thing since my PhD is in Educational leadership, planning and policy. 

Just finished reading Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas' book Geeks and Geezers. Awesome book on leadership that compares the powerful process through which leaders in any era emerge.

Erica Kolatch explains in her review of the book, "Past studies of leadership often emphasized the importance of age and maturity; Bennis and Thomas initially believed that one's era was a primary influence on leadership. The book begins, in fact, by demonstrating that era determines everything from the heroes people admire, to the books they read, to the worries that occupied them at age twenty-five. But through their interviews with geeks and geezers, the authors discovered that the phenomena of an era play only one part in developing leadership qualities. These phenomena feed into a personal "crucible," a critical experience (or set of experiences) that future leaders draw upon to organize meaning and develop core leadership competencies."

Core Leadership Competencies
Bennis and Thomas call the other factors in one's life that shape a leader, their core leadership competencies.  They found these four present in all the leaders they interviewed. Adaptive capacity - an ability to "transcend adversity, with all its attendant stresses, and to emerge stronger than before." Engaging others through Shared Meaning- an ability to build culture and community in an organization; Voice- a distinctive and compelling sense of conviction, or voice driven from a strong set of values (not necessarily religious); Purpose- that purpose includes vision. "Leaders have to provide some overall sense of direction" and generally be comfortable in their own skin.

The Commonality of Crucibles
Bennis and Thomas found both generations of leaders having similar factors that shaped their ability to become leaders but one was highlighted as being of critical importance  "crucibles." Crucibles are "intense, transformational experiences" from which a leader changes dramatically and emerges much wiser. Crucibles are "often opportunities," says Bennis. The key distinction between crucibles is not whether they are considered negative or positive but whether the leader "dived in versus was pushed in. … Both types of crucibles involve important learning and a degree of stress."

A buzz word that is tossed about a lot is this idea of transformational leadership. Artichoke, a blog that uses an unforgettable writing style that keep you laughing while revealing deep truths, shared some interesting ideas about transformational change and leadership. After reading this book and that blog, I was thinking, wouldn't it be wonderful if the transformations taking place in educational leaders were a direct result of their own personal crucible experiences and somewhere along the way they had become creative adaptive experts who understood how to apply what they learned in the depths of their experience to positive school reform and empowerment of teachers and students.

Adaptive Expertise
The one key asset that both young and old leaders shared was their adaptive capacity. The ability to process new experiences, to find their meaning, and then to integrate them into one's life. Being able to adapt is what enables you to come through a crucible experience and immediately start applying what you learned to survive to other situations.

Are you Developing Adaptive Expertise?
So-- what are you doing to ensure that your students are adaptive experts? How are you preparing them so that when life tosses them into a crucible experience that they will not only survive, but emerge stronger and more prepared. We are teaching the future leaders who will see us through our  years of maturity you know. How are you helping the students you have in your classroom now that are in the midst of their crucible experience understand what a powerful opportunity this experience can become in shaping them as future leaders?

For most of us, trusting our instinct, letting go of what we have been trained to do, the "unlearning" so many are blogging about is the toughest obstacle to becoming an adaptive expert ourselves. As we knowin our hearts,  habit is a great deadener! As educators we need to break out of the day-to-dayness of things in our classroom and reinvent ourselves and our profession to remain relevant. It's observing and realizing that if what we are seeing isnt working, then to not act on it with change is insane.

The observation aspect includes the ability to build an effective network or community of practice, because none of us is as smart as all of us. Bennis tells us that, "Expecting one person at the top to be able to observe, digest, analyze, and then be able to deploy that knowledge successfully is ridiculous. It obviously takes a team of people that collegially can look at the world, observe the world together, and what they don't know, they can explain to each other." If there was ever an argument for using Web 2.0 to build networks, that is it. Connecting with others from around the world and modeling how that plays out to our students is part of developing the ability to embrace ambiguity and then schematically adding what you learn to your exisiting knowledge based. Adaptive experts are able to attach new knowledge to current understanding of personal learning  and creatively see something new. That is why building on the ideas of others is so important. It is through this creative process that we unleash potential and passion in our classrooms in ways we only dreamed possible.

Shared Vision
The real beauty of teacher leadership in action is that effective teacher leaders do not impose their vision on others, rather they recruit others to a shared vision. This is especially true in this digital age where power tends to coalesce around ideas and not position.  For example, a quick read of Will Richardson's blog will serve as the perfect example of this kind of leadership. Being able to not only articulate your vision but communicating it in such a way as to help others own it as well is the sign of leadership. This is why teaching our children to be effective writers and communicators in the 21st Century by using the communication tools of the era is increasingly important. My daughter has a t-shirt I just love... Writing well is the "best revenge" Want to enable your students whose circumstance has conspired against them to break loose from the chains that bind them? Teach them to write well and to use the digital tools of the era, which of course means you too have to know how to write well and make the most of the electronic parchment that is available.

Our role as mentors in the lives of the children we teach is to learn and keep on learning and model that ability to our students. Our role as teacher leaders and change agents is to do exactly the same thing. See yourself not as the ultimate wisdom, but rather as the catalyst. In my opinion, our role as leaders in the 21st Century is to cause those within our spheres of influence to reach beyond their normal capacity, to invent something new with the ideas being shared, something innovative and then be brave enough to put it out here in the blogosphere and let the naysayers have their way with it. Knowing that the dross will fall away and the precious pieces will be assimilated into new concepts and shared vision.

Dee Hock says, "In order to thrive you need a deep love of learning and a refusal to be anywhere that didn't let you learn or prevented you from learning." The shocking reality is that for some of us that might be the schools in which we teach or lead.  Re-culturing is a hard process, most feel change is always premature.  But  learning-- not teaching, not school 2.0, not higher education, is going to be the thing that pushes you to the next plateau. I tend to make my own personal commitments based on the learning or educational potential  that I will get from the person or the situation. 

Providers of Hope
The second major part of adaptive capacity is hardiness, which relates to "the expectation of future success." There's one thing that stands out in most teacher leaders I have met: They have unwarranted optimism, they are what Bennis calls,"providers of hope."

The most important thing I walked away with from the book was the concept of neoteny. The dictionary defines it as Main Entry: ne·o·te·ny
Pronunciation: nE-'ä-t&-nE
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin neotenia, from ne- + Greek teinein to stretch  -- more at THIN
1 : retention of some larval or immature characters in adulthood

Neoteny is more than retaining a youthful appearance, it is the retention of all the wonderful qualities that we associate with our students: curiosity, playfulness, eagerness, fearlessness, warmth, and energy. For a teacher leader this means  we need to be willing to take risks, be hungry for new knowledge and experience,  be courageous, and eager to see what the new day brings. Neoteny is what keeps those of us who are on the front lines of change focused on all the marvelous things to come. Walt Disney described it as the ability to look at the world with "uncontaminated wonder". It is this ability that will distinguish the successful from the ordinary. And I am hoping for "the children's sake" most of us advocating for change will aspire to be extraordinary.

Photo credit:http://www.asaecenter.org/PublicationsResources/EUArticle.cfm?ItemNumber=11784

Giving Back to the Profession

Creativity Podcast Series- #2 Amber Nussbaum

This podcast is the second in a series of podcasts with highly creative people. I am interested to see if there is anything to learn from creative people in terms of reforming education, especially as it relates to digital and media literacy.

Amber Nussbaum is a  24 year old graphic designer for a Fortune 500 transportation company and my oldest daughter. She is without a doubt one of the most creative people I know. In this podcast she shares her own thoughts on creativity, her growth as a blogger (she has been at it for 8 years), and her memories about receiving her education as an unschooler.

Here are Amber's Show Notes:
1. Amber introduces herself.
2. Examples of the creative projects and venues with which she finds herself involved.
3. Amber describes some of her home improvement projects and the magazines that have featured her work.
4.She defines creativity: "Looking at what you enjoy most in life and putting that as an outward manifestation of yourself."
5. Amber started blogging at 16. She didn't know that was what it was called at the time. It started as a Web site where she would post her poetry and her ideas trying to find her voice. She had something to say and wanted a place to gather her thoughts. She wasn't as concerned about audience when she got started as she was about documenting her thoughts.
6. Next, she moved to Moveable Type, she has been using it since the first version became available. She began promoting local band's shows and would post news, pics and blog about upcoming shows and after show performance reviews.That was when Amber's site really started getting some real traffic. She wrote for BlogCritics.org for awhile, writing record reviews.But then when she switched Web hosts she lost a lot of her files and took her site down from frustration.
7. Aug. 2004 she put her domain back up. She describes her blog as a mishmash of her life and creations. But rather than just blogging as a journal or diary, she uses her blog to document her life in photography and as a way to help others learn how to do the projects she has recently mastered herself.
8. Amber averages about 1500 unique hits per day. (After this podcast recording Life Hacker featured an artsy home improvement project she did and she got 6000 hits in one day.)
9.  Amber helps out artists who display their wares on Etsy.com, a site with all original pieces by independent artists. Typically, she will feature one item and it will sell in a few hours due the numbers of readers looking at what she posts. Amber says it is satisfying to feel she is helping the artist while giving the person who buys the object a beautiful piece of art and giving her readers something lovely to look at on her blog.
10. Amber describes how her unconventional schooling experience helped her to become the self-directed, creative thinker she is today. She credits he way she was taught for her ability to think critically. People will say to her, "Oh you are a knitter... Where can I take a knitting class?" Amber  didn't know how to respond as she never took a knitting class. She believes in using books, the Web, and folks in her network online to learn new things. Just like she use to do in her homeschool.
11. Amber encourages us all to go after things yourself rather than depending on someone to teach you. She describes how the web provides community and how by reading "do it yourself" information found on other like-minded blogs, she has made real life friends. Some folks say that socializing on computers distances you from true human touch. But Amber argues that it is not so today with blogs and other social networking sites. She connects with others all the time who like the same things she does. No matter how obscure what you are into is-- the web will help you find others who love it too.
12. Amber shares how her early experiences online shaped her Internet use today. Only old people used Telenet and talked about it, no one her age. But she knew about it and connecting with others online in 1993 in our homeschool got her attention. She felt invested in the Internet as a communication medium.
13. The creative process for Amber begins with being somewhere and seeing something wonderful and taking out her camera and capturing the moment and then coming back and blogging about it. Often her real life experiences will inspire her creations. In terms of her Web site, Amber fears that some might think it is "nerdy" but pretty much all the time she lives her life thinking this moment would be cool to post about. She likes sharing her experiences online.
14. How can creativity improve education overall? Amber shares creative lessons she remembers from her middle school experience. "Giving a kid a camera is giving them power. The power to create." She recalls having to be "in character" all day as part of a book report project.
15.Teachers might be intimidated by giving their students the amount of control over their learning she had in her educational experience.But Amber feels that being in charge of her learning helped her graduate in the top spot of her college class. Her education taught her to make decisions.
16.Amber compares college "read a book and take a test" to the more organic way she learned in our home. She said when you are vested in the learning process, you want to learn.
17. Amber describes the learning experience of going different places... being there and doing it.  "Retention is amazing when you are taught like that."
18. She feels college should be more project-based. She describes an engaged, creative lesson done in one of her art history classes.
19. The most incredible moment of the interview was when Amber called me a dynamic instructor who is passionate about what she is teaching. It was a defining moment for me, both as her teacher and her mother.
20. A passionate teacher is "that teacher"- passion makes the difference!
21. Forced learning doesn't appeal to Amber at all, even in the world of work. If you feel vested then you are going to be 100% there in the process making it happen.
22. Her theme is "If you feel you have a stake in what you are doing you are going to give it your all."
23. Since she has an authentic audience via her blog she puts more into refining her writing. She feels this would work for students as well. 
24. Problem/project- based learning requires more work from the teacher-- but cool things will come out of it. Teachers will have to give more of themselves, but it will make the product more valuable. Being creative means taking risks.
26. "How many of you remember stuff you did in the 6th grade? Well I do. Because I was a part of the learning. I was in charge."
27.Give a kid responsibility and they will act responsible. Give them the opportunity to create.

Listen to the interview in MP3 format