Kim Sivick, from Chestnut Hill Academy, replied to a post in the Ning with:

My twitter PLN life has taken off and has been an unending source of information, support, and validation. I began using kidblog on the recommendation of someone I follow on Twitter. I chose to experiment with a culture studies project that my 4th grade students were doing with their homeroom teachers.

I set up a kidblog account and asked each student to blog about the country they had studied. They were to write what they had learned and then ask a few questions. I promised that I would do my best to find people around the world to comment. Because I doubted that I could get enough people from other countries to comment, I told the students that I would also invite people that have traveled around the world to comment.

What happened was nothing short of amazing. In just one week of my first tweet about the project we had heard from people in 20 different countries. Our cluster map lit up and the students were engaged and begging to research more countries.

I made the students business cards with an image of a globe, their name, 4th grade, Chestnut Hill Academy, and the title “International Blogger”. I am planning a day where the student bloggers will wear name tags all day identifying them as International Bloggers.

In addition to all the “hits” on our cluster map, one individual from Ireland added our project to the International Edubloggers Directory, someone in the Canary Islands wrote about us and included a link to our site and we were added to a student blog roll.

To view our project see this link: http://bit.ly/biF2Xp

And then shortly after, Karen Gallagher, from Westtown School, replied to a different post reflecting on the Hopes and Fears participants had at the beginning of PLP with:

Hopes? Far exceeded my expectations. I had no idea I would be so deeply transformed. I am actively thinking about what approaches encourage collaboration and how those can be embedded into Committee meetings, faculty projects, as well as into the classroom. Today, I am living in a learning environment that is dynamic, with students as partners in using and assessing new tools.

Fears? That we will find resistance to new ideas, new approaches, new applications. Striking a balance between our enthusiasm our colleagues’ skeptism–that will be the challenge ahead of us. I am encouraged by our evolution into a collaborative team….and remind myself that it took a great deal of time and communication to bring us to this stage in our development….

So, patience and outreach will be an important part of the way forward. More hope for the future than fear of what lies ahead. That a healthy starting point for the next year.

The drive, dedication and, yes, enthusiasm of passionate educators like these are a big part of what makes PLP a transforming and uplifting experience for so many that participate.

April has arrived, and that means Powerful Learning Practice cohorts are drawing to a close, preparing their final projects. Chesnut Hill Academy, part of the ADVIS cohort, has created a short video explaining their plans to focus on professional development. Their ning includes lists of resources, conferences, and a mentor list of those who might help other colleagues. One group is cleverly entitled “Patrick’s Best Conferences.” Their hope this year has been to model PLP professional development with the rest of their faculty, and the ning is pulling it all together.

In a recent discussion in the ADVIS Cohort Ning, Will Richardson posed a question about public perception:

So I’m wondering, if we believe that putting ubiquitous access into each student’s hands is the best way to teach that student to be prepared for a technology filled world, (and I realize that’s not a given for everyone) how do we best begin to make this case more compellingly to our constituents so that we have their support when we make forward thinking changes like the Calgary board did? Do we just ignore them and forge ahead? Do we “teach” them? If you were charged with changing public perception of technology and social networks in your community, what would you do?

An interesting discussion followed involving many different participants. What I find especially interesting in this discussion (as in many discussions in the PLP Nings) is how individual participant’s responses evolve and morph throughout the discussion thread. Let’s take a look at Jon Freer’s (from Solebury School) responses throughout this thread.

Jon’s initial response early in the discussion included this:

As I embrace this new world in my classroom, I have to say that I have been worried about the feedback I may get from parents. I still have a very hard time explaining these ideas to my colleagues (and have taken some hard hits because of it), so relating the value to parents or the public at large seems daunting.

. . . So how do you educate people who question the value of the internet itself? Tough question.

After several responses from other folks, Jon came back with:

Over the past few months I have been pushing to get up to speed on these issues (something I am not sure is actually possible) and have just started reading Here Comes Everybody. As I read it (I am just a few chapters in), I can’t help but think of the link between Shirky’s stories and education. The tone of the stories seem to hit me in two ways: 1) the people that were/are in the fields affected by the ‘information revolution’, like music stores and newspapers, didn’t really see the huge shift coming and if they did, they saw it, incorrectly, as something that would add to what they do, not replace what they do. 2) the real shifts to technology/social media based revolutions happen because masses of people want it to happen, not because an individual, group of individuals or company wanted it to happen. Music sales changed because the consumer wanted it even if record companies didn’t.

. . . If we can say that this same type of shift will happen in education (that is a big if in my mind, but worth pursuing a bit), the ‘product’ will need to be seen by the public at large to get them excited about it. That is the hard part. The product in this case seems to be well-educated students whose experience in 21st education settings has led them to great colleges (also 21st century style) and successful careers (or perhaps it is enough to say it led to great success in life). As traditional students and parents see this type of success and feel a little left behind, they will seek out that same experience. From there, making huge assumptions so far, there will be a snowball effect. If this shift is worthwhile (and I believe it is more every day) and it leads to increasing numbers of success stories, nothing can actually stop the change.

In my (slowly opening) mind, that means that I (we?) need to press on and realize that there will be near constant pushback and backlash. In those cases, I will do my best to help those folks see the value I see and keep pressing on regardless of their final opinions. Mind you, I am obviously still learning and will need to continue to work towards creating educational experiences that work for my students. But, happily, I seem to be headed that direction even as I type this.

After some more back and forth, Jon’s closing thoughts in this thread were:

I am coming around to the “not if, but when” way of thinking. Your [Will’s] recent tweet regarding your former colleague’s blog adds a question to my post: Can the students be the group that demands change and fuels the shift or must it be the parents? Interesting question, especially since it is the students that have the most at stake.

The discussion-based, grappling-with-big-questions, participant-driven nature of PLP lends itself wonderfully to the read-think-write-reflect-repeat cycle that is so important to personal professional development. No two participant’s needs are the same, and no two-participants experiences in PLP are the same either. While Jon’s thinking has evolved throughout this discussion thread (and throughout the year-long PLP experience), what’s even better is that the rest of us in the cohort can learn from Jon’s thinking in order to further our own thinking. We all have different backgrounds, different beliefs, and different teaching and learning situations, but we all have a common belief in learning together and working collaboratively to best meet the needs of our students. That’s Powerful Learning Practice.

When educators talk about schools and technology, there’s a natural tendency to look forward, to a time when schools are “better,” with technology often part of the perceived solution. In fact, this is often a technique to try to focus on that elusive “vision” of what it is we do and what that could look like.

In the ADVIS Cohort of PLP, we recently had an interesting discussion that Will Richardson started around the idea of a “2020 Vision” for education and where we might be ten years from now. Will asked,

If you could see one “big shift” happening in your school or classroom between now and then, what would it be? In other words, what’s one thing that you see as being really different at the end of this next decade?

The ensuing discussion was rich with different ideas and viewpoints. One thread focused on how much of a presence books, and more specifically textbooks, might have in a classroom in the year 2020. Delia Turner, a teacher at The Haverford School, added this interesting insight:

We piloted a set of Kindles in one of our Upper School English classes this year, with mixed results. It’s easier to do e-books in our English classes because so much of our content is already available–much of it no longer subject to copyright restriction (with all that says about our curriculum).

But I wonder about the assumption that we should replace paper textbooks with e-textbooks without some serious tweaking or without re-negotiating education’s association with publishers. Some years ago, when I was teaching elementary school science, I got fed up with using the large, expensive, glossy books that were the best compromise for my curriculum, and I wrote my own text with only the facts I actually taught. Much of my curriculum wasn’t facts at all; it was skills and understandings, things I couldn’t put in a textbook. I focused on developing some habits of inquiry, the capacity to be surprised, and the ability to write about and reflect on understandings.

The textbook was a good deal shorter that way.

So if I were to wish a wish for ten years from now, it would be to have a great deal fewer and smaller texts, with teachers who were better able to teach.

Delia reminds us that it’s not enough to say “paper textbooks are bad, e-textbooks will be good,” but that we need to think more about what those e-textbooks (or other electronic resources) say about what we value in our schools. We need to focus on what it is we do with our students; on how technology can help us transform what we do instead of how we can use technology to simply improve on something we’re doing poorly.

There’s a reason PLP doesn’t have technology in the title. It’s about learning practices. What do the technology choices your school has made say about what it is you value?

We’ve had some interesting discussions in the ADVIS Cohort around the idea of “lurking” (reading, but not contributing) in online communities. There have been lots of thoughtful responses and discussions, but I thought this comment by Karen Johnson from Trevor Day School was a great way to look at it:

I’d suggest the term “active observer.” I see “lurking” as a great place to start, a vantage point, an active stance for those of us who need to watch and absorb for a while before jumping in.

May I conjugate/contemplate the verb “to ning” from my vantage point, that of – well, OK – a lurker…

Present tense
I ning, you ning, – to check out the forums, to read the many thoughtful replies, to wonder mightily how to wrap my head around these seemingly very abstract concepts, especially since I teach 8-9 year olds

Present Progressive
I am ninging, you are ninging – to put one’s toe in the water and respond to a few posts

Past tense
I ninged (alternately: nang), you ninged/you nang
To have initiated some posts and started some threads

Past perfect
I have ninged (alternately: I nung, you have ninged/you nung) – to be a full and ongoing participant in the online forums

Not meaning to be facetious here, it is certainly my intention to be an active participant in my initial year as a PLP member (to have ninged regularly this year). I find it as stretch, but an interesting challenge, to see how this all applies to younger children since they do not spend much time online, and when they do, it is in a very controlled situation.

I love the way that Karen has framed this, and I particularly love this wording:

I find it a stretch, but an interesting challenge . . .

That’s so much of what PLP is all about. Stretching ourselves as educators. Challenging ourselves – and each other – to make sure we are doing our best to help our students.

No, we don’t always agree (shocking for educators!), and that’s okay. But what we all do agree on is the need to continually examine our practices, to “stretch” and “challenge ourselves,” to “lurk” or “actively observe” or be any of the particular tenses of the verb “to Ning,” all in the service of re-envisioning both our own learning practices, and the learning practices that go on in our classrooms.

So, what tense are you?

PLP.

Powerful Learning Practice.

I always refer to it as PLP, but sometimes I’m reminded of what those letters actually stand for. One of the great things about PLP is the ability to communicate with other caring educators at schools that are sometimes very similar, and sometimes very different, than our own. Through the conversations that ensue, all of us take away ideas that help us think more deeply about what we’re doing and often help us make our own school better.

I was reminded of how powerful PLP can be in a recent forum post on the ADVIS PLP Ning. In a post about Digital Citizenship, Nica Waters Fleming from The Philadelphia School replied several times throughout the thread and laid out her school’s philosophy:

We recently changed our Appropriate Use Policy to a Responsible Use Policy for our students, and review the entire policy every year with students in grades 4 through 8 through some sort of interactive activity (this year we used an online Jeopardy game) at the beginning of the year. It seemed that asking our students to take on more responsibility in their digital world made more sense than simply telling them what we think is appropriate.

While we have this stand alone “class” on what makes for good digital citizenry at the beginning of the year, I try to embed the ideals whenever I am working with students.

. . . We have decided not to filter content because it limits what students can do. We use this access as opportunities to further stress the concept of digital citizenship. Do things slip through? Certainly. But because this is part of the learning here I like to think we do a good job of using these as teaching opportunities.

. . . Several years ago we debated whether or not to filter. In the end we felt it was our responsibility, not the software, to teach students about what it means to be a good (and safe) digital citizen. And it wasn’t worth keeping students away from a wealth of valuable information. It is constant work, but we feel it should be a part of what we do.

It is constant work, but we feel it should be a part of what we do.

Powerful.

One of the fascinating things about PLP is how quickly folks start sharing ideas and resources with one another. This year’s ADVIS cohort just started up on September 29th and there is already some great sharing going on. In response to a question about whether anyone was using social networking in their classrooms, Margaret Haviland quickly responded:

We began experimenting with a Ning website last year in our upper level history classes at Westtown. We were looking for a way to get kids talking about current events. Our students are always telling us that living in a boarding school, they are cut off from the rest of the world. We were so happy with the experiment that we have expanded it this year and have 160 students involved. Each teacher has a slightly different approach to what students post as their “original” current event. For instance, students in Latin American History must post stories based in Latin America. Students are encouraged to reply to any post they want within the entire forum. In my own classes, Ancient World History and World History from the late classical period to World War I students have a specific list of news sources to choose from, I want to wean them off of CNN, BBC, NYTimes. Our modern world history students are being asked to focus on issues in the Middle East. We had some great threads this past year. Everything from the place and role of video games in teenage lives, to environmental degradation of the Brazilian rain forests, to modern art trends in China. Right now there is a vibrant thread going related to the Newsweek Magazine cover on whether or not babies are born with a tendency to prejudice.

This is an excellent example of the power of the learning network that PLP facilitates, and of how to use a Ning in an engaging, meaningful and relevant way. It also mirrors my own experience in terms of student work on the web – when we give them the opportunity to engage in meaningful discussions both inside and outside of school, they respond.

How have you used tools like Ning in your classroom?

The ADVIS Cohort celebrated the end of its year-long PLP experience with a culminating, face-to-face meeting hosted by Springside School in Philadelphia earlier this month. The morning of the event was organized much like a science fair with teams presenting their projects at different tables and started with an hour of project exhibition.

For many ADVIS cohort team members, this is only the second time they’ve met face-to-face since beginning the PLP process a year ago. But the atmosphere couldn’t have been more different.

“The difference in the energy level and tone in the room relative to the first face-to-face was incredible,” said Stacey Kley, director of professional development for ADVIS. “They got to know each other online and it was like old friends getting together.”

After an hour of project exhibition, four teams presented their projects during the second half of the program.

“The energy and excitement in the room was palpable. There really was this great sense of sharing and excitement about the end product of the work the teams had done throughout the year,” said Barbara Kraus-Blackney, executive director of ADVIS. “Whereas at the first meeting, and even on some of the Elluminate sessions, there was a sense of wariness and fear. It came full circle. There was a great sense of trust and sharing and knowing each other even though, in most cases, people hadn’t seen each other face-to-face.”

Kraus-Blackney said there was a great comradarie going on not only among teams, but within teams.

“One thing that really struck me was the appreciation within a team of working together and getting to know each other on a level they wouldn’t have,” Kraus-Blackney said. “Some of our schools are quite large and might not have known each other so well.

ADVIS has decided to sign on for a second year one PLP cohort as well as a new, year two cohort.

“We’re looking for some leaders to come out of this,” Kraus-Blackney said. “It’s a great chance for them to have a place to be leaders and to contribute to other PLP communities and our second year one cohort as mentors.”

You can see more photos of the event here.

Each of the ADVIS teams developed culminating projects, most of which involve plans designed to bring the PLP experience to fellow faculty members and students. Four teams presented their projects to the attendees. Below are links to each school team’s wiki page and a brief description about the team’s concept in developing their project.

Abington Friends School
Abington has decided to use the PLP cohort model next year and beyond, with the goal of creating a professional learning community for the purpose of supporting the teaching of 21st century skills in the classroom. The current members will remain, and we have produced a video to invite and encourage others to join. You can read more about their project here.

Baldwin School
The projects developed by Baldwin’s team were both presentational (created by students) and representational (instructional “how tos” for faculty use). Through a Professional Development wiki , the team is setting the digital stage for dialogue on projects that are being done at Baldwin, along with instructions. You can read more about their project here.

Haverford School
Team Haverford kept a diary of the PLP experience on their wiki page and documented their project with multimedia presentations and video. Their project involves revising their curriculum to incoroprate 21st century skills and creating a learning community for faculty and students. You can read more about their project here.

Holy Child Academy
Holy Child started their project with the goals of introducing faculty and administrators to the importance of Web 2.0 tools as well as providing professional developoment opportunities. You can read more about their project here.

Montgomery School
Team Montgomery’s project focuses on getting parents supporting and using 21st century learning tools in an effort to empower the entire school community with the knowledge necessary to encourage students to become global citizens. You can read more about their project here.

Moravian Academy
You can read about Team Moravian’s project here. (Info wasn’t posted at the time of this posting. More description to come.)

Rosemont School of the Holy Child
Rosemont’s project is to design an ongoing professional development model that will help faculty explore the shifts in education and the impact of the collaborative and creative impact of technology while helping them to figure out how to take advantage of the unique potential of emerging tools and approaches. You can read more about their project here.

Doane Academy
As Doane Academy’s team began to brainstorm ideas for its project, a faculty member came to the team with a need for technology assistance for a student project that she was proposing for seventh grade. The project is the Challenge 20/20 Project, sponsored by NAIS. The program proposes 20 global issues, and teams of students from two to three schools collaborate to research a problem and develop ideas for ways that they can be part of a solution for their issue. The team decided to make helping with this the center of its project. You can read more about their project here

The Pilot School
You can read more about The Pilot School’s team project here. (Info wasn’t posted at the time of this posting. More description to come.)

Woodlynde School
Woodlynde focused its project efforts on raising awareness among its faculty of Web 2.0 tools and getting reachers excited about working with technology. The team decided to do this in a number of ways, from utilizing wikis and Google docts to tagging useful Web sites through Diigo. You can read more about their project here.

Wyoming Seminary
Team Wyoming created a wiki discussing different Web 2.0 tools and how teachers can use them. You can read more about their project here.

Friends School of Mullica Hill
The team’s main goal was to model and encourage the use of 21st Century skills and digital technologies in hopes of enabling teachers to develop a curriculum which includes skills students will need for the 21st Century and beyond. You can read more about their project here.

Benchmark School
Benchmark’s team project outlined plans for bringing web 2.0 professional development to the school. The project starts with a Technology Statement and a celebration of steps already taken this year, then focuses on assessing skills and building a training program, acquiring tools and increasing communication throughout the school. You can read more about Benchmark’s team project here.

The Hill School
The Hill School Team’s project dealt with making the school’s modern language classrooms more interactive with emerging technology. You can read more about their project here.

West Chester Friends School
The West Chester team developed its “Moon Base Project” with the goals of helping students learn to collaborate and utilize 21st century tools. You can read more about their project here.

Academy of Notre Dame
Team Notre Dame is developing a faculty professional development program that focuses on new and emerging Web 2.0 technologies. You can read more about their project here.

The Episcopal Academy
The team from Episcopal Academy created a Web site linking to learning communities for faculty and students. You can read more about their project here

Springside School
You can view two Springside videos here. You can read more about Springside’s team project here. (Info wasn’t posted at the time of this posting. More description to come.)

The Shipley School
Team Shipley’s project goals included building a sustainable, teacher-led, collaborative learning community to encourage teachers to improve their professional practice by making meaningful change in their teaching as well as to positively influence student learning. You can read more about their project here.

The King’s Christian School
The team from King’s Christian created a project with goals of introducing teachers to a mentoring program in the use of 21st century skills and technologies, preparing teachers to be mentors. You can read more about their project here.

One of the fascinating things about being a “Community Leader” in a PLP cohort is the opportunity to observe the great discussions going on and ideas being generated in schools around the world, and watch as learning communities develop both in individual schools and virtually in the cohort. Recently in the ADVIS PLP cohort, Dennis wrote in a post titled Sharing, Risk Taking, and Creativity:

At our faculty meeting today I was center stage discussing teaching and learning in the 21st century. My first announcement was the fact that we were getting rid of the two computer labs in the building. We would however, be adding two Innovation Studios. Of course some people laughed, others gave me the deer caught in the headlights look, and some embraced the idea and felt inspired.

. . . However, my main point was this: we need to shift the mindset of how we use the resource (the computer lab). It is no longer a place where we just go to sit down as a whole class and do the same activities.

. . . The second announcement I had was the addition of a piece of butcher block paper on the bulletin board in the faculty room. The question on the paper “what is a learning community?” I asked everyone to write their thoughts about what a learning community is and the characteristics of a learning community.

Not long after Robin replied:

I love the studio-based learning model! One of the things I like most about Dennis’s approach is the de-emphasis of the technology piece. As independent school teachers our faculties have a good deal of control over their curriculum and what happens in their classrooms and often take risks in terms of new projects or methods. Unfortunately, for many teachers, when they hear the word technology they duck and cover. This re-frames the initiative so that technology is just one piece of a much larger picture.

As far as the question on the butcher block paper…I am not surprised that there was not a rush to add input. It has been my experience that a good chunk of the professional development that our teachers participate in is about “doing”, not “thinking”. Many teachers are not often involved in pedagogical discussions. Although I understand the value of “make and take” PD we have to encourage more “philosophical and visionary” sessions as well. This can be a hard sell for some (think how hard it has been for some of us to go so slowly with this experience) but I think it is imperative if we are truly going to promote the shifts we are working towards.

Dennis then replied back:

I guess I’m just different because I’m not afraid of being wrong, that is the only way I will ever learn anything. Through the Innovation Studio I’m hoping that people will be willing to take chances and risks and say “okay this project was a flop….however I learned along with the students what not to do and what to try next time.”
Do you find the fear of being “wrong” is an issue at your school when it comes to the faculty?

Robin responded:

I just took a minute away to touch base with a colleague (one who does see the big picture) and she confirmed my thoughts. We have a very supportive faculty here so most people feel comfortable venturing an opinion. However, many teachers, here at least, are so consumed with the day to day business of their classroom that they do not often think about or discuss larger pedagogical ideas. This does not make them bad teachers – they are all gifted educators – it is just not a habit they have developed. I think it is up to us to start the conversations.

Dennis’s and Robin’s schools are physically about 5 minutes apart, but without PLP they most likely would never have had this exchange.

Later Russell commented:

Of course the great irony here is that we want our students to be risk-takers and to embrace learning from mistakes…and yet our assessments typically don’t reward taking risks, but rather punish risk-taking by holding up a single right answer. It is critical that we as adults learn to take risks and be wrong, so that we can model this for our kids.

Helping students and adults develop what Carol Dweck calls a “growth mindset” is key here. If you’re not familiar with Dweck’s work, it’s terrific:

Link 1
Link 2

Not only does Russell continue and expand on the conversation, but he links to resources that other PLP participants can investigate and take advantage of.

John then contributes to the conversation, and extends it by asking another question:

Great idea – I really like the shift away from rows and rows of computers. A learning/collaboration studio, where teachers and students have access to a variety of tools and resources. What if every class room was set up like this?

Dru then comments:

Awww, if every classroom were designed like this, it would be heaven for our students, messy for the teachers, and so completely different from what we see right now in a traditional independent school. BUT, it is what we are seeing on college campuses and at workplaces across the country and around the world, so we MUST start to make these changes.

There were many other comments as well, but finally Dennis came back in with an update:

I just thought I would give an update. I checked the chart paper and here is what it said:
“What is a learning community?”

* Works together to share and build an enriching environment.
* A safe place to try, fail, and try again. A learning community takes risks together.
* An environment that fosters innovation and creativity.
* A way to discuss “Big Ideas.”
* An atmosphere of respect where people are comfortable sharing their ideas.
* A place where we can learn from our own and each others’ mistakes and feel comfortable doing so.
* A place where everyone is interested in learning.
* A place to share.
* Exchanging ideas.
* Collaboration cross-curricular/division

Then I posted another piece of paper which asked “what are the essential qualities of a learning community?”

Responses:
* Time
* Access
* Be willing to share ideas.
* To know each other better as people so we feel more comfortable sharing and learning from our mistakes.
* Being okay with our mistakes.
* No one is perfect. Certainly not in this profession.

Dennis found support in the PLP cohort as he tried to foster some change in his school, and the cohort was able to learn from his experience and possibly incorporate that into their own schools. This is a great example of the support a virtual community like PLP can provide.

What are some ways you’ve seen a virtual community (PLP or otherwise) provide support for teaching and learning?

One of the interesting things about the PLP model is observing how the community builds itself. This is definitely not a linear process, and one of the things I have to constantly remind myself as a “Community Leader” is that different teams, and even different participants within those teams, will move forward at different (sometimes vastly different) rates. Ray Hawthorne, an Instructional Coach in my building, often says we need to “go slow to go fast,” and I think that’s a key part of the PLP Cohort model.

From my experience with staff development at my own school, as well as my experience this fall with PLP, I’ve become more and more convinced that reflection is the key to building community and moving forward as educators. It’s also something that few schools seem to implement well; so many educators have trouble when asked to reflect on their own learning. As groups of educators devote time to thinking about teaching and learning in the 21st century, and as they have time to thoughtfully reflect on their own teaching and learning, they seem to reach a tipping point where ideas coalesce and folks are ready to move forward.

At least one of our teams in the ADVIS PLP Cohort seems to have reached that tipping point. The team from The Haverford School has recently posted some interesting and powerful reflections, both inside the private Ning and on the public wiki. Team Leader Lisa Snyder, who’s the Head of Information Services for The Haverford School, recently commented on a discussion in the Ning:

Our meetings have not had much structure until recently. At first, when we met, we simply talked about what we were learning, reading, and how it all relates to our situation here. . . I thought that we should be creating something for our administration, our colleagues, and our board to communicate our experiences in PLP and to give them an idea of what we’re up to. We used our team space on the Wiki and each of us wrote a small narrative of what we’re learning.

The reflective process of creating and sharing what they were doing in PLP with others seems to have crystallized each team member’s thinking. I think they can say it better than I can. (In all cases, emphasis is added by me.)

Dennis Arms talks about how PLP gets the discussion going:

The change in how our students are learning has been exponential and it’s going to take more than just me to shift teaching and learning. I think the PLP program is a great conversation starter.

Nick Romero comments on how he’s been pushed to reexamine everything he’s doing, and how the PLP community helps challenge and support him:

Joining PLP has pushed me to re-examine what I am doing in my class and how to improve it. As a teacher I constantly ask myself: how can I better engage my students and enrich their experience? How can I make their learning more meaningful? PLP is helping me find answers to those questions. Meeting (in person and virtually) teachers from other schools and learning about their successes, questions and struggles in implementing 21st Century Skills in their classrooms has been invaluable. Ever since the first meeting, my mind has been spinning. I feel there is so much to learn about what these skills are and how to effectively teach them to my students. I have a steep learning curve, but I am excited to take this on.

Dru Ciotti has come to realize what I stated above, that folks are going to move at different paces and that we have to be okay with that:

This PLP experience has, so far, been very rewarding in terms of giving me EVEN MORE to think about in terms of how to encourage the upper school faculty to view technology not as an add-on but as an integral part of their teaching and of our students’ learning. I envision classroom teachers using tools like wikis, Ning, or Elluminate to eliminate the boundaries created by their classroom walls and to really empower our students with 21st century skills. Some are willing to jump on this quickly moving train, and others are still looking for parking at the station. The good conversations I’ve had with our group so far have opened up for me the possibility that not everyone is willing to run for the train, and I have to be okay with that. I need to focus on the ones that want to go on the journey.

And Lisa herself reflects on what it feels like to be a learner, and how important it is to assume a “learning posture”:

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

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

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

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

All of the PLP Cohorts have invited in “Expert Voices” to share some of the tools, and I think that will help those who need something a little more concrete to help them frame the big picture ideas. But, as Lisa says so elegantly, we as educators all need to take a “learning posture” if we are going to learn and grow alongside our students.

So, when’s the last time you reflected on your own learning?