Amy Musone, a year 1 team leader in the IU 13 community from the Central York District, PA, encouraged her team members to reflect with her as they wind down this year of Powerful Learning Practice professional learning. The team had been immersed in an action research project, examining how their teaching would be transformed as they engaged in PBL in order to promote 21st century learning.

Our goal for this post is to reflect on where each of us started and where we have come.  Remember our driving question:

 

How will the Pringles Project transform our teaching practices to promote 21st century skills within our students?

 

Our beginning: We started with a survey to gather information about how each of us perceived ourselves along with information about what we felt comfortable and uncomfortable with. We inputed data using a Google form and shared our thinking when we met via Skype and on the Community Hub.

 

Now: Now it is time for us to reflect on what we have done, how we’ve grown, and struggles that still hold us back. It is also important for us to consider and share where we plan to go from here.

 

Looking forward to hearing your ideas!

Amy being the leader that she is, modeled her own reflection for them:

Okay…when we began this venture, I felt unsure of myself and a little self-conscious that I just wasn’t “getting it.” One thing I wasn’t sure about was what exactly was expected of me. As I became more involved I came to the conclusion that the expectation was going to be set by one person…myself. I could get guidance and encouragement from my team members and the PLP community at large, but ideally, the motivation to move forward and become a more effective educator came from within. I knew that I alway wanted to engage in PBL, but never knew how to fully embrace it. Through our meetings both with my PLP Year 1 team and the larger community webinars I felt like I could wrap my head around this idea.

 

So…my head was in the right place, finally. My students are just completing their projects. My room was a disaster (we were using packaging materials), there was a constant buzz of excited and on-task conversations, and the creative juices were flowing. There is NO way that I could have “taught” them everything that they discovered (technology, and science) and that made me glow. ….

 

This project has begun to infiltrate other activities that happen throughout the school day. I worked to devise a project with another teacher in my classroom and have collaborated with the gifted support teacher on a project. I am truly excited about this. My hope would be to work with the PLP group on other projects…. I know that in order to do this, we are going to need teacher and administrative buy in. Luckily, I have plenty of artifacts created by kids to demonstrate learning, problem solving, critical thinking skills, and collaboration. Still have a hill to climb…sure, but I’ve taken a couple of steps!

With Amy’s powerful reflection on her PLP journey, I decided to “follow” the discussion; sure enough, the next day Melissa Wilson responded. She shared in part her challenges and her beliefs in the power of PBL:

This has been a very challenging project.  At the fifth grade level there are many obstacles to overcome just to find the time to proceed with a problem based assignment. …

 

I believe that there is a real need for problem based learning. …  The challenges created by this type of project parallel the types of challenges the students will face in real life….

 

Next year I plan to look at ways that I can create projects such as “The Pringle Project” that will fit in the curriculum.  In designing these assignments the plan is to be able to deliver instruction covering the curriculum and then allow the students to use what they have learned in creative real world problem solving. With support from my colleagues I hope that this will help my students to learn and prepare them for the future.

And then Barb Ream chimed in a day later attributing their success and learning to their coach; Amy, their team leader; and their collaboration:

I know that the point of this whole project was to think differently about education by experiencing it firsthand. I am an old fashioned learner who is used to having everything laid out for me. ..

 

I felt like I was floundering – a fish out of water. I felt like it must just be me, however after talking to the rest of my group I realized it wasn’t just me. We all floundered together and somehow we managed to figure it out in the end.

 

I feel the reason we were able to pull it together was for a number of reasons. The first was we had a great coach. Peter Skillen really guided us through the process and made us think outside the box. Our fearless leader, Amy, was invaluable. Her insight, leadership, creativity, and motivation pulled us through. We would have been lost forever without her. Lastly, my team members. It was such a great experience getting to know members of my school community better. We met through skype and in person. We had great collaboration sessions and worked very well together.

 

I think this project taught me many things. The first is that it is ok to be messy learners. …. I learned that if you give students an interesting project, they will come up with some amazing solutions to problems.

 

My plan for the future is to continue to create more Problem Based Projects. I actually enjoyed how all of the students came up with different solutions to the same problem. I also plan on sharing this with more colleagues in hopes of having them do something similar.

Deep reflections with common themes–

• Initially overwhelmed with uncertainty and challenges yet persevering
• Floundering and figuring it out together
• Appreciations for collaboration, the risk taking that enables, and hopes to continue that
• Recognition of the power of a collegial team working together and of PBL in learning
• Evidence of profound, collegial professional learning– absorbing, doing, interacting and reflecting

Although this team is winding down their formal time together in year 1 PLP, these reflections portend a gearing up–

• for future collaborations, collegial learning,
• for more in depth journeys into transforming their teaching practices to promote 21st century skills within their students.

Cross Posted

Australia Community PLPeep Delia Jenkins

In the beginning.
A colleague and I arrived at the first F2F (face-to-face) day after a very early rise and 3.5 hour drive. I had been asked if I would like to go to the PLP professional development and was told it would be a great opportunity to further my IT skills. Always up for something new in IT, I thought it would be a worthwhile day. After the first 5 minutes of Sheryl’s introduction I was already worried that I was way out of my depth. It was clear that every one else in the room had far more knowledge and was more comfortable with their skills than I was. I listened intently and did my best to keep up with the Ning, wiki and tweeting. So much information in a short period of time and a 3.5 hour drive home to try and figure out what had just happened.

 

I am actually a bit of a perfectionist and never like to let something beat me. This isn’t always a good thing, and I have learnt to control these feelings on most occasions, but after the F2F day I felt I was honoured to have been given the chance to be a part of this and I was going to give it 100 percent. I made it a priority to follow all the instructions, post as often as I could and get involved in all the different activities that were going on.
When it came time to select a group, I immediately chose the Environment group as it was an area that I felt I had most knowledge in and one where I could incorporate the topic into the Yr 7 Science class I teach.
I was disappointed that the group was slow to fill and it looked like some that chose it did so as there was nothing else left. Little was I to know that this was to be a very strong group of special, dedicated teachers that all have similar passions and abilities.
Got to put your trust in the powers that be and accept that all things happen for a reason.

 

How did working together change you?
Being able to work as part of a team where we hadn’t met face-to-face was an interesting experience at first. Communicating initially via the Ning and getting to know a bit about each other was a good introduction and everyone began to find their feet. For me, having the courage to communicate via Elluminate and Skype, where we got to see and hear each other, was a little more daunting but very rewarding and I have built some great professional relationships through the project. Being prepared to have a go at new experiences is getting easier and easier and the more you do it the more benefits you reap.
We often ask that of a lot of our students and really don’t appreciate the challenges that it puts to them. Collaborating as we did and then using the same format in the PBL gave us a deeper appreciation of the challenges put to the students and also gave us the insight in how to best support them in their learning using these ‘new’ technologies.

 

How was it collaborating?
I think because our team got up and running so early and everyone was very keen and interested (how fortunate were we!), the collaborating happened easily. We all had lots of different experiences to bring to the table and were happy to share these freely. The sharing of professional knowledge and experiences and the support from each other was definitely a major plus for me. To actually be able to put into use – in a meaningful way – many Web2.0 tools that I had heard about and looked at before but never found an application for in the past was wonderful.
Barring the occasional technical difficulties and availabilities of all the team members, we did a pretty good job of collaborating. With the use of the Ning, Elluminate, Skype, texting, e-mailing, etc., we managed to keep the project running smoothly.

 

What are your thoughts now about PBL?
I had actually done a PBL with a teacher from another school 2 years ago. I already knew this teacher which made communicating easier and we used mainly Skype. The project was a very simple one and we had a lot of technical difficulties. We did struggle through it and felt we had put in a lot of work for a small return.
When we started this PBL I was worried about the amount of time it was going to consume and yes, it did feel like I had a whole other job on top of what I already had to do, but the difference this time was the huge amount of extra support and professional direction from people who clearly knew what they were doing (Thank you PLP ConnectU and especially our coach John P.).
My main issue with our PBL was wondering what if anything my students learnt about the environment. We were initially going to assess what they learnt about the environment and decided that was going to be a near impossible task and changed our assessment to reflect their learning about collaboration, team work and communicating globally using web2.0 tools. I think all our students did extremely well and the assessments indicate that from a collaborative point of view our PBL was a great success. I was still a little worried that I had spent an entire term of science classes on a project where they hadn’t actually learnt any science (how was I going to report on that?!!). Well, how wrong was I?
Four of my students were interviewed and filmed about our PBL, by the DEECD. They were asked specifically that question – What did you learn about the environment and how did you learnt it? I was looking the other way and sinking in my chair thinking they aren’t going to be able to answer that question. Wrong again. All four very eloquently went about telling the chap amazing things about how they had researched, asked opinions, edited video drafts, created songs, discovered new information and so on. I had no idea. I don’t recall actually seeing this learning happen. They had learnt a great deal about the environment, specific to the topic for their group and when we get time to have a look at each of the groups work I am sure they will also learn from the collaborative work that they have all done. I still don’t know how to assess it though. Does it need assessing?

My final thought about PBL is, that it’s like learning to ride a bike or learning any new skill. We ask our students every day to learn new things and challenge themselves. Some persevere and others don’t. The more you do something the easier it gets. Yes it is a lot of hard work and sometimes you will fall off the bike and want to give up, but if you stick to it, it will be worth it in the long run.

Thanks, Delia, for leading, learning and sharing as part of the PLP Australia community, and congratulations on your outstanding accomplishments!

Margo Edgar

As the Australian Community meets for their culminating session, community member Margo Edgar of Pascoe Vale Primary School shares with us her reflection on the PLP experience:

I can remember attending the first F2F (face-to-face) day and being somewhat daunted by the faces in the crowd. Educators I had admired from afar through my slowly developing Personal Learning Network (PLN). The fact that my reason for taking on the challenge of PLP was because I wanted to ‘go global’, only added to my fear. These were educators that had taken that step and seemed so comfortable online. I wanted to step over that edge and open up opportunities for online learning for myself and my students.

PLPConnectU was the catalyst that gave me the opportunity to clarify thoughts around teaching and learning and bring together concepts I had been struggling to make sense of over recent years. I have been teaching for a very long time but the last few years have seen the greatest changes for me as an educator.

These are my musings as I try to make sense of the powerful learning that took place for me as part of this experience.

Sometimes my first choice is not necessarily the best
In the beginning, I remember contributing many ideas for PLP projects, had a few possible directions in my head, and then …..
I was away with no Internet contact the week the project ideas hit the wiki. This meant none of my first choices were still available. I have to admit I was bothered by this.

But everything happens for a reason. And the group I joined, the environment team ended up being pretty close to perfect. Perfect for me, because it was exactly what I needed. Teachers who also wanted the challenge of collaborating on line, teachers who wanted to get things happening, teachers who challenged thinking, who were good at articulating ideas and a coach who just seemed to provide exactly what we needed.
Remember to look upon every challenge as an opportunity to grow and learn.

I can give up total control
I am a control freak, I used to spend hours planning lessons that ‘hit the mark’, achieved my purpose, delivered content in exciting, interesting ways, that engaged my students. Now I spend hours learning, exploring and working out how to give that control back to the students and still know where they are at with their learning, where they need to go next and what I can provide to support them.
This PLP journey has been the impetus to bring together many ideas that have been bubbling around in my head for a while. The elluminate sessions, the ning, the challenges to my thinking, the opportunity to question what I do all contributed to clarifying and changing my thinking around a number of education issues. Mainly that I should not, will not and do not control other people’s learning. However I can provide support, challenges, ideas, tools, knowledge, information, guidance and direction when needed and when asked.
We should each OWN our own learning and be responsible for the direction we take.

Learning is messy, challenging, uncomfortable and glorious
The uncertainty for me of no clear plans, structures or directions when we started PLP created very uncomfortable feelings. How would we know if we were getting it right? Who would decide what was going to happen? How would we know what to do? Being asked to work with a group of people I didn’t know or wouldn’t necessarily choose to work with was challenging. Yet I often ask this of my students.
It was messy, but as our team navigated our way through the mess, started to know each other, shared our goals and our skills, discussed, negotiated and challenged we could see the value of the process for us as learners. So much so we used the same process for our students. They too experienced much from that messy, uncomfortable not knowing what to do feeling and also got to know each other, shared goals and skills, discussed, negotiated and challenged each other, learnt the importance of clear and precise communication, found out you can never assume and walked away at the end with varying degrees of success.

How glorious to stand at Federation Square on Thursday as we prepared for our Flashmob and watch our student’s work on the big screen, the faces of our students as they saw themselves, each other and our schools up there for all the world to see. How glorious to listen to the buzz, hear the anticipation and feel the excitement as they waited for the signal that it was their time to shine. And then to reflect on the speed with which it was all over and the memories that would last for much longer.
For real learning to happen it has to be messy, challenging, uncomfortable and glorious.

Failure is an option
I want to shout this from the rooftops and write it in large, bold, capital letters. This has been my biggest shift and my greatest challenge. For students, teachers, anyone to learn we have to be allowed to fail, to make mistakes, to not get things right, to not get things done, to do nothing, to change our mind, to change our goal and to get it wrong. If we don’t fail, we don’t learn to problem solve, to ask why, fight to succeed and to value success.
Learning is the trips, stumbles and falls on the journey not the arrival at the destination.

Student voice is powerful
Another big mind shift has been opening up our planning to student voice. I realised if I was serious about students taking ownership of their learning, they had to have opportunities to be involved in planning for their learning.

I have had to do some deep thinking about what does it mean to plan with the ‘end in mind’. The end for me had usually been some predetermined task and/or creation that every student worked towards achieving. I hope for my future student’s sake I never fall in to that trap again. The end has become … what we (students and teachers) want to know and do and we should decide together how to get there.

We still haven’t got it right all the time but involving the students in term planning is a start. Working together to explore VELS, working out what that means, asking students how they want to learn, expecting them to be responsible for that, setting goals and success criteria together has led to many successes and some failures.

Our most powerful learning is coming from the failures and the endless questions we are asking ourselves. How do we support all students to be independent in their learning? Does it take longer for some students to take on responsibility for their learning, their failures and successes? Do we allow students enough time to succeed before we step in? How do we measure success? How do we maintain accountability? How do we cover the curriculum? What is essential learning?
We are educating for an uncertain future – but what is certain – is it is not the past.

So to the environment team, I thank you for being an inspired group of hard working, passionate educators. We did good!

Marie Orzechowski

Alissa DeVito

Experimenting–
Reflecting on where we’ve been–
Using what’s been learned and sharing–

Marian O’Brien

“PLP has clearly opened my eyes as to what I don’t know. It’s also made me realize that I need to not only know but somehow

I need to go the distance and figure out how to USE what I know and SHARE it in my everyday classroom. Still 2 steps forward and 1 or 2 backwards. But I must say I get more and more determined with PLP watching and encouraging.”

Persevering–
Going the distance–
Sharing–
Moving out of comfort zones–
Reflecting–
Becoming co learners–
Adopting dispositions of connected learners–

Me, on the sidelines, silently cheering, whispering questions in online conversations, encouraging, nudging others to experiment too–
Facilitating wayfinding– and thinking of the subsequent possibilities for transformation of professional practice as they “go the distance”.

photo © 2010 Vinoth Chandar | more info (via: Wylio)

Because of my blogging, I’m able to see events that had an impact on my thinking, and I am hoping to recognize patterns and gain insights. I found this post on reflective teaching from nearly two years ago (just as my team from FA was finishing up our own PLP work).

February 7, 2009
I’ve been thinking about reflective teaching this year, trying to determine if reflection is what will make us better teachers. Content matters. But content doesn’t matter unless learning takes place.

So how do we become better learners? Reflecting upon how we learn best, what we want to know, and whether or not we know it.

John Dewey said,

…thinking enables us to direct our activities with foresight and to plan according to ends-in-view, or purpose of which we are aware.  It enables us to act in deliberate and intentional fashion…”

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
Susan Black examines reflection as the basis of good teaching (unfortunately the link doesn’t appear to work any longer):

Teachers who have the right dispositions for reflection — being open-minded, responsible, and wholehearted, for example — study and question their own beliefs and practices and those of others through the light of different prisms, says Dewey. Reflection begins with a problem, he says, such as motivating reluctant students. Some teachers tackle classroom problems by turning to outside authorities for step-by-step solutions, but that’s not what Dewey calls reflective practice: Reflection is “a way of being a teacher”–a holistic approach that involves solving problems with one’s heart as well as one’s mind.

But she cautions that reflection doesn’t necessarily equate to excellence in the classroom:

Teacher reflection doesn’t automatically lead to improved practice, Zeichner and Liston argue. The notion that teachers improve simply by examining their actions and considering their effects on students oversimplifies a “complex reality,” they say. And it’s risky: Some teachers might reflect on classroom episodes and still come up shortsighted. Teachers who blame classroom problems on students or administrators or others, Zeichner and Liston write, and those who refuse to accept responsibility when students aren’t learning, can actually solidify bad practices through reflection.

As our Powerful Learning Practice team continues to develop our end of year project today, I hope we will consider Michigan State University’s statement and work toward this.

Teaching demands self-awareness, reflection, and continual growth. Teachers must be self-reflective, as persons and professionals, understanding that their development occurs over the course of their careers.

But let’s make sure when we look in the mirror, we’re not seeing smoke.

It’s hard, as one teacher said in our Dublin-Dallas ning. I asked if I might share a couple of responses here:

Gail Corder, a Fellow from Fort Worth, Texax, said:

I don’t know if this will help you any at all, but here are my thoughts. I am not looking at this as “technology” at all. I am looking at it as a completely different way to approach teaching and learning. You are certainly much younger than I, so you may already be completely comfortable in this world of connected learning. Me, not so much. I’m a whiz at pretty much any software, but being “connected” was not at all my thing – and certainly not in my classroom. In fact, I blogged about ithttp://tvsteachertech.blogspot.com/2010/10/musings-expanding-walls…. which is out of the ordinary for me.

Soooo… what I’m trying to say is that since I’m looking at this as a whole new way of learning and teaching (not the nuts and bolts of Nings and blogs and Twitter, etc.) , it’s not hard at all for me to put my class aside for now and just soak up as much of this experience as I can. Because I’m trying to become a different type of learner so I can become a different type of teacher. Does that make any sense?

Karen Terlecky, from Dublin, Ohio, added this thought:

I remember that turtle triangle all too well. So glad that’s not what we’re about now! I can tell you from personal experience that these PLNs we are building together to support one another will be invaluable in our growth this year. I am actually fortunate enough to have a group of educators where I live that get together once in a while to talk about all things technological. When you sit side by side with someone to learn a new web 2.0 tool, it makes it a lot more fun and you find success much easier. I look forward to learning “side by side” in our webinars this year and continuing the conversations here in the forums. I’m so excited about the possibilities!!

Watching teachers reflect and share about this experience helps us all learn.

The teams from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia cohort gathered to celebrate at a culminating event last month and share their projects.

Nancy Caramanico, director of technology for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia Catholic Schools, said having full participation from all of the district’s high schools enhanced the experience for all the teams involved.

“We have 20 high schools in our system and I was looking for something that would be able to impact the schools,” she said. The district formed their own cohort and invited six people from each school, including teachers, administrators and high school technicians.”We were interested in professional development that harnesses both innovative technology and sound and rigorous pedagogy.

“It was a perfect blend of important parts of the puzzle,” she said. “Having every school involved allowed them to collaborate and connect with one another and share resources and best practices on a broad scale.”

Jim Meredith from Archbishop Ryan High School was initially skeptical when told his school would be participating in PLP.

“When the Archdiocese told us about this, I thought ‘great, something else we have to do,’” he said. “But I got into it and to make a long story short, after teaching AP Government for a few years, I’d never done anything new until this year.”

Meredith decided to take a chance with social networking in his class, but didn’t dive in head first. If he was going to use Facebook in his class, he wanted to do it right. He shared his experiences and ideas with other teams on the PLP Archdiocese of Philadelphia cohort virtual learning community.

“Will and Sheryl talked about Web 2.0 tools and going where the students are. Many adults have such a negative feeling about it like I did, but I thought, if I can just get my students on Facebook and do it educationally and ethically,” he said.

Meredith decided to include his AP Government students in discussions about considering Facebook and his reservations.

“They went crazy in a positive way and I knew I needed to go forward and strike while the iron was hot,” he said. “I had two lessons about what to do on the Internet and use Facebook ethically. I talked about their digital fingerprints. I don’t they ever had an educator talk to them like that.”

Meredith’s class created a Facebook group where they posted discussion topics. The class plans to keep the group going after graduation, Meredith said.

Members of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia cohort shared their projects at a recent culminating event.

Caramanico said Meredith put plenty of time and thought into utilizing Facebook.

“The best part about Jim’s story is that he really thought it through, the ethics and responsibility, the use policy. Everything he did was within the parameters of our existing policy,” Caramanico said. “He talked to the students about the safety piece and conducting themselves online – really modeling safe and ethical activity online.”

While Meredith pursued Facebook on his own, his team focused on cultivating professional development within the school walls.

“We always have the professional development where people come in, they leave, and nothing happens,” he said. “If we showed them success in the building it’s more effective than sending them somewhere. We got some buzz from our presentation.”

Nancy Summers of J.W. Hallahan High School said her team focused its project efforts on promoting collaboration among the teachers and taking small steps.

“At each of our in-services, we discussed things that came up in PLP – changing our approaches, getting away from lectures, interactive work with students, embracing social technology,” Summers said.

The team from J.W. Hallahan decided to focus their final project on professional development for teachers so that the skills and tools could be passed onto students. The team developed a virtual learning community for teachers to collaborate and share ideas.

“The main focus is collaboration and teachers have shared lesson plans and ways to deal with struggling students,” Summers said. “Everybody is definitely more confident with their tech skills. I think that’s the best change -everyone is more open and not afraid to try something new.”

You can read more about each team’s project by visiting their wiki pages below.

Conwell-Egan Catholic High School
The team at Conwell-Egan took an international approach with their project. The school set up communications with another school in Beunos Aires, Argentina using a wiki and Skype. One of the many goals of the project is to give students real-world practice of a foreign language. You can read more about their project here.

Archbishop Wood High School
The team at Archbishop Wood developed a faculty wiki and a faculty virtual learning community. You can read more about their project here.

Bishop Shanahan High School
The Bishop Shanahan team developed a school-wide, virtual learning community involving administration and department chairs as a way to share ideas and information and to lay the groundwork for the rollout of the social network to the faculty. You can read more about their project here.

Kennedy-Kenrick Catholic High School
You can read more about the Kennedy-Kenrick’s team project here.

Lansdale Catholic High School
You can read more about Lansdale’s team project here.

Bishop McDevitt High School
You can read more about the Bishop McDevitt team’s project here.

Saint Pius X High School
The team at Saint Pius X developed a faculty network to enhance communication among faculty members and between schools. You can read more about their project here.

Monsignor Bonner / Archbishop Prendergast High School
The team at Minsignor Bonner and Archbishop Prendergast surveyed administration, faculty and students on their use of technology in an effort to identify experts that can communicate their knowledge to the rest of the campus community. You can read more about their project here.

Archbishop Carroll High School
You can read more about Archbishop Carroll’s team project here.

Cardinal O’Hara High School
The team at Cardinal O’Hara developed a virtual learning community for thair faculty to share ideas and new Web 2.0 tools. You can read more about their project here.

John W. Hallahan High School
The John W. Hallahan team’s project involved developing a virtual learning community for the faculty and in-service where faculty members were asked to create profiles on the community and collaborate on a Google document. You can read more about their project here.

Saints John Neumann and Maria Goretti Catholic High School
You can read more about the Saints John Neumann and Maria Goretti team’s project here.

Roman Catholic High School
You can read more about the Roman Catholic’s team here.

West Philadelphia Catholic High School
The team at West Philadelphia helped team leader Gina Joceville develop a virtual learning community for her honors biology class. You can read more about the project here.

Cardinal Dougherty High School
Cardinal Dougherty’s team developed a school-wide wiki. You can read more about their project here.

Father Judge High School
The team at Father Judge is working to develop a professional digital learning community for the next year. Red more about their project here.

Saint Hubert High School
You can read more about Saint Hubert’s team project here.

Little Flower High School
The team at Little Flower has a detailed plan for implementing school-wide usage of Web 2.0 tools next year. Red more about their plan here.

Mercy Vocational High School
The team at Mercy Vocational developed a cross-curricular learning project for students on Greece. You can read more about their project “It’s All Greek to Me!” here.

Northeast Catholic High School
The team at Northeast Catholic is working on a virtual learning community to immerse teachers in Web 2.0 tools. You can read more about their project here.

Archbishop Ryan High School
You can read about Archbishop Ryan’s project here.

Office of Catholic Education
You can read about the OCE’s team project here.

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.

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

One of the interesting things about the PLP model is observing how the community builds itself. This is definitely not a linear process, and one of the things I have to constantly remind myself as a “Community Leader” is that different teams, and even different participants within those teams, will move forward at different (sometimes vastly different) rates. Ray Hawthorne, an Instructional Coach in my building, often says we need to “go slow to go fast,” and I think that’s a key part of the PLP Cohort model.

From my experience with staff development at my own school, as well as my experience this fall with PLP, I’ve become more and more convinced that reflection is the key to building community and moving forward as educators. It’s also something that few schools seem to implement well; so many educators have trouble when asked to reflect on their own learning. As groups of educators devote time to thinking about teaching and learning in the 21st century, and as they have time to thoughtfully reflect on their own teaching and learning, they seem to reach a tipping point where ideas coalesce and folks are ready to move forward.

At least one of our teams in the ADVIS PLP Cohort seems to have reached that tipping point. The team from The Haverford School has recently posted some interesting and powerful reflections, both inside the private Ning and on the public wiki. Team Leader Lisa Snyder, who’s the Head of Information Services for The Haverford School, recently commented on a discussion in the Ning:

Our meetings have not had much structure until recently. At first, when we met, we simply talked about what we were learning, reading, and how it all relates to our situation here. . . I thought that we should be creating something for our administration, our colleagues, and our board to communicate our experiences in PLP and to give them an idea of what we’re up to. We used our team space on the Wiki and each of us wrote a small narrative of what we’re learning.

The reflective process of creating and sharing what they were doing in PLP with others seems to have crystallized each team member’s thinking. I think they can say it better than I can. (In all cases, emphasis is added by me.)

Dennis Arms talks about how PLP gets the discussion going:

The change in how our students are learning has been exponential and it’s going to take more than just me to shift teaching and learning. I think the PLP program is a great conversation starter.

Nick Romero comments on how he’s been pushed to reexamine everything he’s doing, and how the PLP community helps challenge and support him:

Joining PLP has pushed me to re-examine what I am doing in my class and how to improve it. As a teacher I constantly ask myself: how can I better engage my students and enrich their experience? How can I make their learning more meaningful? PLP is helping me find answers to those questions. Meeting (in person and virtually) teachers from other schools and learning about their successes, questions and struggles in implementing 21st Century Skills in their classrooms has been invaluable. Ever since the first meeting, my mind has been spinning. I feel there is so much to learn about what these skills are and how to effectively teach them to my students. I have a steep learning curve, but I am excited to take this on.

Dru Ciotti has come to realize what I stated above, that folks are going to move at different paces and that we have to be okay with that:

This PLP experience has, so far, been very rewarding in terms of giving me EVEN MORE to think about in terms of how to encourage the upper school faculty to view technology not as an add-on but as an integral part of their teaching and of our students’ learning. I envision classroom teachers using tools like wikis, Ning, or Elluminate to eliminate the boundaries created by their classroom walls and to really empower our students with 21st century skills. Some are willing to jump on this quickly moving train, and others are still looking for parking at the station. The good conversations I’ve had with our group so far have opened up for me the possibility that not everyone is willing to run for the train, and I have to be okay with that. I need to focus on the ones that want to go on the journey.

And Lisa herself reflects on what it feels like to be a learner, and how important it is to assume a “learning posture”:

Boy, they weren’t kidding when they said this would be powerful! From the very first, I’ve done nothing but learn. I would admit, though, that a lot of what I’ve learned I had not expected to . . .

What I’ve come to realize is that, through PLP, we are gaining exposure to the world that our kids already inhabit easily – and learning in that environment is not neat and tidy. I wrote my first ning post about ambiguity and how learning to live – and learn – in an ambiguous world is not easy. It requires openness to new experiences and letting-go of my tradition-based ideas of what schooling is. Learning is not linear, and while I’ve espoused that for years, it wasn’t until this experience of PLP that I was able to live the non-linear, sometimes frustrating, always interesting world of a 21st century learner . . .

I’ve also experienced the very powerful feeling that comes from having a Ning colleague read my posts, find something in there of use, and respond in a thoughtful, serious way to my thoughts. Authentic assessment! Wow, I always knew it was an important concept, but I didn’t know how it would feel to receive authentic feedback from people I respect and admire. It feels great!

So, the lessons I’ve learned from PLP have been important ones – and I’m sure that Will and Sheryl intended for me (and the rest of us) to have the opportunity to share these same kinds of experiences. For those who are wondering, “what’s next?” or “when are we actually going to do something?” I would have to argue that, if you really take a learning posture – give up your control and your need to feel industrious – you will find that you are learning. And you have been all along!

All of the PLP Cohorts have invited in “Expert Voices” to share some of the tools, and I think that will help those who need something a little more concrete to help them frame the big picture ideas. But, as Lisa says so elegantly, we as educators all need to take a “learning posture” if we are going to learn and grow alongside our students.

So, when’s the last time you reflected on your own learning?