Living and Learning in a Global CommunityInnovative Schools Virtual University

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach Co-Founder & CEO Powerful Learning Practice, LLChttp://plpnetwork.comsheryl@plpnetwork.com

President21st Century Collaborative, LLChttp://21stcenturycollaborative.com

AuthorThe Connected Educator: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age

Follow me on Twitter@snbeach

My community work

Mantra for today’s keynote…

We are stronger together than apart.

None of us is as smart, creative, good or interesting as all of us.

• THE CONNECTED EDUCATOR

Things do not change; we change. —Henry David Thoreau

What are you doing to contextualize and mobilize what you are learning?

How will you leverage, how will you enable your teachers or your students to leverage- collective intelligence?

Learner First—Educator Second

Introduce yourselves to each other at the table and brag a little. Talk about (in 2 min or less) the most recent or compelling connected learning project you have recently led, discovered, or been involved in lately in your school, classroom or organization.

Emerson and Thoreau reunited would ask-

“What has become clearer to you since we last met?”

Trust Building Exercise

I need 3 brave volunteers.

http://plpcommunityhub.com  http://todaysmeet.com/innovate13

#ileohio

Overview of HUB and Introductions in our Workshop Space

What do you wonder…

About connected learning?How do you define the terms?Let’s build a common language.

The world is changing...

 

6 Trends for the digital age

Analogue Digital

Tethered Mobile

Closed Open

Isolated Connected

Generic Personal

Consuming Creating

Source: David Wiley: Openness and the disaggregated future of higher education

“We are tethered to our always on/ always on us communication devices and the people and things we reach through them.”

~ Sherry Turkle

Web 1.0 Web 2.0 Web 3.0

We are living in a new economy – powered by technology, fueled by information, and driven by knowledge.

-- Futureworks: Trends and Challenges for Work in the 21st Century

Shifting From Shifting To

Learning at school Learning anytime/anywhere

Teaching as a private event Teaching as a public collaborative practice

Learning as passiveparticipant

Learning in a participatory culture

Learning as individuals

Linear knowledge

Learning in a networked community

Distributed knowledge

Are you Ready for Learning and Leading in the 21st

Century?

It isn’t just “coming”… it has arrived! And schools who aren’t redefining themselves, risk becoming irrelevant in preparing students for the future.

By the year 2011 80% of all Fortune 500 companies will be using immersive worlds – Gartner Vice President Jackie Fenn

Libraries 2.0Management 2.0 Education 2.0Warfare 2.0Government 2.0Vatican 2.0

Credit: Hugh MacLeod, gapingvoid

Everything 2.0

“In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”

--Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

http://bit.ly/QSqfjI

Dedication to the ongoing development of expertise

Shares and contributes

Engages in strength-based approachesand appreciative inquiry

Demonstrates mindfulness

Willingness to leaving one's comfort zone to experiment with new strategies and taking on new responsibilities

Dispositions and ValuesCommitment to understanding asking good questions

Explores ideas and concepts, rethinking, revising, and continuously repacks and unpacks, resisting urges to finish prematurely

Co-learner, Co-leader, Co-creator

Self directed, open minded

Commits to deep reflection

Transparent in thinking

Values and engages in a culture of collegiality

dangerouslyirrelevant.org

Our kids have tasted the honey.

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Free range learnersFree-range learners choose how and what they learn. Self-service is less expensive and more timely than the alternative. Informal learning has no need for the busywork, chrome, and bureaucracy that accompany typical classroom instruction.

• THE CONNECTED EDUCATOR

The Disconnect“Every time I go to school, I have to power down.” --a high school student

The pace of change is accelerating

It is estimated that 1.5 exabytes of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year.

That’s estimated to be more than in the previous 5,000 years.

Knowledge Creation

For students starting a four-year education degree, this means that . . .

half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.

Shift in Learning = New Possibilities

Shift from emphasis on teaching…

To an emphasis on co-learning

Shifts focus of literacy from individual expression to community involvement.

Students become producers, notjust consumersof knowledge.

Connected Learning

The computer connects the student to the rest of the worldLearning occurs through connections with other learnersLearning is based on conversation and interaction

Stephen Downes

Shifts focus of literacy from individual expression to community involvement.

Connected Learner ScaleThis work is at which level(s) of the connected learner scale?Explain.

Share (Publish & Participate) –

Connect (Comment and Cooperate) –

Remixing (building on the ideas of others) –

Collaborate (Co-construction of knowledge and meaning) –

Collective Action (Social Justice, Activism, Service Learning) –

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Education for Citizenship

“A capable and productive citizen doesn’t simply turn up for jury service. Rather, she is capable of serving impartially on trials that may require learning unfamiliar facts and concepts and new ways to communicate and reach decisions with her fellow jurors…. Jurors may be called on to decide complex matters that require the verbal, reasoning, math, science, and socialization skills that should be imparted in public schools. Jurors today must determine questions of fact concerning DNA evidence, statistical analyses, and convoluted financial fraud, to name only three topics.”

Justice Leland DeGrasse, 2001

What Might Your Life as a DIY Connected Learner Look Like?

Connected Learning Speed Dating

Self Evaluation and then a Powerful Conversation of Change

What Does Connected Learning Look Like?

• THE CONNECTED EDUCATOR

Professional development needs to change. We know this.

A revolution in technology has transformed the way we can find each other, interact, and collaborate to create knowledge as connected

learners.

Do it Yourself PDA revolution in technology has transformed the way we can find each other, interact, and collaborate to create knowledge as connected learners.

What are connected learners? Learners who collaborate online; learners who use social media to connect with others around the globe; learners who engage in conversations in safe online spaces; learners who bring what they learn online back to their classrooms, schools, and districts.

• THE CONNECTED EDUCATOR

• THE CONNECTED EDUCATOR

• THE CONNECTED EDUCATOR

Meet the new model for professional development:

Connected Learning CommunitiesIn CLCs educators have several ways to connect and collaborate:• F2F learning communities (PLCs)• Personal learning networks (PLNs)• Communities of practice or inquiry (CoPs)

• THE CONNECTED EDUCATOR

1. Local community: Purposeful, face-to-face connections among members of a committed group—a professional learning community (PLC)

2. Global network: Individually chosen, online connections with a diverse collection of people and resources from around the world—a personal learning network (PLN)

3. Bounded community: A committed, collective, and often global group of individuals who have overlapping interests and recognize a need for connections that go deeper than the personal learning network or the professional learning community can provide—a community of practice or inquiry (CoP)

• THE CONNECTED EDUCATOR

Professional Learning Communities

Personal Learning Networks

Communities of Practice

Method Often organized for teachers

Do-it-yourself Educators organize it themselves

Purpose To collaborate in subject area or grade leverl teams around tasks

For individuals to gather info for personal knowledge construction and to bring back info to the community

Collective knowledge building around shared interests and goals.

Structure Team/groupF2f

Individual, face to face, and online

Collective, face to face, or online

Focus Student achievement

Personal growth Systemic improvement

Community is the New Professional Development

Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999a) describe three ways of knowing and constructing knowledge…

Knowledge for Practice is often reflected in traditional PD efforts when a trainer shares with teachers information produced by educational researchers. This knowledge presumes a commonly accepted degree of correctness about what is being shared. The learner is typically passive in this kind of "sit and get" experience. This kind of knowledge is difficult for teachers to transfer to classrooms without support and follow through. After a workshop, much of what was useful gets lost in the daily grind, pressures and isolation of teaching.

Knowledge in Practice recognizes the importance of teacher experience and practical knowledge in improving classroom practice. As a teacher tests out new strategies and assimilates them into teaching routines they construct knowledge in practice. They learn by doing. This knowledge is strengthened when teachers reflect and share with one another lessons learned during specific teaching sessions and describe the tacit knowledge embedded in their experiences. 

Community is the New Professional Development

Knowledge of Practice believes that systematic inquiry where teachers create knowledge as they focus on raising questions about and systematically studying their own classroom teaching practices collaboratively, allows educators to construct knowledge of practice in ways that move beyond the basics of classroom practice to a more systemic view of learning.

I believe that by attending to the development of knowledge for, in and of practice, we can enhance professional growth that leads to real change.

Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S.L. (1999a). Relationships of knowledge and practice: Teaching learning in communities. Review of Research in Education, 24, 249-305.

Passive, active, and reflective knowledge building in local (PLC), global (CoP) and contextual (PLN) learning spaces.

In Phillip Schlechty's, Leading for Learning: How to Transform Schools into Learning Organizations he makes a case for transformation of schools.

Reform- installing innovations that will work within the context of the existing culture and structure of schools. It usually means changing procedures, processes, and technologies with the intent of improving performance of existing operation systems.

It involves repositioning and reorienting action by putting an organization into a new business or adopting radically different means of doing the work traditionally done.

Transformation includes altering the beliefs, values, meanings- the culture- in which programs are embedded, as well as changing the current system of rules, roles, and relationship- social structure-so that the innovations needed will be supported.

Transformation- is intended to make it possible to do things that have never been done by the organization undergoing the transformation.

Different than

So as you develop your vision for learning in the 21st Century how do you see it- should you be a reformer or a transformer and why?

Make a case for using one or the other as a change strategy.

We will cover one question with your introduction embedded during the Round Robin portion. Each of you will have one shot – uninterrupted – at this question.

When each of you has had 1-2 minute (or less) to say what you want about the first question, we'll move on to our next agenda item.

Ground Rules for Round Robin

As facilitators we are going to stay neutral.We may ask a couple questions that will stimulate the discussion and bring out concerns or views that need to be considered.

Please know we are not trying to put you on the spot. Our questions are just trying to get as much information from you as we can.

Questions??

You are convinced that change is needed and that connected learning is a better way to empower teachers, engage students with the content and provide a deeper learning experience than traditional methods- What are the challenges you will face? The yeah buts… the resistance?

Discussion Prompt

Now that we have discussed the challenges that have or could possibly prevent us from achieving the goal, let’s start to brainstorm some possible solutions to over coming these challenges.

Think in terms of: “What’s working now?”“What actions can be put into place to overcome the barriers mentioned?” “What can individuals do?” “Or what innovative ideas can you suggest that aren’t related to overcoming barriers?”

Using the Post Its you have on the table, put one idea per sticky for potential solutions to the problems we have discussed, or innovations/ideas you have that help implement change or shift.

You will have 10 minutes to generate ideas– one per sticky note.

Generating Proactive Solutions

Ok. Stop writing. Now I would like for you to get into pairs or small groups. Looking at your combined Post It notes and share your ideas. Post your best ideas (remix and collaborate) from the collective mind or post your favorites from the group.

You have 10 minutes

Sharing Ideas

Change is hard

Connected learners are more effective change agents

Let’s just admit it…

You are an agent of change!

Now. Always. And now you have the tools to leverage your ideas.

An effective change agent is someone who isn’t afraid to change course.

We have a choice: A choice to be powerful or pitiful. A choice to allow ourselves to become victims of all that is wrong in education or activists. Activists who set their own course. Who resist the urge to quit prematurely. DIY change agents who choose to be powerful learners on behalf of the children they serve.