About “Voices”

Voices from the Learning Revolution is a blog where voices, strong voices from our Powerful Learning Practice (PLP) communities, tell their stories about connected and shifted learning. What I love about this blog is that it isn’t about us (PLP), but about the collective us (the educators and schools) who share a powerful vision about the future of learning.

We’ve titled this group blog “Voices from the Learning Revolution” not because our bloggers are necessarily revolutionary leaders — but because they are leaving behind outdated practices and mindsets and shifting toward the kind of connected, digitally infused teaching and learning that we know our 21st century students need. We have some voices who are strong and well developed in their understanding; we have others who are just beginning their connected learning journey. And we’ll be inviting some guest writers to join us who most will agree are truly on the front lines of the learning revolution, leading the charge.

Voices from the Learning RevolutionWe’ve positioned this blog as separate from our regular PLP postings because we want to send a strong message that Voices from the Learning Revolution is not about marketing our company — it’s about engaging a large audience of educators and other change agents in a significant discussion about what learning needs to become. For us, this is about storytelling, capacity building, and giving back. This is about sharing what educators and schools who are part of the Powerful Learning Practice network are doing as they put all they have learned in our community and their networks into their daily professional practice.

Voices from the Learning Revolution — like everything we do at PLP — is also about creating and mobilizing connected, collaborative communities on behalf of 21st century learning. So we need you to join our conversations. We must have your voices. Read, post your own thoughts, and push the work of this excellent blogging team out through your own networks. Together, we are so much smarter than we are apart.

Meet our Voices

Ed Allen is a high school teacher and administrator in the Philadelphia area. He firmly believes that learning needs to be networked. He has also been involved in arts education for many years and believes that the arts are critical in schools. Ed blogs athttp://imagineteach.org

Becky BairBecky Bair teaches fourth grade in Pennsylvania’s Elizabethtown Area School District. She is passionate about incorporating technology as one of many tools to help students view learning as an exciting, lifelong endeavor. She writes the blog Teach ‘N’ Life and can be followed on Twitter @becky7274.

Tony Baldasaro is a Community Leader with Powerful Learning Practice and the Personalized Pathways Administrator at the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School (VLACS) in Exeter, New Hampshire. Tony chronicles his transformation as an educational leader at TransLeadership and on Twitter at @baldy7. Read more about Tony here.

Kathy CassidyKathy Cassidy is an award-winning first grade teacher who incorporates technology into her classroom to give her students an authentic audience and a portal to the world. She shares her classroom happenings in several online spaces and through conference presentations.

Brian Crosby is a Community Leader with Powerful Learning Practice and a 27-year veteran teacher in Sparks, Nevada. Brian blogs at Learning is Messy. You can also follow him on Twitter at @bcrosby. Read more about Brian here.

Susan Davis is a leader at Chinquapin Preparatory School where she is Academic Dean and teaches English.  She established her teaching roots in the Baltimore/DC area, where she taught at the U.S. Naval Academy and American University. For the past two decades, Susan has taught in independent schools, where she has found her work with students and faculty alike to be transformed by new media. She blogs about education and media at The Flying Trapeze with Renee Hawkins.

Wendy Eiteljorg is a fifth grade teacher at The Shipley School outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One of the things she loves about fifth graders is that every day is different. She and her class try to live up the their school motto of “courage for the deed and grace for the doing.” Wendy was selected as an NAIS Teacher of the Future in 2009. Her students blog at We have some things to share and she blogs at Thoughts from School.
Dolores Gende has been teaching science and math for over 28 years in the U.S, Mexico, Belgium, and the Netherlands Antilles. She is the Director of Instructional Technology at Parish Episcopal School in Dallas where she also teaches Honors Physics. Her award-winning AP Physics website serves as an important reference tool for teachers all over the world. Dolores is a member of The College Boards’ AP Physics Curriculum Development and Assessment Committee, presents at national and international conferences and leads week-long summer institutes for new and experienced physics teachers.

Patti GraysonPatti Grayson is an elementary teacher at Virginia’s Hampton Roads Academy and a member of the digital learning leadership team. This year she’s looping with rising fourth graders. She blogs at Patti’s Ponderings Follow her on Twitter @pattigrayson.

Margaret Haviland is Director of Teaching and Learning at Westtown School in West Chester, PA. She combines responsibilities for curriculum development and cross divisional curricular integration with fostering a school climate that emphasizes continuous professional learning. Margaret constantly evolves her own teaching practice in her high school US History and World History courses. Margaret believes her task as a teacher and administrator is to shape her student’s learning environment to focus on collaborative learning and ethical leadership in a connected world. She occasionally writes a blog called Breaking Down Walls (http://breakingdownwalls2.blogspot.com). Follow her on Twitter @mhavilan

Renee Hawkins is a 4th/5th grade teacher and Director of Instructional Technology at Garrison Forest School, a nursery-to-grade 12 girls’ school near Baltimore, MD, and co-author of the blog, The Flying Trapeze. A teacher for 28 years, she has taught in the US and Japan and currently lives with her husband in Baltimore County.

Lyn Hilt is an elementary school principal and technology integrator/coach. She believes in learner-centered, passion-driven educational experiences, and seeks to model for her students and staff the power of connected learning. Her thoughts on learning can be found on The Principal’s Posts and Connected Principals. She lives in Pennsylvania, has enjoyed many world travels, and encourages everyone to adopt a greyhound or two.

Time HoltTim Holt is a 25-year public school educator and has been both a science teacher and urban district administrator. He is currently an IT leader in El Paso. Through it all, he has been an experimenter with technology, seeking ways to make learning more engaging and meaningful. He lives in Canutillo TX with his family and blogs at Holt Thoughts.

Bud Hunt

Bud Hunt is an instructional technologist for the St. Vrain Valley School District in northern Colorado. Formerly, he taught high school language arts and journalism at Olde Columbine High School in Longmont, Colorado. He is a teacher-consultant with the Colorado State University Writing Project, an affiliate of the National Writing Project, a group working to improve the teaching of writing in schools via regular and meaningful professional development. Bud is a co-founder of Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation. He reads, writes, and worries about the future of reading and writing and teaching and learning at http://www.budtheteacher.com.

Jenny Luca is a Teacher-Librarian from Melbourne, Australia who is passionate about exploring the potential of new technologies in educational settings. She writes a blog called ‘Lucacept – intercepting the Web’ and has presented at conferences in Australia and internationally. Follow Jenny on Twitter @jennyluca

Ann S. Michaelsen is a teacher and administrator at Sandvika High School in Oslo Norway. She has promoted the use of computers in school since 2002, working on the county level to implement the Skillsoft LMS in our 34 schools. Sandvika was Norway’s 2009 Pathfinder school in the global Microsoft Partners in Learning Innovative Education Forums, and Ann presented at the same event in South Africa 2010. She is an active writer of the blog Teaching English Using Web 2.0 where she offers advice to fellow educators.

Lisa NobleLisa Noble teaches Core French and music to junior and intermediate students at Queen Mary Public School in Peterborough, Ontario. Her guiding metaphor in teaching comes from her knitting and spinning. She often knows where she’d like to go with a lesson, or a fibre to be spun, but the students and the fibre often have interesting ideas of their own. After almost 20 years of teaching French, she is finding her first year as a PLPeep rejuvenating her practice. She tweets as @nobleknits2, and is particularly fond of the #plpnetwork and #aimlang hashtags.

Chris PrestonChris Preston is a 7th grade science teacher at Nagel Middle School in Cincinnati’s Forest Hills Local School District. He enjoys “challenging myself, colleagues, and my students to push the boundaries of teaching and learning.” Chris has presented at regional and national middle-level conferences and has co-authored a professional journal article. On Twitter: @cprestonrunning

Marsha RatzelMarsha Ratzel is a National Board-certified teacher in the Blue Valley School District in Kansas, where she teaches middle school math, science, and sometimes social studies. To read more of her writing about her teaching practice, visit her blog Reflections of a Techie.

Lani Ritter HallLani Ritter-Hall is a Community Leader and Co-director of Connected Coaches for Powerful Learning Practice and a National Board Certified Teacher. She blogs at Possibilities Abound and is on Twitter at @lanihall. Read more about Lani here.

Sister GeralynSister Geralyn Schmidt, SCC, is the Wide Area Network Coordinator for the Diocese of Harrisburg (PA). She has been a high school tech coordinator and graphics design teacher who’s also taught middle grades math and science in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York City.

Brenda Sherry is community leader in the Canadian community and a connected coach.  She is currently an Itinerant Technology Coach at Upper Grand District School Board in Ontario, Canada, after 20 years as a regular classroom and special education teacher. Using social media to connect and learn with teachers both nearby and around the world,  she has co-founded Minds On Media, she chairs the Educational Computing Organization’s Annual Conference, develops and facilitates professional learning for the Ontario Teacher’s Federation  and has been a Connected Coach with the PLP Network.  Brenda blogs at Learning Zone and tries to get to the mountains for skiing and hiking whenever she can.

Peter Skillen is a Community Leader in the Canadian community with the PLP Network, He is currently Manager of Professional Learning for Social Media with the YMCA of Greater Toronto after 40 years teaching students & teachers. He was a founding teacher at the YMCA Academy. Peter has been involved in technology supported, project-based learning since the late 1970s. He serves on the Board of Directors of iEARN-Canada, The Educational Computing Organization of Ontario, and is global ambassador with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Peter is also co-founder of the Minds On Media model of professional learning.

Rachel Small is a fifth grade public school teacher in Seacoast New Hampshire. She believes in fostering deep thinking and a love of learning in her students. To achieve these goals, she employs modeling and connected learning strategies and encourages her students to collaborate and create projects that enrich their lives beyond school. Visit her blog, , and follow her on Twitter at .Rachel’s Reflections and on Twitter at @rvsmall.

M. E. Steele-Pierce: As a district assistant superintendent (West Clermont Schools, OH), M.E. Steele-Pierce works at the intersection of policy and practice where, she says, it’s all personal. She’s an alum of the Harvard Change Leadership Group and is currently learning with the PLP Network. She’s interested in how individuals and systems change. Her home is Cincinnati OH where she finds balance in books, film, arts, and slow food. When she was recently called a bureaucrat, she countered, “a creative bureaucrat.”

Jamie Reaburn Weir is a secondary English teacher in the Waterloo District School Board in Ontario, Canada. She believes that learning happens anywhere and anytime and carries her iPhone and iPad everywhere, including her classroom. She encourages her students to do the same. Jamie blogs regularly at Ms. Weir’s Musings and you can follow her on Twitter @msjweir.

Shelley Wright is a teacher/education blogger who lives in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada. She teaches high school English, Science and technology. Her passion in education is social justice, global education and helping her students make the world a better place. She blogs in Wright’s Room.