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 . . .

In the fall, my high school English class created a social media campaign against modern day slavery. We created some fantastic photos & videos. But the truth is, in the end, not much came of them. Originally, we created a blog to house all of our work in, but if you take a look, not much is there. Why? The fancy academic phrase is cognitive overload; in short, they’d had enough.

The content was heavy and the work was hard. We’d had an initial meltdown in the inquiry process when we hit the October wall, but we were able to recover and keep going forward. By the end of October my students were at a place where they could start filming their videos. It took weeks to finish them. Going in, I don’t think they had any idea how hard it would be.

So what was the problem? It’s hard to deal with the issue of contemporary slavery for three months. And while my students are competent researchers and creators of content, the subject took an emotional toll. By the end, they didn’t want to hear the word slavery anymore. At first this kind of irked me. I thought, “Really, after all you’ve learned?” But the truth is, I’ve had this experience too. When I used to teach the Holocaust in a traditional classroom, I would spend weeks researching. By the end of the unit, I couldn’t handle any more death and destruction. It’s like a part of you shuts down because you just can’t manage the emotional load. I could empathize with my students; I knew what they were feeling.

I asked each of them to write a post about their experience with the slavery unit. It didn’t happen. I could have threatened them with bad marks, or coerced them, or even laid on a guilt trip. But the truth is, they had nothing left to give. They had learned and been pushed to the limit: they had nothing else to offer. In all of my years of teaching, I don’t think I’ve had a unit produce that effect before.

I don’t know the fix

And here’s the thing. I have no idea how to fix it. I have no idea how to scaffold and support my students so that they don’t experience this overload in the future. And maybe that’s not even possible. I don’t know. It’s a failure, for the moment, that remains an enigma.

More recently, as part of an assignment for The Secret Life of Bees, my students were to create a museum box. The concept looked amazing. The problem? It didn’t work amazingly. My students kept losing pictures, audio and video they had embedded. Some of them tried for hours. I received frantic emails. The end result? We ditched the assignment. Why? Because my students were able to critically evaluate the tool for its usefulness and usability, and it came up short. And maybe that’s more important. But in the end the assignment, as conceived, was a failure.

Yet, it’s this failure, along with hundreds of others, that inspires me to learn more. When things fall apart it makes me think, “Why did that happen?” “How can I change it?” And I dive into the research to find or cobble together a working thesis that I test.

While some great things have happened in my classroom, the truth is that I have failed over and over again in my teaching. And that’s where the great things come from.

Creative Commons images: Pretty/Ugly Design and Comicbase

Powerful Learning Practice is represented in this directory of popular online communities and the comments we’ve received in this have been amazing! It demonstrates the strength of our PLP community through these positive messages of support and transformation. We’re proud of the work done by thousands of PLPeeps – we don’t think it’s equaled anywhere else.

What they’re saying about Powerful Learning Practice, professional development for educators

Marsha Ratzel says:

This community thinks deeply about Problem Based Learning, student centered learning, making the shift to being a connected teacher and inquiry learning. There are lots of practical ideas that someone can take away and immediately apply in the classroom. In a similar way, there are posts and articles about how to start thinking about these topics, so if you don’t know anything, it’s a good place to get started. Lastly there are such a variety of teachers, classrooms and types of schools represented, you can probably find someone who is very much like you and your classroom that is offering practical, tried in the classroom reports of how it went and what you can try.

Steve Goldberg says:

This is a thoughtful community with lots of people from around the world who are doing very cool things. Members are generous with their time to help new members of the community and are transparent about the work they do, so it’s easy for new members to get up to speed. I’ve broadened my perspective a great deal from my work with PLP and I continue to learn on a daily basis from PLP.

Becky Bair says:

There are many different reasons why I am thankful to be part of the PLP community. As a PLPeep I have learned new tools that have allowed me to connect with educators throughout the country and the world. These connections helped me create a professional learning network that has taught me more than any professional development day or conference I have ever been a part of. Prior to being part of PLP I was not happy with the test-centered focus of my classroom and wanted to integrate technology more, but I wasn’t sure what to do to change things. PLP taught me how to make effective changes in my classroom so I can meet the requirements of the tests I give and still provide my students with learning opportunities that will prepare them for their future experiences.

Shelley Wright says:

I am truly grateful to be part of the PLP community. It has been a huge source of encouragement and inspiration. Through the seminars and interactive community I have learned to completely shift my classroom from an overfocus on prescribed content, to a student-centred, project-based, tech embedded classroom. It’s been an incredible journey, and I’ve received a lot of support from PLP. My favourite part is that it’s provided job embedded PD, which has changed my classroom more than any conference.

Patti Grayson says:

PLP is a fantastic community of passionate learners. There is enormous support within the community, and a strong leadership through Sheryl, Will, and the community leaders. “PLPeeps” are there for one another through Twitter and other social media, providing information and encouragement for teachers attempting to shift their classrooms, long after they have completed the program. PLP truly “gets” learning communities, and fosters leadership in these communities. PLP also helps members understand how to bring 21st century skills to their classrooms and schools through guided action research projects. There is a reason it’s called POWERFUL Learning Practice!

Christa Forster says:

The PLP professional development model is so smart: It allows teachers to be true learners again. In our PLP work, we encounter new information, skills and concepts related to how technology is contributing to the shift and shape of education. We are challenged to make sense of our roles in this shift, and we are encouraged to develop a community of connected colleagues with whom we wrestle with the questions of how we can best help students learn and thrive with their knowledge and skills in the 21st Century.

Darren Kools says:

Powerful Learning Practice is such a game changer. The process of discovery that I have embarked upon will help all of my students in the future. I try to share more, connect more and challenge myself to be better because of this program. My energy and excitement about teaching is at an all time high and it’s not coming down. If you have the chance, try it! Make the chance, be the change you want to see in the world, because most likely they will be doing PLP too!

Allison Robertson says:

Dedicated, passionate people–many are right where I am in the process of learning to infuse technology into the classroom using an ever-changing landscape of tools. Best Quote: It is no longer what you know, nor who you know but rather “Do you know what who you know knows? This learning community has been a lifeline to connect with others for meaningful discussions and practical information on blending pedagogy, knowledge,and technology . Thank you for starting this community!

Patti Rodger says:

This is my second year in the PLP community. It has been one of the best PD opportunities that I’ve been involved with. It has given me the tools to lead our teachers and students in embracing 21st C learning tools and processes. While we have a long way to go and a lot still to learn, Sheryl and Will’s leadership, as well as many others who have taken leadership roles, has been phenomenal. They are credible and practical and they help make sense of paradigm shifts.

Cary Harrod says:

Without a doubt, this was the most life changing professional development experience of my 23+ years in teaching. I was fortunate enough to be a “fellow” for our district for three years. We have had over 40 of our district staff participate in PLP. This professional development embodies what we now know about professional learning: it must be job-embedded, long-term, community-driven, passion-based and leverage digital technologies to bridge the gaps of space and time. Sheryl Nussbaum Beach and Will Richardson have their feet firmly planted in the 21st Century; their understanding and knowledge of good teaching practices, coupled with a deep understanding of networked learning and digital technologies is the basis for this compelling PD. All professional development should be based off the PLP model.

Sister Geralyn says:

PLP is am amazing community of educators that are committed to life long learning. It is a place in which one can collaborate about a girth of topics about education. I am a better person for being a member of PLP. It has taught me that we are better when we lean on others and when we collaborate with others. In short, we are better educators when we connect educational dots with others from across the county or across the world.

Peter Skillen says:

The PLP community pushes the boundaries. Actually, that’s not quite accurate. We, as individuals and as colleagues, are encouraged and supported to push our own boundaries – to become ‘natural’ learners similar to what we were like as children before formalized school. PLP is a community where we can follow our passions, engage in questioning our understandings of education and learning, challenge others and be challenged by ‘critical friends’. It encourages us to be transparent about our learning – our wonderings, frustrations, ahas, questions, ‘thinking aloud’, revelations, and classroom practice. The Powerful Learning Practice community is daunting in its wealth of information – both ‘stuff’ and people resources – but, in that way, it is not unlike the ‘real’ world. The real world is rich with complexity and we struggle all our lives to make sense within it. PLP is similar.

One learns to be in the community with ‘intention’, with purpose and passion. This allows ‘ideas to find us’ as Eleanor Duckworth might say. It’s not always comfortable – but then ‘cognitive & emotional dissonance’ are at the heart of learning.

If you want to learn how to best meet the needs of students in this era, this differentiated environment affords the best opportunity I know.

Sheamus Burns says:

PLP has pushed our independent school educators to think about professional development in ways that alight with 21st century values and ideas. The community continues to grow and we find invaluable resources in each other. If you’re just starting to develop your own online presence and looking for a place to team up with others like you as you navigate the web and strive to connect with a diverse group of educators, I recommend PLP.

Renee Hawkins says:

The life of a Technology Coordinator can be a pretty lonely experience. I speak a language only a small number of people understand; few people want to buy what I’m selling. At least it seems so much of the time. That’s why the Powerful Learning Practice has become so important to me both personally and professionally. Contrary to the popular myth that the internet has weakened social connections, I have found my professional family with the individuals I have met through this organization. I share, I learn, and I grow with with teachers from all over the world. This year my Year Two PLP Cohort is exploring Passion-based learning and it is having a real impact in our classrooms. I’m grateful to the good people at the Powerful Learning Practice, especially Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson, for providing me and others with the support and space to make this happen.

Kathy Cassidy says:

Being part of the PLP community has pushed my thinking and helped me to be more reflective about what I do in my classroom. I love the fact that it is a year-long experience and that it is job-embedded. Change does not happen overnight. The asynchronous/synchronous model of PLP allows those involved to learn at their own pace and at a time that works for them,while still bringing participants together to learn. I am a better teacher because of my involvement with these educators.

Lani Ritter Hall says:

Members of the Powerful Learning Practice community, affectionately dubbed PLPeeps, collaborate together to effect systemic change in education. As learners first, they aspire for a more accomplished collective practice. From NE Ohio I’ve connected with educators in Australia where it was our tomorrow, with passionate teachers in Texas, in PA, in Ohio, in Kansas, in NY, and across Canada. Their diverse perspectives have added a special synergy to our learning. Relationships, both personal and professional have become long lasting. The world has become a better place for the action research they have conducted and for the PBL units they have designed. My interactions with others in this community have had a profound impact on my life and my beliefs around learning.

Trish Dower says:

I participated in PLP community in 2011 in Victoria as part of the DEECD (Education department Victoria). I was a wonderful opportunity to build a community of like minded individuals and to network to develop and challenge ideas, understandings and approaches to how we can best engage and support learning in 2012. I met amazing people both face to face and during online workshops and was inspired to ‘embrace change in my teaching practice’ and to promote problem based learning as the key to engage learners in our school.

Sheryl, Will and all the gang involved were supportive and really encouraged you to think deeply, asking questions that promoted thinking and problem solving at a deeper level. Our wrap up ‘show case’ day was fantastic. It was inspiring to see the growth and development of the community of PLPpeep’s across Victoria. If you have a chance to get involved, I’d say, “Go for it!” I’m glad I did.

Kathleen Tsakiris says:

I am a year 2 PLP member and this is the best opportunity to learn how our students already and will continue to learn in the future. This community models how I want my classroom to look. Everyone participating – all moving forward with their learning – endless support – the permission to make mistakes and ask any question – time to slow down or move ahead as needed – all levels of expertise addressed- all effort celebrated! The perfect combination of self-directed and collaborative learning with endless resources to facilitate both.

Lisa noble says:

PLP has been an incredible growth experience for me. Here, I find people to bounce ideas off, to challenge the way I think, to push me to do more, go further, think deeper, try again and again and yes, again, to figure out the best way to help my colleagues and students and me make the shift to 21st century learning. I am not the same learner I was before I began this journey, and I know I have much farther to go.

Sharon Raquet says:

I am in my second year with this wonderful group . Support, ideas, latest trends, a caring community of educators!

Chris Shriver says:

This is my second year as a member of the PLP community, and during these two years I have found myself on a learning adventure unlike any other. Through the course of the journey, I have grown as an educator in ways that I could never have envisioned, and I have met some of the most amazing people who stretch my thinking with each encounter. I am grateful for the journey because of where it has taken me and because of where I know it will lead me in the future. My outlook as a teacher and a learner has been forever strengthened because of my place in the PLP community.

Check out COCP

Check out the Connected Online Communities of Practice project. There are lots of ways to get involved. You can also follow this effort on Twitter or sign up for their newsletter.

Volunteering with elephants in Kegalle, Sri Lanka.

I posted this picture of myself riding an elephant in Sri Lanka on my Facebook profile and instantly the comments came pouring in:

“Bucket list: ride an elephant…CHECK! That is so awesome!”

“These pics are amazing. Makes me want to do this!”

“I’m so jealous!”

No need to be wishful or jealous, you can do it too! Taking your personal learning journey halfway across the world might sound extreme, but the lifelong learning rewards are in your reach.

Most Americans don’t take vacations. The ones who do plan a vacation to take a break and relax. I’ve always considered vacation travel a priority because I consider it a personal growth opportunity.

Three weeks before I planned to take some vacation time, I still hadn’t decided where to go. I only knew that I wanted to challenge myself by traveling to an unfamiliar country totally alone (as opposed to visiting a friend or joining a tour group). To me, traveling alone would be its own challenge and learning experience. Add to that, I started to pick up surfing in my thirties and my recent vacations have focused on challenging my fears and physical limits with waves. I didn’t know where to go, but I wanted to visit a country alone and surf.

Sri Lanka sounded like an adventurous surf destination, certainly less typical than visiting Costa Rica or Puerto Rico. Commence Googling. Hours and hours later, I came across an organization that offered hands-on volunteering at an elephant orphanage. I never would have dreamed up an opportunity like taking care of elephants was just out there for anyone to grab!

Each morning, I bathed the elephants by scrubbing them with a coconut husk in a river.

After spending two weeks volunteering with Inspire Sri Lanka, I can personally tell you anything you’d like to know about the endangered Asian elephant (elephas maximus): They are a bit smaller and have a different shape than African elephants. Only about 6 percent of them have ivory tusks. Their height is two times the circumference of their foot! I learned elephant language and how to train and work with captive elephants. Most importantly, I know the complicated issues surrounding their endangerment — causes of the species’ decline, issues that go into protecting the species and ways we can save and protect these magnificent giants. I learned this while scrubbing their hairy skin with coconut husks each morning to give them a bath and by touching their wet, pink tongues as I hand fed them bunches of bananas. I’m not only educated about their situation in Sri Lanka and other parts of Asia, I’m now personally invested in the cause to save the elephants.

As luck would have it, I chose an elephant orphanage that also supports a girls’ orphanage just down the road from their elephant park! A few times each week, after a morning of dirty work with the elephants, I visited the girls to teach basic math, English vocabulary, geography, reading and writing. The 45 orphans share two bedrooms, a classroom, a kitchen (no appliances, just cabinets and a fire place), a two-stall bathroom with squatting toilets, a large playground and a vegetable garden. Thankfully, Inspire Sri Lanka recently provided them with a washing machine. Can you imagine that up until then, all 45 girls hand washed their clothing!

Spending time with these orphans was heartbreaking and extremely rewarding. The girls are starved for attention, and while two weeks wasn’t long enough, I got to share my time with them and make a difference in their lives by simply playing games like musical chairs and cat, cat, dog (aka duck, duck, goose!) and teaching them American dancing, such as the Electric Slide.

What a vacation! I learned hands on about elephant conservation. I exchanged culture, language and compassion with orphan girls and other locals. I explored Buddhism. I surfed the Indian Ocean. I saw the devastation and discussed personal accounts of the aftermath of a tsunami that killed 228,000 people in South Asia. Three short weeks in Sri Lanka completely changed my life. Experiencing all of these amazing adventures taught me to expand my personal limits, helped me to develop and enhance my compassion and encourages me to turn more to travel as a powerful learning opportunity.

We all know vacation time keeps us healthy and stress-free, and that most Americans need to be taking more of it. Perhaps when we think of vacation as a learning opportunity, we will prioritize vacation travel as much as we prioritize professional development travel. If you’re wondering if cost is an issue, it can be extremely cheap to volunteer or even just travel abroad. I spent the same amount of money flying to and spending three weeks in Sri Lanka as I did flying to and spending just four days attending a BlogWorld conference in Las Vegas.

To learn and give back to society on my vacation is something I plan to do more often. I am determined to make this  “once in a lifetime” experience  a priority in my life so that it can occur much more often than just once.

More photos of my trip to Sri Lanka are available on Facebook, and additional posts detailing my trip are available on my personal blog.

Periwinkle will provide PLPeeps and our at-large educator audience with the opportunity to virtually travel the globe to hear and see how Powerful Learning Practice is helping shift and change education.  During Periwinkle’s visits, PLPeeps will take him around their schools and city (while taking pictures) so we can see all the great things the PLP teams are doing.  These pictures will be uploaded to our Powerful Learning Practice Facebook page, posted to our twitter (@plpnetwork) account and given the #plpnetwork hashtag.

Periwinkle started his adventure at the FETC 2012 conference in Orlando, Florida.  From there, he traveled to Virginia to visit with PLPeep Patti Grayson as she prepared for her trip to EduCon 2.4 in Philadelphia, PA.  While at EduCon, Patti and Periwinkle meet up with other PLPeeps and PLP Community Leaders.  Below are just a few pictures of Periwinkle’s adventures over the past two weeks.  Stay tuned to our Facebook and Twitter (@plpnetwork) pages for more of Periwinkle’s adventures.

Classroom teacher Heather Wolpert-Gawron teaches in the San Gabriel (CA) Unified School District and blogs at Edutopia, The Huffington Post, and her personal blog TweenTeacher, where a version of this post appeared last fall. She’s also the author of a book for new middle grades teachers,

On February 6, Heather will offer her first five-week online course for Powerful Learning Practice. The topic, Project-Based Writing, grows out of teaching experiences that began with the events she described in this September post.

____________

by Heather Wolpert-Gawron

This year, I have decided to teach solely through a Project-Based Writing approach. 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.

The goal: if it doesn’t apply outside of school, then it isn’t worthy enough to teach inside of school.

As a result of this shift (and mind you, it’s only been a couple of weeks since school began), I’ve found that not only do my students enjoy learning more, but I enjoy teaching more. I’m coming to see, strangely enough, that this is mostly due to the fact that with Project-Based Writing, I’m not limiting myself to only teaching what I know. I am the writing authority, but not the content authority. I’m learning with my kids, and in so doing, I’m modeling how to learn.

Let me give you the best example I can. As I write this, we’re in the midst of a fantastic unit called The Darpa Project. It all began this summer when my husband told me of a cool symposium scheduled for late September in Florida, for which DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) was seeking presenters. They were asking scientists, futurists, ethicists, and science-fiction writers to apply to attend a forum where they would collectively brainstorm how Earthlings might prepare for a deep space journey to colonize another planet. The project itself is called the 100 Years Starship Study. (I can hear Star Trek music in my brain scoring that title every time I write or type it.)

Here’s some of what I learned at the 100YSS website:

The 100 Year Starship™ (100YSS™) study is an effort seeded by DARPA to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible.

 

The genesis of this study is to foster a rebirth of a sense of wonder among students, academia, industry, researchers and the general population to consider “why not” and to encourage them to tackle whole new classes of research and development related to all the issues surrounding long duration, long distance spaceflight.

The conference, I discovered, would be segregated into 7 tracks, all focused on different aspects of what it would take to prepare for colonization: the time-distance issues, economic challenges, medical considerations, the need to communicate and publicize the rationale, and so forth.

As I read over the website, it occurred to me that applying to speak at a conference was a kind of persuasive writing exercise. It also occurred to me that studying these different “tracks” and synthesizing one’s research into a proposal was sort of an executive summary.

And lo, a Project Based Writing unit was born.

Planning the starship unit

So I whipped together an iMovie introducing the concept, with some dramatic and suspenseful music thrown in. I cobbled together a pacing guide for myself and a packet with checklist for my students. The packet gave details of how each small “professional community” of experts would be broken down into groups of 7 students. Each student would be responsible for becoming an authority on one of the “tracks.”

The packet also contained various assignments and due dates, leading up to a mock panel that would take place during lunch, where students from all over the school could come to our symposium to learn about colonizing the stars.

And then I had a thought: What if I called my friend in the Caltech patent office and asked if she knew of anyone who could come over during lunchtime to be an authentic audience for my students. Perhaps the person or persons could ask questions like a panel might be asked, or evaluate the presentations in some way. Wow, wouldn’t my students be excited?

So I sent out the email to my buddy, who responded and said she’d ask around and get back to me. Two weeks later I got a call. From NASA.

Where no 8th graders have gone before

It seems that there is now an additional group of experts added to the agenda for the DARPA 100 Year Starship Study: my students!

It’s true. A small panel of my kids will be presenting via Skype (or WebX, TBD) to an audience made up of those very same scientists, futurists, ethicists, and science-fiction writers my students will be researching. My students will be presenting not as scientists, but as youthful experts with a unique vested interest in this project. After all, the adults in the room are going to be planning an adventure for a group of humans several generations beyond their own. My students, on the other hand, will have a direct role in building the future for their own children or grandchildren. They will be creating a legacy that they can carry forward when they leave 8th grade.

But the import of these events — the amazing luck of participating in the Starship symposium — is not what makes this unit so fun to teach. What makes it so very cool for me is how little I know about the content I’m asking my students to learn.

. . . Or their teacher

Sure, I know a lot about writing and reading comprehension and research skills and internet literacy — and that’s ultimately what I’m responsible to teach. However, that’s not what the content of this unit is focused on. It’s focused on science and space, cultural trends and colonization, and that means we’re going to have to learn together.

This is different than reciprocal learning, where I learn from them and they learn from me. This is going on a journey with my students, emailing and exploring and discovering and having head-scratching moments and eureka moments along with them. We will enter the classroom with ideas together; we sit and brainstorm together; and ultimately, we will come away from this experience richer and more knowledgeable together.

I’ve got a few other PBW units for other genres already in the works for later this term: Literary Analysis and Narrative, to name two. I don’t know all the details yet, but I do know that my goal for this year is not to teach only what I already know, but to look for every opportunity to learn together with my students, so that modeling how to learn becomes part of my job.

You can find out more about how Heather’s students fared at the Starship conference here and more details about her new ecourse here.

Meet Grace Beach, Powerful Learning Practice Program Administrator

Grace Beach, PLP Program Admin

I am Grace Beach and I am 23 years old. I was born in Valdosta, GA and resided there until I was nine, but have spent the majority of my life here in Virginia Beach, VA. My passions are theater arts, reading, baking, crafting, and zombielore.

What do you do here at Powerful Learning Practice?

I am PLP’s program admin. I work behind the scenes handling scheduling, returning and receiving phone calls, mic checks in Elluminate Sessions, and many other miscellaneous administrative duties.

What else are you up to professionally?

I am currently in the concept stages of starting a theater and artists collaborative with a fellow actor I know from college. We are calling it The Monster Box and couldn’t be more excited about it.

Desert island situation – you get to take five books. What are they?

The Bible by God, The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (It counts as one because I say so), SAS Survival Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild, in Any Climate, on Land or at Sea by John Wiseman, Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (It is reputed as the hardest book to read in the English language and on an island I might have the patience to get through it) and Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger.

What is your favorite example of how online communities are powerful and transformative?

The Invisible Children activist movement. Invisible Children started as a documentary on child soldiers in Uganda and through the power of online community and social media activists have organized and put up over 5 international and nationwide events to spread awareness, started a fund raising campaign and lobby for peace.

Where can people find you online?

Facebook: Grace Beach or on Pinterest

Any final words?

“Now comes good sailing. Moose. Indian.”

Many people are thinking about the way we spend our time and what gets our attention in this digital age. Howard Rheingold calls it infotention and I’ve been learning a lot about it recently thanks to his challenging but rewarding online course, “Introduction to Mind Amplifiers.” It’s a five-week experience using asynchronous forums, blogs, wikis, mindmaps, social bookmarks, synchronous audio, video, chat, and Twitter. Participation requires a serious commitment of time and attention by every member of the learning group. Believe me, the skill of staying focused on what is important certainly proves to be helpful here!

The world demands “infotention”

Infotention is a word I came up with to describe the psycho-social-techno skill/tools we all need to find our way online today, a mind-machine combination of brain-powered attention skills with computer-powered information filters. ~ Howard Rheingold

I first heard about Howard Rheingold and his fascinating history as a founding father of online communities via my PLN. I had the pleasure of hearing him present at ISTE in Denver 2010. I wrote about the presentation where he talked about “crap detection 101.” He discussed the importance of sharing best practices for Internet literacy and critical thinking with our students. He reminded us of the importance of teaching our students how to search the web skillfully and how to find trustworthy websites. (See this video on YouTube with advice to students.) He recommended triangulation, saying that by all means start your research with Wikipedia, but always check two more sources (for example, here and here!)

The course I’m taking is pointing me in many directions and the reading material list is long. I have a lot of new books in my iPad Kindle app, including several that examine the potentially detrimental effects of the Internet on human cognition and relationships, like: Alone Together by Sherry Turkle and The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. The latter wrote a much-talked-about 2008 article for The Atlantic magazine called Is Google Making Us Stupid? in which he described his own experience this way:

(W)hat the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

Carr wrote that his friends reported similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.

What are the implications for our students?

If highly educated professionals are having problems staying focused on long pieces of writing, what about students? More and more schools are going 1:1, equipping students with personal computing devices without equipping their teachers with research-based pedagogy to support its use.

It is like Clayton M. Christensen says in his book Disrupting Class: we can’t go on teaching, assuming all students should be taught the same things on the same day in the same way. When teachers are lecturing, using a PowerPoint for more than 15 minutes, students’ attention most certainly will be on content they find online! I think it is rather unfair to assume that all teachers automatically know how to deal with these distractions and how to guide their students. I know many teachers struggle with this at my school.

The solutions I read about online tend to emphasize strict time limits, interesting tasks and real life problems. I found this recent article from the Harvard Education Letter useful: “Teaching students to ask their own questions”. But even if we have a school where the core values are: inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation and reflection, (Science Leadership Academy, Philadelphia), 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.

Some draft guidelines

Here are some possible guidelines or ground rules that come to my mind for using computers and staying focused in school. Please add your own thoughts in the comments.

A. Make your own rules of student Netiquette.

Netiquette (short for “network etiquette” or “Internet etiquette”) is a set of social conventions that facilitate interaction over networks, whether through social media, chat, email or other means.

1. Computer lids down when teacher is giving instructions for class.
2. Stay on task, no gaming, Facebook, Twitter, Skype or surfing when not related to school work.
3. Computer lids down when teachers or students are presenting, unless you are taking notes or searching online for more information.

B. Teach and discuss how to focus in the age of distraction.

1. Close all other applications and devices when reading texts.
2. Make a mental list of what to do and how much time you have available.
3. Turn off the internet when you don’t need it.
4. Leave your phone at home sometimes!

C: Teach and discuss how to find reliable information online.

1. Teach searching skills and introduce safe search engines.
2. Teach and discuss knowing how to ask the right questions and finding the accurate answers.
3. Help students build personal learning networks with people they know they can trust. One way is to introduce blogging and the use of Twitter.

I’ll be spending two more virtual weeks with Howard Rheingold. If you’d like to know more about his e-course, which is characterized by many good things, including small enrollment, visit this webpage at the Social Media Classroom.

Image: Joi Ito, Creative Commons

Norwegian school leader Ann Michaelsen (ctr) with PLP co-founders Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson at ISTE 2011.

If you’re a superintendent, a principal, or an educator in another key leadership role, you know that your students are using the Web, mobile technologies, and other tools to connect and create social networks. But do you also recognize their transformative potential for learning?

In their five-week Leading Edge Boot Camp e-course, PLP co-founders Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson help education leaders not only understand how 21st Century technologies are challenging curriculum and pedagogy but how savvy leaders can use them economically to expand learning opportunities and assure all students gain the skills and dispositions they need to thrive in the new millennium. (Find out more and register here.)

In a recent interview, Will and Sheryl talked about their Leading Edge course — and why they call it a “boot camp.”

1. Give education leaders a quick overview of PLP’s Leading Edge Boot Camp e-course.

Will: School leaders need to bring a fresh lens to their own practice and what’s taking place in their schools due to the huge shifts brought about by technology and connectivity. This e-course gives them a great way to understand the shifts more clearly and to rethink their own leadership role and the implications of digital-age learning for their schools.

Sheryl: And our Leading Edge Boot Camp e-course is carefully designed with the life of busy school and system leaders in mind. In the past, we’ve offered it as a challenging 3-day on-the-ground retreat (that’s the origin of “boot camp”) and participants gave it excellent reviews. But many other administrators who feel the urgency of these issues told us three days away from the office wasn’t practical for them.

By offering the experience in an e-course format, where we can blend weekly live webinars with anytime-learning via readings and  discussion threads, most education leaders can commit some hours each week for 5 weeks. During that time, they’re guided through an in-depth experience that begins with a general understanding of the shift taking place in the world of learning and ends — in week 5 — with a concrete plan of action to implement in their schools.

2. What is the biggest obstacle to “the shift” as you see it, from an administrator’s point of view?

Sheryl: Time. We hear it over and over again. Leaders don’t have time to learn what they need to know to recreate their schools as 21st Century learning environments. Teachers don’t have time to change their practice and fully engage their iGeneration students. In this course we help you understand how to find and manage all the needed time effectively.

Will: We’re living and educating in a really challenging period of transition, from analog to digital, from isolated classrooms to global connectivity. We’re figuring it out as we go. The larger themes of change are clear, but the practical aspects of seizing the opportunities and dealing with the challenges of that change are still fairly difficult to sort through. This boot camp, with its leading edge perspective, can help.

3. Who should take this e-course?

Will: Any school leader who is interested in making sure his or her students are fully prepared for the networked, collaborative, always on world they will live in.

Sheryl: In some cases that includes teacher leaders (and they are welcome!), but more often than not it includes superintendents, principals, curriculum providers or technology coordinators. Our goal is to help 21st century educational leaders re-envision practice and develop an action plan for shift and change in their local context

4. In the ecourse you make the case for distributive leadership and using the talent in your own organization to create a shared vision. Do you consider that a “non-negotiable” for today’s leaders?

Sheryl: Yes. Just think about. We live in a participatory culture in which educators can learn anything, anytime, anywhere. The smart educational leader knows how to leverage that capacity and the knowledge that results from it. When you distribute leadership, you enable your faculty and staff to go out, connect with others, harvest what they learn, and bring it back to inform your school improvement model and – most important – benefit students and student achievement.

Shared vision is essential to building a learning organization and a learning organization is the best hope we have for recapturing schools in such a way that they meet the needs of todays learners.

5. You’ve offered the e-course several times now. What’s one a-ha moment from past sessions?

Sheryl: Will and I have both learned so much from watching how different educational leaders apply the knowledge that we share in this e-course. But one well-documented example I can point to is Tony Baldasaro’s experience (he wrote about it here). Tony is a virtual charter school leader in New Hampshire and a former assistant superintendent and curriculum administrator. He came to understand what transparent, open leadership means in a connected world; the importance of vulnerability in producing an effective 21st century leader, and how a well developed digital footprint is critical in the personal and professional life of any school leader today.

6. What’s your e-course teaching style?

Will: We’ll look at context, practice, tools and some key research, but we’ll do it more by asking tough questions than delivering answers. If you like having your thinking challenged, you’ll enjoy this course.

Sheryl: The awesome thing about this particular course is that Will and I teach it together. We’ve been told we have complementary but very different strengths. There’s a nice mix of humor and roll-up-your- sleeves and get the job done instruction. It makes for a great time, but all of us — instructors and participants — really work too.

7. Anything else we need to know about the course?

Sheryl: The exciting thing about Leading Edge Boot Camp is that it gives the busy educational leader not only the research base they need to make policy sense out of technology trends and shifts in today’s schools but the opportunity to connect with other 21st century leaders who will share their lessons learned. They won’t just hear our voices. Participants will also leave with a well-honed personal online learning network, tailored to their leadership role, and a good understanding of how to leverage that network on behalf of positive change in their schools.

Will: If you are an educational leader, and you’re trying to figure out how you can become more connected, and more savvy about the rapid global advances in technology and their implications for your learning enterprise, then you want to take this course.

Join leading-edge instructors for this unique eCourse.

Find out more and register now. Course starts February 6.

How do you make change happen beyond your classroom? When I started writing about how technology was changing my approach to teaching and learning, my focus was initially on my immediate classroom and the changes happening there. But I’m a Teacher-Librarian. I work not only in an English classroom where I hold court, but across all year/grade levels working with teachers and students in many different subject areas.

It became obvious to me that systemic change was necessary to enable all our students to benefit from the opportunities created by technology and connectedness. Over the past year, the team I work with has been leading change in our school, working to expand our understandings about 21st century information fluency and help our students grow as digital citizens.

This means addressing all of the traditional information literacy we’ve always concentrated on, but also helping our students understand new technologies and how to use them effectively, become ethical users of digital resources, and learn the importance of creating and maintaining a positive digital footprint. And it’s not only the students who need this knowledge base: Our teachers need to be well versed too.

So what are we doing about this?

At the end of 2010, with the support of our Head of Learning, we presented what we called an Information Fluency Initiative to our Heads of Faculties and proposed we begin the introduction of this for 2011. First up, we introduced to our staff the idea of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge – the TPACK model, developed by Koehler & Mishra.

Source: http://tpack.org/

When using this graphic with staff, I see a lot of nodding heads. They understand the need to integrate technology to support their content knowledge and pedagogical practice. But they don’t always know how to do this using new technology tools that support meaningful learning and aren’t just gimmicky add-ons. As Teacher-Librarians, my team works hard at staying on top of new ideas in this arena. We have committed to work closely with our staff, both in the library and in classrooms, to help staff and students come to grips with new ideas using technology to support their learning.

As they look at existing and new ideas for curriculum offerings, we’re encouraging our staff to use the SAMR model to inform their planning. I first saw this graphic showing stages of technology integration last year at our Association of Independent Schools Conference, where Martin Levins was leading a sandpit group talking about how to use it to modify learning tasks.

Again, when explaining this model I see heads nodding in agreement.  Teachers ‘get it’ when you use models like this, and they pay attention to models that have a research base. SAMR was developed by Ruben Puentedura, and from my perspective, along with TPACK, it should be the basis of any discussion in schools about the use of technology in the development of learning tasks.

The next layer of our Information Fluency initiative was the development of Information Fluency certificates for Year 7, 8 and 9 students. The certificates are an invention of ours — a means to measure acquisition and as a way to give the kids a sense that they have achieved something. These have been created using the ISTE NETS for Students standards as the basis. They identify as critical for today’s students the ability to:

■  Demonstrate creativity and innovation

■  Communicate and collaborate

■  Conduct research and use information

■  Think critically, solve problems, and make decisions

■  Use technology effectively and productively

We have used ISTE’s NETS.S curriculum planning tool to help us identify skills we think students should have acquired by the end of each year.  We were looking to develop an identifiable skill set that we could measure in terms of acquisition. I’m not a strict proponent of a ‘tick the box’ measuring scale — not by any stretch of the imagination. But I did want something concrete that we could use with our students and staff.

We also recognised the need to address our evolving Australian Curriculum and looked to ACARA (our nation’s independent authority responsible for the development of a national curriculum) to see what was being developed there. What is contained within the General Capabilities underpins meaningful teaching and learning, and is really quite closely aligned with the ISTE NETS for Students. What we have done is to tag each skill within our Information Fluency Certificates with the appropriate General Capability it addresses. As our teachers plan curriculum, we feel these certificates will help them to identify how they can embed new technologies and practice into their delivery of curriculum, knowing that they are addressing aspects of the General Capabilities that ACARA has identified as necessary.

Developing Student ePortfolios

What has taken up considerable time this past year has been the introduction of an Edublogs platform to enable all students from Years (grades) 7 – 10 to have an ePortfolio as a means of documenting and demonstrating their learning.

In the early stages of planning this Information Fluency initiative, I could see we were going to need some means of sharing the learning that was happening in classrooms. We investigated a WordPress multi-user setup, but felt that the management of this would fall on individuals already tied up with full loads — and our under the pump IT team, who already work tirelessly to maintain a robust network.

We decided that a fee-based Edublogs platform — one that allows for blogs to be set up with our school’s domain name and comes with support — would be a more workable option. The initial creation and linking of blogs to homepage class blogs took some time at the start of the year, as did the effort to teach students how to manage their blogs/ePortfolios. We have allowed students to select their own themes and customise sidebars with widgets.

One of the critical elements of the set up was having students create categories within their blogs/ePortfolios. We recommended they create a category for every subject they were studying, and other categories that reflected key school directions and co-curricular involvement. Students were taught how to write their posts and tag a category or multiple categories to each post. This has made it easy for subject teachers to check into student blogs, click on their subject category, and see all of the posts written by that student for their subject area.

We have encouraged our teachers to use these these blogs/eportfolios for formative assessment, and students have been encouraged to use them on their own initiative to write about what they have been doing in their classrooms and in co-curricular activities. Over the course of the year we have seen some wonderful ePortfolios created, supported by teachers who can see the positive benefits for our students as they create their own digital footprint.

When you see a student’s eportfolio/blog as Google’s top result for a search for Yr 7 Unit of Inquiry, it’s pretty impressive. (One of our staff members was conducting just such a search, and sent me an email excitedly relaying what she’d found!) Students have embedded Clustrmaps in their sidebars, and have seen the reach they have by writing in public spaces. We’ve even recently had the author Susanne Gervay leave a comment on a student’s post discussing her novel, ‘Butterflies’. Not every student ePortfolio is brilliant, and some year levels are working much better than others, but we are in our infancy still. It’s accepted that this is part and parcel of the pedagogy now, and we will continue to develop the platform in 2012 and onwards.

What these blogs already do is provide terrific feedback for students, something that has been a key focus area for our staff as we explore elements of John Hattie’s research. It’s also really encouraging to see students providing feedback to other students  — they are remarkably supportive of one another. We’ve also seen parents and grandparents leave comments. It’s this critical school/home nexus that can help our school move closer to a Networked School Community, of the type proposed by Associate Professor Glenn Finger and Mal Lee.

What’s next

Our Edublogs platform reveals that our students are developing skills identified on the Information Fluency Certificates we created. Last year we just used them in our team to gauge how we were progressing and did not formally use them with the kids. This year we intend to implement them fully. We do recognise the need for the certificates to be fluid documents responding to new technologies as they arise. It’s important that they present our students with new opportunities and challenges.

2011 has been a year of development, and 2012 will be a year of  full implementation (our school year in Australia is just about to begin again). We need to map our curriculum to ensure all areas of our faculty gain the skill set and understandings we have identified as being critical for the development of effective citizens in our world today. This is not easy work, particularly as it often means teachers need to accept the idea of working in a co-teaching capacity if they themselves don’t have the necessary skill set.

Something I would like to look closely at next year is the AITSL (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership) National Professional Standards for Teachers and see how the work we are doing aligns with these standards. Helping teachers see the connectedness between school initiatives and their professional development is an important part of this process. I heard recently from someone working in this area and look forward to exploring that work more.

As a Teacher-Librarian, I know this is critical work. We can be change agents in our school, and in the process, do the best kind of advocacy we can for our profession. I believe this is the job of a Teacher-Librarian today. If you are prepared to stay abreast of change and develop the skill set that can move your school and student population where they need to be, you have a future.

What about schools in other places? What steps are you taking to shift your school, build a networked community, and change your teaching and learning in transformational ways?

Meet Christen Dodd, Powerful Learning Practice eLearning Director

Christen Dodd, PLP eLearning Director

Hi, my name is Christen Dodd and I was born and raised in upstate New York.  I currently reside in Virginia Beach, VA where I have spent the majority of my life.  I love being creative in all that I do and sharing my knowledge with others, both face-to-face and virtually.  I enjoy being outdoors (esp. when it is warm) and challenging myself physically and mentally.  I have completed two IronMan races (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run), one Marine Corps Marathon and numerous half marathons.  I am currently working on getting back in “race shape” and look forward to my next race in the springtime.

What do you do here at Powerful Learning Practice?

I am the Director of eLearning for PLP. I coordinate all the eCourses being currently offered, and am working with some wonderful instructors to create exciting new offerings for this spring and beyond!

What else are you up to professionally?

I am working on growing my digital footprint and creating a new online experience that will help open up the dialogue in families with children of all ages.

Desert island situation – you get to take five books. What are they?

Probably all children’s books if my daughter was with me.  If she weren’t with me, I’d probably still take her books because it would remind me of her and our special times together.  I also think the smallest books can still have the best lessons and morals in life.  My top four choices would be Love You Forever, Goodnight Moon, The Giving Tree and I Am Really A Princess.  My ‘adult book’ would be anything by John Grisham.  I love reading and watching mysteries that keep me on the edge of my seat.  Oh and I can’t forget my newest read, The Connected Educator by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Lani Ritter Hall.

What is your favorite example of how online communities are powerful and transformative?  

Unfortunately, not all schools embrace a culture of sharing. In schools where the competition can be fierce, online communities have allowed the educators I’ve worked with to transform their teaching practices.  By working online they have felt the freedom to grow by asking questions, voicing concerns and sharing ideas and resources with others.  The feedback and stories of transformation I hear at the end of every course are nothing short of amazing.

Where can people find you online?

Twitter: chris10dodd

Any final words?

Each day remember to appreciate all that you have accomplished, thank those that have helped and know that tomorrow will only get better!