Boot Camp Goes Overseas

By Susan Carter Morgan

PLP Boot Camp will be traveling this fallâ€”all the way to Norway.

Ann Michaelsen, a teacher who has been providing new opportunities to learn for her own teachers, has now also arranged the November 17 Boot Camp for administrators in Norway and Sweden.

“We’ve all been using technology for a long time,” she said. “But we hope this Boot Camp will give people a reason to think about what they are doing and why.”

Teachers in Norway are conservative in teaching and learning, she said. However, the curriculum is not set, and teachers are “at liberty to choose more than teachers in the US.”

Yet, even with that freedom, she said, “Students are basically using computers to take notes.” She hopes this conference will help people see the possibilities for more collaborative, online work. She wants the pedagogy to match the instruction; having administrators all work together for three days on this will help that focus.

Ann looks forward to seeing her colleagues embrace some of ideas she’s been sharing. She is a teacher at heart, saying planning lessons is her favorite part of teaching. And, as classes are taught for a full day once a week rather than hourly each day, teachers have many opportunities to use projects, online collaborations, and time for reflection.

“Teaching has gone from the closed system to sharing work on the net and getting responses from other teachers,” she said. Recently students worked on Facebook, sharing a post-it notes project on various topics. And her recent blog post indicates she is looking for some global collaboration!

“I want the principals to be aware of all the possibilities and to be able to support the teachers,” Ann said. “And I want for the teachers to see all the possibilities and not be afraid. It’s too easy to do the same old things. They need to think beyond that.”