Playing Together
By Clarence Fisher
Just about every school (and office) for that matter that I’ve been in has had some sort of system for filtering the content that comes in from the internet. Now, I don’t want to debate the pros and cons of these filters (believe me, I REALLY don’t want to do that), but I do want to take some time to think about the decision making process.
In the PLP cohort of the archdiocese of Philadelphia, there has been some discussion about implementation. For example, Bonnie Gowen, a technology instructor in the cohort has been thinking about filters:
“All the web filter we can set up don’t really give the students a chance to make choices regarding appropriateness (is that a word). I have asked my 5th and 6th graders to consider whether or not I should unblock Flickr for them. We are using a blog and their comments are very interesting.”
Including students in making decisions about the filters that are in place in their schools. A simple, but really, rather revolutionary idea. Asking them to judge based on their level of maturity, their information needs and based on the culture of the school is a much higher level exercise than simply blocking something off from them.
The same is true for the discussions around Moodle that have bloomed in our cohort. Sister Mary Ellen Tennity has weighed in over and over again in discussions, giving advice that parents and students be included openly and honestly in discussions and implementation plans around the use of a new tool such as this. Teacher Mary Gratton includes quotes from blog posts written by students who post about the power of being included in the implementation process, about being given a chance to contribute to what happens in their building.
Finally, Melissa Dow brings this important piece of advice:
“My biggest advice is to take it slowly and keep the big picture in mind. We are in year 3 of using Moodle and it is now part of our school culture, but this didn’t happen overnight.”
Changing school culture; that is what PLP is about. There are myriads of new tools and new tools to try out. Some of them are useful, while others are not. Tools will come and go, but the skills of communication and the ability to change the culture of your building to support student learning more effectively is the cornerstone of what PLP is about.
It Should Be Part of What We Do
By: Karl Fisch
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.
Illinois-Ohio Cohort celebrates at culminating event
By Mary Worrell
Earlier this month teams from the Illinois-Ohio Cohort gathered at the Marie Murphy School is Wilmette, Ill. to celebrate the end of their year-long PLP experience with a project showcase.
Gail Soriano from the Avoca School District 37 said the PLP experience gave her team a chance to get to know others in the district. The Avoca district hosted two PLP teams.
“It was amazing. The thing I enjoyed the most was working with people in my district from both schools,” Soriano said. “A lot of times we don’t have the opportunity to work with teachers in the other building and from different grade levels. It brought our district together in a way I’ve never seen before – we were working toward a common goal.”
Kim Zimmer, from the other Avoca District team, acknowledged the importance of the collaborative aspect of the PLP experience.
“The transformation came in the conversations we’ve had since – it brought together teachers that might otherwise have never crossed paths,” Zimmer said.
The technology integration aspect of PLP shook a lot of team members up, Zimmer said.
“Which as a tech facilitator was great to see,” she said. “We came out knowing a lot of more about technology and tech integration. I really came away with the concept of a personal learning network – it’s changed the way I do things and the way I help teachers.”
Mark Emmons and his team from Leyden High School had to celebrate failure before they could find the right strategy for implementing their project.
“Like many, we went in thinking we would develop professional development sites, connections between our colleagues, and everyone was going to jump on the bandwagon. We thought 300 teachers would embrace technology,” Emmons said. “The good news is we quickly changed our focus. Instead of throwing a blanket over all of the teachers, we started communicating one-on-one and grew it that way. We started to create evangelists not talking about tech, but talking about engaging students.”
Alison Cox from the Bedford City School District said her team struggled at first before finding their footing.
“It was a long process for us and sporadic initially. A year ago we were disjointed, not working toward any particular goal, but we are now,” Cox said. “The six of us in this district are on the same page and working toward a reachable goal. We’re really excited about the future.”
The Bedford team is developing a wiki to serve as a database of information to share with teachers without having to meet in-person.
Emmons from the Leyden team said the PLP experience was hard, but necessary work.
“You either figure out how this is going to be in your teaching toolkit, or you’ll relegate yourself to the back of the bus,” he said. “When the objective is to use technology, we’re in the wrong place. When technology becomes ubiquitous, that’s when it gets really cool.”
Visit each team’s wiki page below for a peek into how they planned their culminating projects.
Illinois Teams
Avoca School District 37 – Teams One & Two
Avoca Team One developed a menu of tutorials for its teachers called TechBytes. Avoca Team Two focused its project on student blogging. You can read about both teams’ projects here.
Leyden High School District 212
Read about the Leyden High School team’s project here.
Northbrook School District 28
Greenbriar School: Team Sprockets
The Greenbriar team’s project, “No Teacher Left Behind,” was developed with the goals of increasing the use of technology across the building and creating a venue for efficient professional collaboration. Read more about the project here.
Meadowbrook School: Team Polaris
The Meadowbrook team focused its project on enhancing communication and collaboration among staff members. Read more about their project here.
Northbrook Junior High: Team Apex
The Northbrook team aimed to foster online collaboration and professional development for its staff through its project. Read more about their project here.
Westmoor School: Team West ‘Site’ Story
The Westmoor School developed its project with the objective of changing the behavior, temperament and culture of the school to use 21st century learning practices. Read more about their project here.
Sunset Ridge School District 29
The Sunset Ridge team is in the process of developing a wiki for its Sunset Ridge Learning Network, which will focus on disseminating information about a 21st century learning seminar series. You can read more about the project here.
East Maine School District 63
The four East Maine teams focused their project efforts on staff development. You can read more about their project here.
Ohio Teams
Forest Hills School District-Secondary
The secondary Forest Hills team is building a wiki that will share the team’s 21st centurized lessons and foster collaboration among teachers. You can read more about the team’s project and find a link to its wiki here.
Forest Hills School District-Elementary
The elementary Forest Hills team developed a professional learning community for its culminating project. You can read more about the planning involved in the project here.
Bedford City School District
Team Bedford is developing a virtual learning community to build awareness of 21st century skills like collaboration, creativity and critical thinking. You can read more about their project here.
Independent Cohort wraps things up
By Mary Worrell
The Independent Schools Cohort celebrated the end of its PLP experience with a culminating face-to-face meeting and project showcase last month. A number of team members and leaders had a chance to reflect on the year-long experience and how they have changed, both personally and in their practices.
Stewart Crais is a PLP 21st Century Fellow and works in operations at Lausanne Collegiate School in Tennessee. The Lausanne team decided to develop a program of projects for each grade focused on teaching computer skills.
“We had a scope and sequence that was pretty detailed starting in kindergarten, but teachers didn’t know exactly what they were supposed to teach in terms of computer skills,” Crais said. “We landed on this idea of trying to make an easy way for teachers to understand how they’re required to get those skills across to the kids.”
Projects will be required of each grade rather than a separate computer class, which Crais said the school pulled out of the curriculum because they were often having to re-teach the same material year after year.
Kim Davis, a high school social studies teacher and PLP team member at Lausanne, said learning about virtual learning communities was the most beneficial aspect of the PLP experience for her.
“Being immersed in technology as our culture, some of the concepts were a little remedial, but it gave us more exposure to what was out there,” Davis said. “It gave us a point to look at our weaknesses. We have so much technology, but it’s not well organized. We needed to take something that was overwhelming for teachers and students and put it into a process that is clean-cut, concise and builds on skills.”
Wendy Drexler of the Shorecrest Preparatory School team said the team first had to tackle its own diversity when starting the PLP process.
“We had two team members from the lower division, two from the middle division and two people from the upper division. The personalities, requirements and styles of teaching were very different,” Drexler said. “It was a little messy, but we learned a lot.”
In deciding how they would tackle their project, the team held two focus groups of students and found that those in the upper school didn’t have a grasp on the relationship between technology and learning.
“They saw school as very traditional,” Drexler said. “But we found that the younger kids were much more excited and open-minded to using technology in the classroom.”
Based on the focus group results, Shorecrest focused their efforts on the middle division using quotes from students as response to any push back they might encounter.
“We’re asking teachers to do one thing ‘more them, less us,’” Drexler said. “Give kids a say in how a project is initiated, how they’re going to be evaluated, and put more responsibility on them.
“Instead of focusing on teachers we’re focusing on the kids,” she said. “That’s the most important thing we learned this year.”
Laura Deisley is a PLP 21st Century Fellow and Director of 21st Century Learning at The Lovett School, which has a team from its middle school and one from its upper school.
The middle school is opening a new, LEED-certified green building in the fall as well as receiving new laptops making it a 1:1 laptop school. The middle school team decided to situate it’s PLP project alongside these two events with a week-long, immersion, modeled, 21st century learning project, Deisley said.
“Ultimately we’re going to ask each student to come up with a way to express their understanding from the week. They will be given a lot of latitude,” she said. “We’ve set aside an entire week. There’s no curriculum mandate.”
The PLP experience has been an eye-opening experience for Lovett’s team members, Deisley said.
“Our teachers will tell you they’re lifelong learners, but they are so used to sit-and-get models,” she said. “To put them in this model is such a huge shift.”
Deisley said the team members became captivated by 21st century teaching and learning at different points during the year.
“The hook is different for everybody,” she said.
The Kinkaid School team in Texas decided to tackle technology professional development and take ownership of it rather than outsourcing it to a vendor.
“The PLP model was so powerful for us we decided on professional development for our project,” said Christine Papadakes, a third grade teacher at Kinkaid and its PLP team leader.
Larry Kahn is a PLP 21st Century Fellow and Director of Academic and Information Technology at Kinkaid.
“One of the things I’ve been struggling with is how to make professional development better,” he said. “It became a no-brainer. We had the skills within our own school. We didn’t need to bring in outside help.”
Lizzy Riordan is a middle school English and Spanish teacher at Kinkaid. Prior to starting the PLP program, Riordan had only used Web 2.0 tools socially, not in her practice.
“It’s been an eye-opening experience for me,” she said. “After my PLP experience, I have a blog going in my classroom, a wiki and VoiceThread. I know a lot more about Web 2.0 tools for the classroom.”
Ron Gutowsky, a third grade teacher, found that getting out of the way and letting students use the tools was important.
“Just letting it happen – showing them something and being sure I give the kids who can handle it some time to use it,” he said. “There are some children who need more time. We do a lot of peer teaching – the kids are very helpful.”
For Vanessa Riesgo, an upper school Spanish teacher at Kinkaid, the PLP experience and using Web 2.0 tools in the classroom forced a major shift in her perspective and the students’ points of view.
“We’re part of a bigger community – a global community,” she said. “We always ask students to be out of the box, but we don’t take that step. Let them know we’re learning with them.
“Teaching is not teaching, it’s really learning,” Riesgo said. “It’s not a one-way communication. Everybody is collaborating.”
Each team from the Independent Schools Cohort created a wiki page for their team and detailed their culminating projects. Read on for descriptions and links to each team’s project.
Atlanta Area
Lovett Middle School
The Lovett Middle School team is developing a week-long learning experience for all 6th grade students, faculty and parents to officially launch the school’s 1:1 laptop program and 21st century learning environment. The week coincides with teh opening of a new, LEED-certified green building for the school. Classrooms and disciplines will be “hidden” during the week and students and faculty will explore their new surroundings, issues of sustainability and reflect on their changing community. You can read more about their project here.
Lovett Upper School
The upper school team from Lovett is developing a home page for upper school classrooms with online presence, which will enable faculty to “see” into their colleagues’ classrooms for the first time and make student access to those classrooms (and corresponding online tools and communities) easier. Team members are also pursuing individual projects. You can read more about the upper school team from Lovett and their projects here.
Woodward Lower School
Two lower school teams from Woodward have joined forces to create a lower school Ning to serve as the main communication portal for daily office memos and general sharing in hopes of creating a platform for faculty connections. You can read more about their project here.
Woodward North
The Woodward North team designed a project aimed at “thinning the walls” between classrooms and growing together as a faculty. The basics of the project involve each member of the PLP team to partner with an interested colleague for a full calendar year beginning this month. You can read more about their project here.
Westminster Schools
The Westminster team created a resource wiki as a virtual learning community for teachers of level four Spanish. According to the team, “published resources for fourth year Spanish courses are either inconsistent or substandard…As a result, most teachers of level four Spanish fend for themselves.” Teachers of these courses will be able to share resources on the wiki. You can read more about this project here.
The Walker School
The Walker team’s project involves helping students achieve a global view of water conservation through a class wiki. You can read more about the team’s project here.
Trinity School
The Trinity team focused on converting a traditional fourth grade unit on forests to a 21st Century unit with collaborative Web 2.0 tools. Read more about their project here.
Greater Atlanta Christian
You can view a slideshow about the Greater Atlanta Christian team’s project “From Here to Relevance” here.
Brookstone School (Columbus, GA)
The Brookstone team decided to develop a project around a tool they wanted to learn more about and decided on Skype. Teachers are developing lesson plans utilizing the tool, among other activities. You can read more about their project here.
Houston Area
Second Baptist School
The Second Baptist Team decided to focus their project efforts on integrating Web 2.0 language and tools into their professional practice during the 2009-2010 school year. One of the big steps they’re taking is replacing the normal in-service days at the beginning of the school year with a School for Leaders Web 2.0 Conference. You can read more about their project here.
The Kinkaid School
The Kinkaid team decided to take control of the technology professional development required by all faculty at least once every three years at the school. The team decided to have training provided by Kinkaid teachers rather than bringing in an outside vendor. You can read more about their project here.
Tampa Area
Shorecrest Preparatory School
You can read more about the Shorecrest Preparatory School’s team project here.
Berkeley Preparatory School
The Berkeley team decided to develop a “One-Unit Challenge” for its project, which challenges faculty members to develop interdisciplinary units that meet a number of criteria, including using Web 2.0 tools to connect and collaborate with colleagues. You can read more about their project here.
Tennessee
David Lipscomb Campus School
The David Lipscomb team developed a project with two-pronged initiatives: to encourage faculty to consider social networking and to use Web 2.0 tools in teaching as well as create a Web site for the school to share “What Inspires You?” stories. You can read more about the team’s project and visit its Web sites here.
Lausanne Collegiate School
The Lausanne team’s project goal is to provide clear, easy-to-follow, and measurable information literacy integration goals school-wide. You can read more about the Lausanne project here.
California
Chadwick School
You can read more about the Chadwick team project here.
Ohio
Hawken School
You can read more about the Hawken team project here.
Self Directed Learning Teams
By Robin Ellis
In the November issue of Educational Leadership there was an interesting article, Students at Bat, as I read it I saw a correlation between the article and conversations about self-directed learning, both for students and adults. The article used an analogy of how playing neighborhood baseball taught many skills to children, for example: they chose teams, picked positions, decided where bases were located, what was considered a home run, and determined batting orders. Older children taught younger children how to bat, run the bases, and how to field the ball. Children resolved their disagreements through conversation, compromise and consensus.
Today most children don’t have the chance to play neighborhood baseball, their leagues are structured and run by adults who pick the teams, determine who plays what position, and create the batting order and the schedule of when games are played. Organized sports today are much like school, kids are told where to sit, who they will work with, when to eat, when to get up, when they can talk, what they will learn, and how they will be measured on their learning. As students move up in grade levels their choices become fewer and fewer, schedules are more structured, and course requirements make their time in school more restrictive. They have fewer opportunities to learn about sharing, resolving disputes through compromise and consensus. They are rarely asked to participate in conversations to decide about their learning goals, rules of conduct, or classroom procedures. In some instances these same structures apply to educational professional development as well.
Yet, we talk of self-directed learning and its importance in education today. Usually the conversations are centered on students being self directed learners and the difficulties they seem to have understanding this concept, but this is a new experience for many teachers as well. I believe most people are used to menu option of professional development sessions offered through their employer. Many chose to attend sessions that fit into the time constraints of their lives, whether they are the most relevant or not. Through PLP it has been my pleasure to watch throughout all of the cohorts; strong, self directed learners emerge. For many this was a new experience, a yearlong job embedded personal learning opportunity, in which all participants had choice, not only of where and when they would participate, but also choice in topics of interest they wanted to learn more about, have collegial conversations with others, ask questions to clarify understanding, dig deeper, and grow personally and professionally. It was not an easy journey for everyone, the reality everyone was responsible for their own learning was a shift, and a revealing one. I remember last fall one day Scott Godshalk, a teammate of mine said,
“I’m just not sure what I should be doing, I keep waiting for someone to tell me what to do”. Once the words were out of his mouth, he seemed to realize he was in charge of what he was doing, and ultimately of what he would learn throughout the year. The benefits he would gain would stem from the time and energy he invested in the experience and conversations he felt were relevant to his learning.
As all cohorts participate in their last Elluminate session, a time designated to sharing their projects before coming together face to face for final celebrations, there is overwhelming evidence teams of strong, self-directed learners have formed within the communities of cohorts. The projects for sustaining and scaling the learning which has taken place this year are varied in scope and delivery methods. Most importantly, all are rooted in change and evidence of the collaborative learning environments we have been immersed in.
Expert Voices
By Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach
I am happily paddling, running in and out with the discussion waves, splashing a bit in the groups, occasionally sticking my head under and blowing a few small blogging bubbles. Feeling I can’t yet go too long with out taking a breath to edit and definitely still need my Google goggles, although am learning to keep my eyes open for new ideas and applications. I’m still, perhaps irrationally, scared of sharks and so sticking close to the shore. Perfectly happy to watch and learn from those who can swim competently. Enjoying my day at the beach.
International Cohort Member- Amanda Ritter, Melbourne, Australia
For many educators sharing and posting in a situated community of practice is awkward and risky business. It is a process of slowly building trust and taking small steps while trying to find their online voice. It takes time before many of the team members in PLP feel like their input is going to contribute much to the discussion. Amanda describes it as not wanting to get in over her head but looking towards relinquishing her “Ning floatie ring” and “swimming on her own into open water while building her cyber confidence.”
Part of the mission of PLP is to help participants build their cyber confidence while at the same time starting to build their personal and professional learning networks. One way we do that is by bringing in Expert Voices. The idea behind “Expert Voices” is twofold. First, it’s to bring into the PLP communities folks knowledgeable about both the tools and the pedagogy, and have them help PLP members explore various topics related to teaching and learning in the 21st century. Second, it’s a way to help PLPers slowly expand their learning networks by giving them some thoughtful folks to learn from and to follow.
It is with great pleasure that Powerful Learning Practice welcomes this year’s Expert Voices.
International Cohort
Graham Wegner – Building a Personal Learning Network
Ben Hazzard – Classrooms as Communities
John Evans – Podcasting Purpose
Chris Harbeck – Classroom Blogging
Alanah King – Collaborative Tools
Independent Cohort
Kim Harrison – virtual worlds, particularly Second Life
John Hendron – blogs and other read/write tools in education
Chris O’Neal – developing technology leaders, particularly school administrators
Meg Swecker – Voice Thread as well as other collaborative tools such as wikis
Paula White – Web 2.0 tools in the classroom
Illinois/Ohio Cohort
Kathy Cassidy – on Blogging
Alec Couros – on Building a PLN
Brian Crosby – on Collaborative Tools
John Evans – on Podcasting
Jo McCleay – on Social Networking
ADVIS Cohort
Kim Cofino – Collaborative Projects with Multiple Schools
Ben Wilkoff – Blogging (with RSS and Social Bookmarking thrown in)
Scott McLeod – Disruptive Innovation: What School Leaders Should Be Doing Now in Their Schools and Classrooms
Kristin Hokanson – My Digital Responsibility in a Global World
Wes Fryer – Wikis and Digital Storytelling
Archdiocese of Philadelphia Cohort
Barbara Barreda – Leadership and Change
Bill Kist – Wikis and Digital Storytelling
Susan Sedro – Technology Integration
Sara Kajder – New Literacies
Jo McLeay – Social Networking
New Jersey State Cohort
Michelle Bourgeois - Collaborative Learning
Scott Elias – Balancing Your Real and Virtual Lives
Dean Shareski - Lesson 1- Share
Brian C. Smith – Educator as Learner
Adina Sullivan – Audio and Visuals to Support Learning for All
PEARLS NYC Cohort
Tom Barrett- Publishing Tools
Graham Wegner- Blogging
Lee Kolbert- Social Networks
Darren Draper- Dimensions of Change
Jeff Utecht- PLN
