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

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

Vicki Davis - Teacher Extraordinare

Vicky Rocked the House

Vicki Davis graciously agreed to present during a Virtual Monday for my EDUC 330 course. She rocked the house. But did you really expect any less? Her presentation is on wikis. The archive can be viewed here. Her page on the class wiki can be viewed here and it has all her resources and the presentation she used.

The students have been contacting me in Skype all buzzing about how much they understood and enjoyed what she taught.

I first "met" Vicki as one of the presenters for the K-12Online Conference of which I served as an organizer. Then rediscovered her through Women of the Web 2.0. She is a prolific poster to her blog and is known for breaking Web 2.0 pieces down into understandable bits that are easy to implement in the classroom. On behalf of my students-- thanks Vicki!

EduWikipedia

EduWikipedia

I have had several conversations as of late with folks about the dis-connect of all the connected learning taking place in Education 2.0. Randy Fullington, one of the Alabama Best Practice Fellows, commented how it was confusing tryng to navigate through all archived in the virtual learning community with all the resources we had gathered (much of it things edubloggers like you are creating and so willingly share) John Norton and I decided we had to come up with a better way to organize all we were pulling together around 21st Century teaching and learning.

Then Will Richardson, Darren Kuropatwa and I were talking the other day and the topic surfaced again-- around all the excellent resources we were all creating. It seems as if we are all working so hard in isolation and really duplicating effort in many cases-- which kind of smacks in the face of what connected learning could be...

Today Will posted this...

And to be honest, this is all stemming from a bigger burr in mybrain of late that has to do with the seeming randomness of all of thereally great work that people in this community are starting to create.It’s just feeling like it’s all over the place, and that if we could insome way get our collective act together, we could start creating anincredibly valuable resource. I know it’s all about small piecesloosely joined, but wouldn’t it be great to point the newcomers to onespot that was a clearinghouse for all of this work? Not to mention thevalue it would have to us old timers in terms of bringing people in. Imean all of a sudden, it seems like everyone has a wiki, and most allof them have great intent and good content. But there’s also a lot ofduplication of effort, and more importantly, dis-connection, at leastthat what it feels like to me.

Am I wrong?

And more importantly, what to do about it?

More conversation ensued and we decided the answer was to create EduWikipedia- the place for all edubloggers to get their act together!

What we need is a master Index where we can all link to all thingswonderful and good that we are doing in our own education 2.0 spaces.

The easiest way I see to do that is through a wiki. So please join me over on EduWikipedia- The place for us all to get our collective act together!

http://eduwikipedia.pbwiki.com
Password = connected
Share it wide and far in all your networks.

Together we can create a Table of Contents for a collectiverepository of Educational Web 2.0 related tools, resources, experts andso on.

After we create the sections in the Index– we still continue tocreate in our own spaces, we just link what we create in EduWikipedia–so we can all benefit from the awesome things we are all doing toimprove education.

Join me… help create this incredible resource!

technorati tags:connected_learning, Darren_Kuropatwa, sheryl_nussbaum-beach, will_richardson, wiki, web, web2.0, collaboration

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End of Year One

Now that the last of the four 21st Century Learning sessions in Elluminate is over-- it's a good time to pause and reflect on where this work has taken the Alabama Best Practice Center's 21st Century schools that are involved in the Microsoft 21st Century Partners' project.

Last night we had the final virtual 21st Century Learning Fair presentation from the ABPC 21st Century schools. These schools have been hard at work since February learning what it takes to be a 21st Century School.

These teachers (with average techie ability) had to configure for and master two communication platforms (Elluminate and Tapped In) while at the same time being exposed to an ever-growing list of social networking tools and how by using these tools they could positively impact student achievement and meet AYP in their schools. The Alabama school teams were encouraged not only to take what they were learning, during the busiest time of the school year, and apply it to their teaching- but to share all they were learning with their faculty in true "change agent" form. Here is what the learning fair was all about...

21st Century Learning Fair .... an opportunity to showcase, reflect, and celebrate!

The focus of our 21st century learning fair is to reflect on the successes and challenges of our journey in our ABPC 21st Century Teaching and Learning Initiative and to share and learn from each other.

Each school team was asked to showcase their work through collaboration in the creation of a visual representation of the learning that has emerged at their schools from this initiative. Each school team had an opportunity to discuss their work using the tools in Elluminate. A showcase should reflect: ~ One or more Cool Tool (blogs, wikis, podcasts, videoblogs, or other) creations each school team has used for professional development or for instruction in their classroom.
Included in their presentations:

~ Sucesses and outcomes of the project
~ Challenges and solutions
~ Lessons learned

The showcases were simply amazing. I was struck with how this was so much more than a "one time- shot in the dark" like so many inservices are in a school. And the feedback we got from the participants echo'd the same sentiments.

Here is a delicious list, that my colleague and friend John Norton has put together, that will enable you to view some of the developing projects in the schools-- http://del.icio.us/abpcjohn

An ABPC staff member reflected recently – "In the mainstream media and in the education publications we all read – people are talking about 21st Century Learning. It's becoming increasingly apparent that the world our youngsters are growing up in is vastly different from what most of us experienced ten or twenty or thirty years ago. And the future they face is different, too. We all feel some obligation to help them prepare for that future – a "digitally enhanced" era where they will not only need to be technologically proficient, but also be able to use technology to communicate effectively, work in teams, solve problems and create new knowledge and understanding."

My colleagues and I do not presume that this project is going to fully prepare participants to deliver on all these obligations. But we do believe it is a good model for setting a school's feet firmly on the path to full-scale 21st Century Learning. In fact, in a recent conversation with Microsoft, they told us they believed our model to be one for the nation. As you can imagine, that was an incredible thing to hear.

Here, in a nutshell, is what we think this project is all about.

Purposeful Design
Although online learning offers many advantages – convenience, privacy, self-pacing, modeling of best practice, the chance to sharpen technology skills – Web-based professional development comes with its own set of challenges. In designing our framework for this 21st Century Learning project, we grappled with some key questions: How do we bring a group of individuals together online and nurture a sense of community and trust? How do we connect with local practice and context? How do we get the change effort to resonate, not only with the individual teacher, but also with the school and district? And how do we do all this in ways that respect teachers' time and many responsibilities?

Framework
With these important questions in mind, for our first "adventure" in 21st Century Learning we designed a four-cycle framework built around three components.

We imagined that: (1) school-based teams of 4 or 5 would attend four live Web conferences (in Elluminate) with the purpose of concept development;
(2) these live, two-hour sessions would be followed by participation in a collaborative community (Tapped In) where teams would further explore the ideas presented in the conferences – and because the Tapped In discussions are "asynchronous," they would do so at times that best suit their schedules. Finally, we imagined that;
(3) teams would find opportunities to use what they are learning and experiencing, applying it in a local context, experimenting with various web tools and digital teaching strategies in their own classrooms and schools.

Our Curriculum Sessions
Our first year curricular framework occured in the following four sessions:

Session #1: "Introduction to 21st Century Learning: The Digital Natives Are Restless" – What is 21st Century learning? Why is it important? This session introduced the teams to the research about why 21st Century Tools and learning strategies are critical to student learning in a digital age.

Session #2: "Cool Web Tools for Teaching & Learning" – This session moveed us from talking about 21st Century Learning to actually examining some specific tools and gadgets available on the Web.

Session #3: "Cool Web Tools: The Sequel" – delved deeper into the cool tools, focusing on their seamless use in instruction and the concept of developing adpative expertise.

Session #4: "21st Century Learning Fair”- Between Session #2 and Session #4, we encouraged teachers to begin to experiment with some of the web tools and digital gadgets that were introduced and explored. In the final session of 2005-06, teams had an opportunity – individually and/or in teams – to showcase, reflect upon, and celebrate the success and outcomes of your learning with all the educators participating in this project.

The real questions we posed to the teams are these:
Are you willing to change – to risk change – to meet the obvious need for better alignment between "school as we know it" and the needs of 21st Century learners? Can you accept that Change (with a big "C") is a sometimes messy process and that learning new things together is going to require some tolerance for ambiguity?

The outcomes have far surpased what we thought was possible. Here are some other resources that were the result of other aspects of our work this year.

Internet Safety Session

Teaching with Blogs sessions

Paper Chase- 21st Century Style

Jon Messer and I were on Skype trying to figure out how we could make studying for our doctoral research exam less painful. Some would argue this is the toughest exam given in the School of Education at W&M. Solution-- we created a wiki. We took the study guide for the course (objectives driven) and pasted it into pages on wiki. I contacted the class and invited each to come put their name by a chapter(s) they would be willing to complete in the study guide. Now this was revolutionary in and of itself in that many of the students are educational leaders and by their own admission not tech savvy. My thinking was if they bit, the experience would carry over into their K-12 schools.

Much to my surprise and delight 11 out of  16 accepted the offer. I thought it would be wise to get the professor's blessing (secretly hoping to influence his use of Web 2.0 in his future revisions of his course) Each individual completed the work on their assigned chapter, then all of us went through the entire document adding our thoughts and cleaning up the content.

The most exciting part is that we created a web resource that could be used as a teaching tool for those who are interested in learning more about quantitative and qualitative research.

Jon set-up a text-based chat tool for us to meet online to study as well.The chat included one person who did not work on the project but used it to study for the exam--which is really the real benefit of the Web-- sharing what we know and have created with others--who then can benefit and learn too.

I was struck by how "open source" like the project was. Many working together to created a useful tool that one working alone couldnt have produced.

At any rate... the value added goes beyond the outcomes on the exam-- (although I am interested to see comparatively if our cohort does better than cohorts taking this exam in the past have done) the real value for me was in watching those who hadnt used a wiki before, become so comfortable-- so quickly. See -- even higher education can use this medium if they will stop letting the pursuit of their degree get in the way of their creativity.