Voices from the Learning Revolution

My Students Put Their 21st Century Skills to the Test

Posted by Shelley Wright on Feb 20, 2012 in Less Teacher, More Student, Making The Shift, Passion Based Learning, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices | 4 comments

This exciting and demanding opportunity for my students to serve as ejournalists at Canada’s National Rural Congress is the “exam” I’ve been preparing them for. I think this is the future of education: authentic tasks; embedded, mobile, BYOD technology. What students can memorize and spew back on a Biology or English final has no ability to tell me how they will perform in a high pressure situation like this. But I think they’re up for the task.

Juggling Plates, Leading Change

Posted by Margaret Haviland on Feb 17, 2012 in Connected Leadership, Creating Global Classrooms, Local Professional Collaboration, Voices | 0 comments

In her new position as Westtown School’s Director of Teaching & Learning, Margaret Haviland says she is “mindful of the many ’21st century learning’ advocates who hold up for us a world in which our students will work in jobs that have yet to be created and likely will hold numerous jobs over the course of their lives. I see this school year as one of living into that experience as I sort through what this new position I’ve accepted will look like.”

Inquiring About Teacher Inquiry

Posted by Bud Hunt on Feb 15, 2012 in Local Professional Collaboration, Teacher Leadership 2.0, The How of 21st Century Teaching, The Moral Imperative, Voices | 4 comments

In year two, our Digital Learning Collaborative teams look at what they’ve learned and apply it in their classrooms. Using an inquiry model, we ask the teams to evaluate what impact their use of technology is having on students. But more often than I’m comfortable with, teams balk at this point in the process. Some of them do not want to do this work. That keeps me up at night.

PBL in Primary: Making Up the Rules

Posted by Kathy Cassidy on Feb 13, 2012 in Less Teacher, More Student, Making The Shift, Passion Based Learning, Voices | 0 comments

Science and health lend themselves easily to PBL (passion or project-based learning) in my mind. But I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it all work in a social studies unit about relationships, rules and responsibilities. I want this to be based on what the students are interested in. Yet there really is nothing about the words “relationships,” “rules” and “responsibilities” that has the ability to inspire passion in most six-year olds. But then I thought about our six Nintendo DS gaming devices.

Contagious Leadership

Posted by Sr Geralyn Schmidt on Feb 10, 2012 in Connected Leadership, Local Professional Collaboration, Passion Based Learning, Teacher Leadership 2.0, Voices | 11 comments

At the best unconference experiences, contagious leadership abounds. And isn’t this the foundation of every social networking site, every blog, and every wiki? Isn’t this the true definition of collaboration? The sum of the parts is always greater than the individual. Together, we are stronger, smarter, and more creative. Leaders who get this are not only better for it, but can lead others to create communities of excellence.

Google Jockeys in the Classroom

Posted by John Norton on Feb 8, 2012 in Global Communities of Inquiry, Less Teacher, More Student, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices | 1 comment

Marsha Ratzel and Shelley Wright are regular writers here at PLP’s Voices from the Learning Revolution group blog. They both teach science, they both keep popular personal blogs about their classroom practice. Marsha’s from Kansas, Shelley’s from Saskatchewan. Shelley teaches high schoolers, Marsha teaches ‘tweens. They’ve never met but they’ve become colleagues and collaborators thanks to their Powerful Learning Practice experience. This dialogue about classroom Google jockeys is their first joint post for VFLR.

Let’s Take Back Our Team-Building Time!

Posted by Becky Bair on Feb 6, 2012 in Less Teacher, More Student, Making The Shift, Student Life, Teacher Leadership 2.0, Voices | 13 comments

I am trying to shift my teaching, make inquiry the centerpiece, and have my students be the leaders in their learning. The biggest challenge I face is that my students have no idea how to work together. As teachers we need to steal back the time necessary to make community-building a priority in our classrooms.

Teacher Fails: Let’s Talk

Posted by Shelley Wright on Feb 2, 2012 in Less Teacher, More Student, Teacher Leadership 2.0, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices | 11 comments

I recently blogged about the importance of cultivating a culture where our students are expected to fail sometimes — it’s part of taking risks. We need to do this as teachers too. The first step, of course, is to create a culture of trust and support among teachers, and that’s hard in the midst of high-stakes testing and the publishing of teacher and school rankings. The only way this will happen is if we’re honest.

I’ll go first.

PB Writing: Teaching as We Learn Together

Posted by Powerful Learning Practice on Jan 30, 2012 in Less Teacher, More Student, Making The Shift, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices | 0 comments

“This year I’ve decided to teach solely through a Project-Based Writing approach,” wrote Heather Wolpert-Gawron last September. “I’m defining PBW as a series of constructed units built around authentic assessment, authentic audience, and authentic learning that incorporates the multiple writing genres. It’s all about blurring the lines between school life and the real world.” That happened in a big way when her 8th graders were invited to present at the 100-Year Starship Symposium. The best part? “Finding out I don’t always have to be the expert; I can model learning as we explore this new content together.”

Howard Rheingold’s World of Infotention

Posted by Ann Michaelsen on Jan 27, 2012 in Less Teacher, More Student, Making The Shift, Student Life, Voices | 9 comments

If we’re going to help our students develop the focus they need to think deeply about things — to acquire Howard Rheingold’s “Infotention” — then I think most schools will need some ground rules, made in collaboration with students after lots of conversations around these important topics.