Lifelong Learning 2.0

If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.

~Mary Engelbreit

For the past ten years, I have been teaching at an Independent Study charter school.  I’ve taught 34-40 students each year, in a unique school environment.  We serve students who were not successful in a traditional school model.  Keeping the same students for more than one year has allowed me to have a strong knowledge of  their strengths and areas needing growth. It has been an amazing experience working with kids individually in this model.

I work with an incredibly talented group of teachers and administrators, who care for our students and foster innovation.  While there are many wonderful things to celebrate at our school, there are several changes I’ve wanted to see take place. Technology and web 2.0 skills have not been explored much by our teachers.  Many of our students would benefit from innovative uses of technology to enhance their learning experience.  Since they work in an independent study model, they need opportunities to make connections, create and collaborate.  There are many tools we can use to help our students do this in a virtual setting.

I want to help in this effort for changing the way our students and teachers learn. I want our school to provide standards-based, project-learning opportunities where students can take ownership for their education.   I want to help teachers take control of their own professional development and grow a personal learning network.  I want us to collaborate to find better ways to engage students in meaningful learning experiences.  You know the feeling you get learning from your PLN virtually or at a conference?  I want to provide that kind of network for our staff.  I’ve longed for this all year. 

Sometimes you need to stop talking about change, and just do it.

I have decided to leave my teaching role to help bring about change at our school. I was offered a position to work on curriculum development and instructional technology.  I’ve helped with curriculum in the past, in addition to a full teaching schedule.  Until now, we did not have an educator focused solely on these areas for our academy.  While the job description is still being defined, I know it will include the following:

• Curriculum Development: We are providing an alternative  to traditional textbooks:  a project-and inquiry-based model.  There will be an emphasis on writing, critical thinking, collaboration, literature and the use of web 2.0 tools.
  
• Course-building in Moodle: We will be using Moodle for the first time this year.  We’re utilizing it for technology training for teachers this fall.  In the meantime, we are taking a year to build courses and develop curriculum in moodle for our students to use next year.
  
• Professional Development Training: I will be leading workshops for teachers and parents.  I hope to do this on-site and in Elluminate.
  
• Instructional Technology: We will introduce students, teachers, and parents to web 2.0 and innovative technology tools to enhance learning.
  
• Web 2.0 Class: I am writing a proposal to also create a Web 2.0/Technology Club for students, which I hope to launch in October.
  

I will miss working with students on a daily basis.   However, I am grateful for the opportunity to help bring about change at our school.

This is where you come in.  I am looking for a little advice from my PLN to help me in this transition.  There are two ways you can help.

1.  There are many projects that I would like to work on.  I will be posting about some of these in the near future.  If you are interested in collaborating on a project this year, let me know.

Where should I begin?

2.  Please consider posting a little advice for me or any newbie in this role.  Where is the best place to start?  What’s one thing that has worked well for you with organizing resources for your teachers? If you are in a similar job position and created an amazing wiki or helpful website, please share!  If you are willing, I would love to chat with you sometime.  I look forward to learning from you!

Creative Commons Photo Attribution:  Victoria is Changing, by victoriapeckham

I’ve been thinking about school starting in the fall.  Not because I want to. I relish the thought of summer lasting for weeks and weeks. I’ve been thinking about it because several of the bloggers I follow have started writing about the start of school.

Summer is a great time for refreshment, relaxation, renewal.  It is also a great time for educators to connect with their PLN and extend their knowledge.  As school starts, I know I will be so busy that the thought of extra time to learn new things seems almost impossible.  Will I have time to stay connected to my PLN? I know that when I am I learn so much and am able to contribute to others.  If you value this too, I am confident that with thoughtful planning, you can take create time for self-education and growth during the busy school year.

1. Be proactive. We make choices daily about how we spend our time.  Make a conscious effort to learn something new.  Be a lifelong learner.

2. Set clearly defined goals and put them in writing. Things don’t often happen just because.  Success and growth are intentional.  Create a plan and allow yourself to be flexible with it. Find a friend to hold you accountable.

3. Seek out opportunities for self-education. There are many ways to do this:  follow other blogs, sign up for webinars, read books, join twitter, watch tutorials, take a class, register for a workshop, subscribe to learning channels on YouTube.

4. Start with you. Learn new ways to use existing tools.  However, don’t push web 2.0 tools on students without taking time to use them for your own learning.  Participate in networks, create a wiki, journal in a blog.  You’ll be better prepared to help your students with these tools if you use them for your own professional growth. Learn first. Experience.  Then pass on the treasures to your students and learn with them.

5. Blog.  Journal about your self-educational experiences.  Reflect on your learning.

6. Take risks. Seize opportunities. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there.  This is often the very place where true growth can occur.

7. Grow in community. Vygotsky spoke of the “Zone of proximal development,” meaning that there exists a certain amount of knowledge that can only come from the assistance of others through social interaction.  The learning process flourishes when you focus on learning together.  Collaborate.  Find others who have the same interests.  Share resources. Grow together. Learning in community is a wonderful path to take.

Photo Attribution: End of Summer, by Noe

Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) are an integral part of an educator’s life.

Since getting started 10 months ago, my PLN has been the best thing to come my way professionally.  For those of you new to the concept, you can build your network by participating in social networks, conferences, blogs and twitter.  Even though I’ve only been on twitter since May, I have received a wealth of information to last a lifetime.

I am nurturing my network by collaboration, contributions, and deep conversations. My PLN helps me stay connected and teaches me new things daily.  They also make me think when I should go deeper, laugh about life, and stretch where I need to grow.

My first blog post about NECC focuses on my PLN.  Why? Because the face-to-face conversations were the most valuable part of the conference.  Although there were many fabulous workshops taking place, I gained much more from the networking connections with people at the Blogger’s cafe, on twitter, and in backchannels.

Here are a few things to consider when making connections at a conference:

1.  Plan to meet your PLN.

The best part of being at NECC was spending time, in person, with many of the people in my learning community. It was an amazing and surreal experience.   How fun to be able to tweet my location and have people run over to say hello.  I connected with virtual friends even up to the last day of the conference.  I will have a new experience when I see their name on a tweet or read their blog post, having met them in person.

I enjoyed meeting new people to add to my learning community.  It’s neat how you can just meet someone, and by the end of the conference, feel as though you’ve known him or her for years.  I will miss hanging out.  It was an experience I’ll treasure.

2.  Plan to meet the well-connected people.

Besides hanging out with my own tweeps, I made an effort to introduce myself to those well-connected bloggers in our midst.  We all learn from them.  Why not say hello?  Sure, sometimes people put them up on a pedestal (some put themselves there), but they are just regular people.  Unlike the experience this blogger had, I found value from our exchanges.  Taking an interest in what they are up to, as well as being able to share I’m doing, made for great conversation.

Angela Maiers was one of those bloggers I’ve admired for a long time.  As I made my way over to introduce myself on the first day, she rushed over and kept hugging me.  She knew my name before I put my name tag on.  She asked me questions about the projects I’m involved in, and was such an encouragement to me.  Isn’t that just Angela, though?  I want to always be as authentic and caring. I want to give back as much as I get from my PLN.

3. Plan to meet the new people.

As equally important to not being star-struck with well-known bloggers, make a point to meet the new people.  Don’t just say hello, but engage!

I spent a lot of time at NECC in the blogger’s cafe’ and hallways.  You can tell who the new people are. They slowly walk up to the blogger’s cafe. They look around, then sneak in a few photos before finding a seat at the edge of the room.

I took a funny picture of a friend from the back, with the Teach42 blog on their laptop, and Steve Dembo standing right in front of them.  He was comparing the photo to see if it was actually Steve standing before him.  Of course, I then had to introduce myself to Steve, and then introduce the two of them, so they could have the chance to meet.  It was a great moment.

During the conference, I walked right up to people that didn’t seem to know anyone.  Many people, like myself, attend these conferences alone.  I asked them questions and listened intentionally.  Many times, we ended up exchanging business cards and sharing ideas.  Everyone has a story to tell.  It is so important at events like NECC, to include new people and make them feel valued.

Wait.  I’m new!

Which brings up another point.  Don’t wait for people to include you.  Reach out to others.

4. Plan to collaborate.

What should you do now that the conference is over?  Well, the conversations are only just beginning!  I plan to collaborate with a teacher on digital portfolios next fall.  I hope to work with another few teachers on a book discussion group.  I chatted with a few people about the possibility of co-presenting at future conferences.  A few of us discussed ideas for meet-ups.  Wikis were shared for global classroom connections.  The possibilities for collaboration are endless!

Read tweets and blogposts about the NECC experience.  Find them on twitter with the hashtag #NECC09.  Check out these blogs. Make a note if something resonates with you.  Contact those people you may want to work on a project with in the future.

5.  Plan to go deep!

Be authentic.  Of course, your PLN can be a valuable resource, but don’t let it stop there.  Go deep!  Look for ways to contribute to others.  I love what Beth Still has done in setting up the Help Send a Newbie to NECC project.  What a great way to give back.  There are many people who do this well that you can learn from.  Be part of a larger community of learners.

There were so many things I took away from the conference, which I’ll be blogging about in the next few days.  However, the exchanges and networking with others was the most valuable experience at NECC09. My PLN definitely rocks!

Will Richardson’s recent blog post resonated with me. He opened quoting a tweet from John Pederson:

“Community building is the new professional development.  We forgot that and taught Web 2.0 tools.”

Hmm.  I love that line about community building providing for professional development.  He’s so right.  As for the Web 2.0 tools, it’s hard to decide which should come first.  I believe for the teacher not versed in the innovative ways that technology can be used to engage students, that the tools must be taught first.  However, not for immediate use in the classroom.  I feel the learning takes place best when that teacher uses the tools for their own professional development first. I personally got much more out of experiencing the tools in my own educational experience, before teaching them to my students.

It’s okay to take a year or any time you need to practice using the tools first. I am still learning.  And I will continue to have more to share with them.  And that’s how it should be.  But I will be far more effective having a handle on it, being able to explore these tools in the setting of my online networks and community first. The value of learning in the setting of community is immeasurable.

As I commented on Will Richardson’s blog, there is such value at seeing ourselves as lifelong learners first, teachers second. Social communities and networking can play a huge role in our professional development. We can’t wait to be spoon-fed through power points and handouts.  We need to make our learning experience relevant and set out to create our own plan.

Prior to this past year, professional development trainings at my school were not often relevant to what I feel I needed to know to make a difference in how my students learn.  At first, I sought out my own professional development in frustration, because I didn’t want to be “fed” with announcements or listen to speakers that didn’t understand our learning environment.  It didn’t interest me. I wanted to grow professionally so I could turn around and share that passion for learning with my students.

The frustration soon wore off and I became excited at the possibilities.  I joined Classroom 2.0 and loved the opportunity to connect with other educators seeking similar paths to lifelong learning.  I “attended” the K12 Online Conference, and registered for courses in EduFire.  I subscribed to online webinars.  I listened to interviews, learned from tutorials and slideshares, and watched alot of Ted.   I read books and joined other educational social networks.  I try to catch as many of these Saturday Elluminate sessions as I can.  I was blessed to be asked by my school to attend the Innovative Learning Conference, in San Jose last fall, as well as the CUE conference, in Palm Springs, this past March.  This past year, my school decided to focus on technology, which aligned nicely to what I was learning on my own.

I chose what I wanted to learn.  And now, I can more effectively share the web2.0 tools I’ve been learning about with my students. But the learning doesn’t stop here. I will continue to seek other like-minded colleagues to develop my PLN, so we can learn, collaborate, and share ideas and projects. Does it take time? It takes a ton of time.  But the students are worth it!  Will Richardson talks a bit about the time it takes here:

“So when John Tweeted “Community building is the new professional development” it really resonated, because it suggests that unlike most so-called pd that schools offer, getting our heads and our practice around this is a process, not an event. It’s learning, not training. (I cringed a couple of weeks ago when a principal said “Wow, our teachers are going to need a lot more ‘training.’” Ugh.) It’s not something we can “deliver” in a four-hour PowerPoint-like session. As Linda Darling-Hammond suggests, “…teachers need to learn the way other professionals do—continually, collaboratively, and on the job.” If that’s not a description of what I see most of us doing in these spaces I don’t know what is. Somehow, by luck or hard work or a combination, those of us who are taking advantage of the affordances of learning in online communities and networks have found a way to invest the time, not in big chunks in a physical space classroom but in as-needed, passion-driven, hour-here-fifteen-minutes-there learning flow that relies on the interactions of many learners, not on the expertise of any one person. And it’s in knowing how to effectively navigate those interactions where the value lives, not in effectively navigating the tools.”

Yes!  I couldn’t agree more.  I want time to observe other teachers, learn from mentors, and work collaboratively, as Linda-Darling Hammond suggests. Read her findings in the recently released report from Stanford University and the National Staff Development Council here.  The report states that:

“Most states and districts are still not providing the kind of professional learning that research suggests improves teaching practice and student outcomes. The research tells us that teachers need to learn the way other professionals do—continually, collaboratively, and on the job.”

Technology has always been around at my school, but not being utilized to its potential to make learning engaging and meaningful for kids.  No, it’s not about the tools.  However, there are amazing ways that we can teach innovatively, using these tools.  When taking control of my own professional development this year, my eyes were opened to the innovative things that educators are doing in their classrooms, as well as the amazing things students are doing to contribute and find their voice.

I want that for our students.  They deserve the opportunity to connect, collaborate, and contribute.  I am doing what I can to help others get things moving forward at my school and the possibilities are beyond exciting.  It will be transformational.

What are your thoughts about professional development? What resources have you found interesting to learn about? Anyone open to my observing their classroom or computer labs so I can learn from you?

Photo Attribution:

Working from the Mobile Office, by David Sifry

Sprouts, by Plutor