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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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