On the cusp

Professional learning teams—

Engaged in action research related to 21st Century change and the shifts we have been exploring in PLP—

Many Ohio Consortium teams, transparent in their process—

Providing a window onto their exciting, intense, collaborative, and difficult work—

On the way to building capacity for change in their districts—

With vision–

This project will allow students to rediscover the joy of learning by re-inventing the concept of going to school. Teachers will need to model the behaviors we hope the students will adopt, and they will need to coach students as they find their way. We will need to re-teach the young people at our school how to be learners and how to take charge of their own learning. But we may need to re-teach and re-invent ourselves as well.   Chinquapin team

With burning questions—

How to keep students engaged in learning outside of the classroom while using the same technologies that they are using in their personal learning networks?  Forest Hills high school team

How can a Standards-based Professional Development program using and implementing  21st Century skills have an impact on teaching and learning at our school?  Parish Episcopal team

How can we increase our student learning and motivation in math and science utilizing a collaborative approach?  Berea elementary team

April Lempa Cooper, from the Milford team mentioned in a virtual community comment:

..feels like we are on the cusp of some real changes…

I sense that too from tensions inherent in the questions and vision, from learning I’ve had the privilege to see in our virtual community, and from the commitment of team members as their team has experienced storming and norming on their way to performing. Teams, full of hope when our cohort began last fall, have moved beyond hope to important work with their action research projects and are “on the cusp of some real changes”.

U.S. International Cohort teams reflect on the past year

By Mary Worrell

Members of the PLP International Cohort’s U.S. teams celebrated the end to their year-long experience together with a culminating event in Fredericksburg, VA earlier this month. Even though it was the U.S. teams celebrating and presenting their projects, teams from Australia and New Zealand attended the event via the PLPLive Ustream channel. It was 11 p.m. for the Australians and 2 a.m. for the New Zealanders, but they were still on hand to support their fellow U.S. teams. (The Aussie teams will have their learning showcase event in July.)

The projects presented at the event showcased the learning of participating teams over the last year. But the event was also about book-ending the PLP experience with another face-to-face event where people who had gotten to know each other online could catch up and collaborate in person.

Alex Ragone and Melanie Hutchinson said each member of the Collegiate School team in New York City got something different from the year with PLP.

“It created some really clear ideas of what we have to do and how we can get there,” said Ragone, director of technology at Collegiate.

“I didn’t realize how far along we’d come until the end,” said Hutchinson, lower school curriculum coordinator at Collegiate. “My whole life has changed and this whole new world has opened up to me.”

Ragone said the Collegiate team started utilizing what they’d learned by dipping just a toe into the pool with some digital communication tools for faculty and parents, but since then they’ve begun to expand and have started to try and communicate what they learned through PLP with the rest of the faculty. For their project, the Collegiate team created a Yammer for their faculty, which Ragone described as an internal Twitter network for faculty members.

“It’s just another place to have conversations,” Ragone said.

For the team at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Va., the PLP experience has been more of a journey than anything else, said Hiram Cuevas, director of academic technology at St. Christopher’s, team leader, and PLP 21st Century Fellow.

“When our team started to branch out within PLP, we realized we were growing at different rates, but that we were all growing,” Cuevas said. “There was a realization that it was okay to take your time.”

Cuevas said many of the teachers on his team, and he personally, took the PLP experience as a chance to expand their personal learning networks.

“I found myself gravitating toward increasing the size of my PLN so I could grow personally, but also provide support for my team and support for other teams within the cohort,” he said. “The other thing that two of my teachers have learned is that it’s okay to lurk, but don’t make a habit of doing so. Learn how to be contributors.”

The St. Christopher’s team developed a wiki for faculty members populated with how-tos for Web-based tools and technologies.

“We wanted to create a safe environment and one in which everyone has an opportunity to flourish,” Cuevas said. “We also included tips for working internationally with other schools.”

Susanne Nobles, an English teacher at Fredericksburg Academy in Virginia and a member of the school’s PLP team, said being a part of PLP helped her overcome the overwhelmed feelings she had about technology.

“The year was powerful. They said ‘do this for yourself and that’s enough,’” Nobles said. “I didn’t have to worry about putting it into my classroom. I could spend time figuring it out for myself, but I ultimately did use it in my classroom.”

Susan Carter Morgan, team leader, instructional tech coordinator and English teacher for Fredericksburg Academy, said the team of peers put faculty members at ease when the group presented what they’d been learning through PLP.

“I had a comment after our presentation that ‘this is the first time I’ve been this comfortable talking about technology ever,’” Morgan said. “Having a team of people is wonderful. It woudl be very hard to be alone and have this voice of authority because I’m not an administrator. But we have this team of people research, work on projects, learn for themselves and apply it to their classrooms.”

Morgan said that the PLP model, which involves giving teams little direction in the beginning stages, was initially frustrating but ended up allowing the team to flourish on its own and find its own direction in the learning process.

“Because we took up this intentional time to meet monthly, we grew, pushed back a little bit, and tried to change each other’s thinking. We focused on our thoughtful approaches to teaching and learning,” Morgan said. “We shared things that worked, we learned them ourselves and realized how we could use them in our classes. When we learned together we realized that’s what we wanted our faculty to do.”

Team Ravenscroft went from feeling required to learn about technology to wanting to learn about it, said Kathleen Christopher, academic computing coordinator, team leader and PLP 21st Century Fellow.

“I think the biggest thing that is different is that at the beginning they felt a sense of obligation to participate and try new things because they were a part of the group,” she said. “Now they actively seek out new activities because of their own developing interest in what the tools can help them accomplish with their students.”

The Ravenscroft team developed a professional development wiki as a way to pass what they learned through PLP onto their fellow faculty members.

Matt Scully is director of technology at Providence Day School (PDS) in North Carolina and his team’s leader. The team is trying to get faculty members revved up for a professional development day in October to be led by the PLP team.

“A lot of what we’re trying to do is make sure we’re having conversations,” Scully said. “Not necessarily about technology, but about curriculum, differentiation, assessment, and mention where tools can help.”

One of the PDS team members expressed some skeptism at first about whether his students were learning as much through the new methods. After a gentle push from PLP he conducted his own action research project to see just what was happening in terms of student achievement and was surprised at the results, especially when aggregated by gender. It appears that his female students did better using social means to learn and study.

Like Cuevas, Scully said the year-long PLP experience helped him expand his personal learning network.

“It has made all of us very reflective on our practice in the classroom,” Scully said. “We had to step back and ask ourselves why we did what we did and why.”

Each PLP team developed a project to culminate the year-long experience. Please visit their wiki pages to review their hard work and innovation:

Virginia
Fredericksburg Academy- VA
The team at Fredericksburg Academy created a school-wide, virtual learning community to introduce faculty to the idea of reflective collaboration and sharing. They are also planning monthly, after-school sessions to share Web 2.0 tools. You can read more about their project here.

Christchurch School- VA
The team at Christchurch is working to implement 21st century skills and Web 2.0 tools into its existing curriculum. You can read more about this transformation
here.

St. Christopher’s School- VA
The St. Christopher’s team developed a wiki where teachers can learn Web 2.0 tools and see how other teachers have utilized them. You can read more about their project here.

Flint Hill School- VA
You can read more about Flint Hill’s project here.

Norfolk Academy- VA
You can read more about Norfolk Academy’s project here.

North Carolina
Ravenscroft School- NC
The team from Ravenscroft decided to develop a school-wide, professional development wiki to share and scale what they’ve been learning with the rest of their faculty here.

Providence Day School- NC
You can read more about Providence’s project here.

New York City
Collegiate School- NYC
The Team at Collegiate School created a Yammer for the school’s nearly 100 faculty members to share ideas. You can read more about their project here.

Missouri
Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School- MO
You can read more about Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School’s project here

ADVIS Cohort Wraps Things Up

By Mary Worrell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can see more photos of the event here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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