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Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach Co-Founder & CEO Powerful Learning Practice, LLChttp://[email protected]

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

AuthorThe Connected Educator: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age

Follow me on Twitter@snbeach

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

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

Are you using the smallest number of high leverage, easy to understand actions to unleash stunningly powerful consequence?

Professional development needs to change. We know this.

-----Do it Yourself PD

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

as 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.

Who/What are connected, DIY learners?

What is Do -It- Yourself Learning ?

How Does One Get Started on the Path to Becoming a DIY, Connected Educator?

Status Quo-- Things are working well most of the time.

THENSomething happens that creates a sense of urgency to change. A desire to learn something new. You are presented with evidence that makes you feel something. It touches you in some way.

Maybe…- a disturbing look at a problem- a hopeful glimpse of the future- a sobering self reflection- you hear someone like Ewan McIntosh speak and are moved to action

.

One of three things happen:

1. Complacency - You are moved but fail act - telling yourself or others, "Everything is fine."

2. False urgency - You are busy, working-working-working and never reflect or move yourself to action. You talk and it scratches the itch.

3. True urgency or passion- Urgent behavior is driven by a belief that the world contains great opportunities and great hazards. It inspires a gut-level determination to move, and shift, now. You are clearly focused on making real progress every single day.

You see it. You feel it and you are moved to change or act or learn

• Letting go of control• Willing to unlearn and relearn• Mindset of discovery• Reversed mentorship• Co-learning and co-creating• Messy, ground zero, risk taking

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

Wonder is both a sense of awe and capacity for contemplation.

Wonderment begins with curiosity but then goes deeper beyond the surface to a place of possibility. A place we look for patterns and testing of ideas we had closed to our more reasonable mind.

Wonder is to leave aside our taken-for-granted assumptions, peel away our biases, and to willing explore aspects and angles we wouldn't have seen before.

• http://bit.ly/QSqfjI

•MCCSC on Today’s Meet

• Twitter around DIY PD

It also helps to ask yourself questions like:

1) Why am I planning to do this? 2) How will I initiate this change? 3) Who can I connect with online in my network that can help me? 4) How will I measure my progress? Or how will I know if I am learning?

In connectivism, learning involves

creating connections and developing a

network. It is a theory for the digital age

drawing upon chaos, emergent properties,

and self organized learning.

responsiveresponsive

personalized

“Twitter and blogs ... contribute an entirely new dimension of what it means to be a part of a tribe. The real power of tribes has nothing to do with the Internet and everything to do with people.”

Internet tribes

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“A tribe needs a shared interest and a way to communicate.”

“ Do you know what who you know knows?” H. Rheingold

• 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 and Networks are 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 information produced by 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 to transfer to local context without support and follow through. After a workshop, much of what was useful gets lost in the daily grind, pressures and isolation of doing the work.

Knowledge in Practice recognizes the importance of experience and practical knowledge in improving practice. As you test out new strategies and assimilates them into your routines you construct knowledge in practice. You learn by doing. This knowledge is strengthened when teams reflect and share with one another lessons learned during application and describe the tacit knowledge embedded in their experiences.

Community and Networks are the new Professional Development

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

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.

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Focus on the sharing—the learning– not the tool.

But make sure you know a few tools or know someone that knows who can teach you.

Action research groups: Do active, collaborative research focused on improvement around a possibility or problem in a classroom, school, district, or state.

Book study groups: Collaboratively read and discuss a book in an online space.

Case studies: Analyze in detail specific situations and their relationship to current thinking and pedagogy. Write, discuss, and reflect on cases using a 21st century lens to produce collaborative reflection and improve practice.

Connected coaching: Assign a connected coach to individuals on teams who will discuss and share teaching practices in order to promote collegiality and help educators think about how the new literacies inform current teaching practices.

Critical friends: Form a professional learning team who come together voluntarily at least once a month. Have members commit to improving their practice through collaborative learning. Use protocols to examine each other’s teaching or leadership activities and share both warm and cool feedback in respectful ways.

Curriculum review or mapping groups: Meet regularly in teams to review what team members are teaching, to reflect together on the impact of assumptions that underlie the curriculum, and to make collaborative decisions. Teams often study lesson plans together.

Instructional rounds: Adopt a process through which educators develop a shared practice of observing each other, analyzing learning and teaching from a research perspective, and sharing expertise.

"Imagine an organization with an employee who can accurately see the truth, understand the situation, and understand the potential outcomes of various decisions. And now imagine that this person is able to make something happen." ~ Seth Godin.

Connected learners are more effective change agents

http://www.21stcenturycollaborative.com

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