always learning

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been two full years since I taught my own technology classes. Of course I’ve done all sorts of co-planning and co-teaching in the last couple of years at ISB, but it’s certainly not the same as having your own group of students to work with. So, this year, in my new role of Middle School Technology and Learning Coordinator, I am thrilled to be back in the classroom, teaching our one middle school IT class – a sixth grade quarter-long exploratory course – for just one quarter this year. With the end of the semester quickly approaching, we’re almost finished with our ‘big project’, so I thought I’d share it here.

Given that I’m only teaching one section of this class (and my colleagues Ross, Matt and Jean are teaching the others), I felt it was important to keep the content as consistent as possible, but of course, I couldn’t resist transforming the process of how we would learn that content, along with the finished product that we would use to demonstrate our learning. As can be expected, since this is the first time I’ve taught this particular class in this particular way, there are a few things I would change for next time around, but overall, I think it turned out pretty well.

Basically the course is intended to teach the “basics” of Microsoft Office (you know the course, you probably taught it back in the 1990′s like I did when I was first teaching). So, considering the content, I tried to develop a project-based unit that would emphasize independent learning (since so many of the students would probably already know the basics), as well as allow them to share what they’ve learned in an authentic environment, and utilize some new technology tools in a creative way.

As usual, I followed the Understanding by Design model to plan the unit and the MYP Technology Design Cycle to break down the stages of the project into manageable chunks. Basically, what we’re working towards is a shared wiki with student-created tutorials on all of the MS Office basics (inspired by Chad Bates, our fantastic tech director who taught the class last year and experimented with the tutorial idea with his class) and an overview of digital citizenship, which we will share with the entire middle school as a resource for their potential technology needs.

Here’s what it looks like:

Established Goals (ISTE NETS Standards)

2. Communication and Collaboration: Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students:

a. interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts or others employing a variety of digital environments and media.
b. communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats.

4. Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving & Decision-Making: Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources. Students:

b. plan and manage activities to develop a solution or complete a project.

5. Digital Citizenship: Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior. Students:

d. exhibit leadership for digital citizenship.

6. Technology Operations and Concepts: Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems and operations. Students:

b. select and use applications effectively and productively.
d. transfer current knowledge to learning of new technologies.

Enduring Understandings:
Students will understand that:

• Responsible digital citizens demonstrated shared characteristics, habits and attitudes.
• We can work together to teach others what we have learned.
• We can use web 2.0 tools to collaborate and communicate with a global audience.

Essential Questions:

• What are the characteristics, habits and attitudes of a responsible digital citizen?
• How can we work together to teach others about responsible digital citizenship?
• How can we collaborate and communicate with others online?

Assessment Evidence

GRASPS Task

• Goal: Your goal is to produce a multimedia handbook about basic technology tools and digital citizenship for ISB elementary students.
• Role: You are a team of student leaders at ISB.
• Audience: Elementary students at ISB, and around the world.
• Situation: You will need to collaborate together to produce a thorough, easy to understand, multimedia tutorial wiki about basic technology tools and digital citizenship for a school and worldwide audience.
• Product/Performance: Your wiki must demonstrate everything that you have learned about digital citizenship and basic technology tools this quarter.

Six Facets of Understanding:

• Explain: Produce a screencast tutorial about how to use a specific technology feature in MS Office.
• Apply: As a team, create a multimedia handbook about digital citizenship for ISB elementary students.
• Interpret: As part of your presentation to ISB elementary students, write a skit to demonstrate your understanding of digital citizenship.
• Perspective: Develop and deliver a lesson to ISB elementary students presenting all facets of responsible digital citizenship.
• Self-Knowledge: On your blog, describe what you know about digital citizenship. At the end of the course, go back to your first post and reflect on what you’ve learned. What more do you need to learn?
• Empathize: On your blog, write a post in the perspective of one of the characters in the public service announcements. Reflect on the events of that day and how they made you feel.

And here’s how I broke it down into the stages of the MYP Technology Design Cycle:

Investigate

During the first part of the project, we spent most of our class time exploring different types tutorials and determining what the criteria are for a quality tutorial. To get the discussion started, we watched and critiqued the first one (on adding a survey in Moodle) as a class. Then, they had class (and homework) time to watch at least 2 other tutorials from the list below (or a different tutorial that they found and shared with the class):

• Adding a chart in Google Docs
• How to draw realistic eyes
• Student Sample from last year
• Discussion Settings in WP
• RSS in Plain English
• VoiceThread tutorial
• Switch to Mac

For each tutorial they watched, they added a response to the Moodle discussion forum answering the following questions:

• What did the creator of this tutorial do well?
• What would you change about this tutorial?
• What aspects of this tutorial would you like to include in your own tutorial?

In the end, we came up with a list (as a class) of criteria for a good tutorial that all students will be assessed with at the end of the project. Then, because we had so many different skills to create tutorials on, I asked students to form groups based on the tutorials we needed (this list was based on the course curriculum I was given). Finally, each student wrote a blog post reflecting on what they learned in that section of the project , which tutorial they had chosen to create and why, and what they need to learn to complete their tutorial.

The next time I teach this course, I would also add some exploration time with ScreenRecorder and MovieMaker (and maybe even GarageBand) since we ended up doing quite a lot more editing than I thought we would. I would also add in brainstorming time for students to create a mini-storyline for their tutorial to help give them focus and to make the tutorials a little more interesting.

Plan

During the planning, students created a storyboard and script of their tutorial, keeping in mind all of the criteria we developed during the investigate stage. We focused on: making the tutorial understandable by anyone (even people who are not in our class), using simple and clear directions, including a basic introduction and credits, and changing the view and “zoom” on the screen to keep the tutorial interesting. Once the students completed their storyboard and script, they posted it on their individual blog along with a reflection on this part of the project.

Create

At this point, students have a good idea of what their tutorial will look like and exactly what steps they need to take to complete their tutorial. They spent a little bit of time exploring with the SmartNotebook SmartRecorder (which happens to be our only screencasting software available to students), after watching this tutorial created by Matt, and then got right down to the recording.

Aside from some serious Windows-related drama about recording volume (oh how I miss working in a Mac lab), it really only took one lesson for the students to record their complete screencast. Of course, they all wanted to add the extra features, so we brought their screencasts into MovieMaker and started adding the finishing touches. Once they had their introductions and credits, it was time to add background music. Since we have access to a smaller Mac lab, we spent one lesson exploring with GarageBand to create simple (and original) background tracks.

As each student finished their tutorial, they did a peer assessment based on the class criteria. Once they had feedback from their peers, they had time to edit and fix any issues with their completed tutorial. After they were satisfied, they uploaded their finished tutorial to YouTube, embedded it in a blog post and reflected on their finished product.

Evaluate

For the last few days of the project, we spent some time determining which aspects of the ISB Definition of Learning we achieved throughout the process of completing our tutorials:

I used a simple checklist to get students thinking about which aspect of learning they met during each stage, then they shared their results with a peer knowing that they would be asked to share 1 or 2 ideas with the whole class, and then we had a whole class reflection. Finally, they wrote a personal reflection as a blog post.

Here are a few highlights from what they shared with me during the whole class-reflection:

• We learned a lot having to do our tutorials independently instead of being directly taught each skill. This way we learned it when we needed it and as we were doing our project, which helps us remember how to do it.
• We learned more by being able to test out the tools by ourselves and helping each other than by having the teacher teach us everything together.
• We would have preferred to do one single blog post at the end of the project reflecting on everything, instead of one for each stage.
• By writing a blog post at the end of each stage, we really reinforced everything we learned during that stage.
• We learned a lot about what makes a good blog post from having to write so many.
• We learned about ISB’s Blogging Guidelines and how to write a blog post with just the right kind of information.
• We learned how to be independent in our projects, but we liked having the checklists and all the steps broken down for us.
• We would have liked the steps to be broken down into even smaller chunks so we could meet our deadlines better.
• We learned that we can use websites and YouTube to learn new things and to teach other people things that we know.

Putting it all together

I waited until the last three weeks of class to have the students start compiling the wiki because I really didn’t know how long it would take to complete the tutorials. So now we’ll spend the next few days putting the finishing touches on the wiki and publicizing it around the middle school so that other students can learn from our work.

We also have a collaborating class in the US who are doing something very similar, except using the Mac version of all of these applications. We’re hoping that they will finish their tutorials before the end of our semester so we can also include them on our wiki and have a brief discussion about the transferability of skills from one platform to another.

We’ll also use this time to discuss digital citizenship and online safety and responsibility to be able to add those sections to the wiki. If we have time, I would love to do something in one or two elementary classrooms to share what we’ve learned  with an authentic audience (that can always use some reinforcement about appropriate online behavior).

Final Thoughts

Considering that I really didn’t have a good idea of how long it would take students to complete this type of tutorial – especially in a PC lab working with MovieMaker (my old enemy), I’m quite impressed with how things turned out. I was so happy to see how much the students learned in this very project-based course. I did very little direct instruction, even though some of the screencasting and editing tools were completely new to most students. It was a pleasure to see how much they appreciated being able to learn independently and to create something new with their knowledge.

Next time I would really like to add a more in-depth collaborative element – having our global partners do the peer assessment instead of simply within our class, potentially sharing more directly via our blog posts, and maybe coming up with some kind of collaborative lesson for our elementary classrooms that could involve multimedia elements (or a Skype connection) from our partner class. Of course, this is all dependent on timing, commitment and logistics. Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to teach this course again to make it even better!

I am incredibly honored (and quite flattered) to be part of an amazing line-up of speakers at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School (MICDS) this summer, thanks to Elizabeth Helfant and Patrick Woessner. Plus, as if it wasn’t exciting enough to be billed on the same event as Will, Karl, Alec, Darren, Dean, Chris, Jeff and Matt, my session is scheduled the day after Kevin’s so we get to meet up for dinner before he flies out!

In reflecting back to the SUNY course I taught with Jeff earlier this year; the faculty meetings Tara, Jeff and I have facilitated this year; my 2 trips to Qatar to consult at QA over the past two years (thanks to Julie); my recent visit to TIS (thanks to Leanne); and the various conferences I’ve attended over the past few years; there are a few things I want to make sure I do in my workshop:

• Ensure that the session is participant-driven and focused on actually producing something that can be used in the classroom in August.
• Provide lots of time for discussion, reflection, and metacognition by asking participants to work in small groups.
• Create groups based on participant need – either ability groups (self-determined) or curricular/grade level groups.
• Focus on the practical, remembering that the how is just as important as the why. Break the session down into stages (the way I would in my classroom) so that participants can work through the entire planning and creation of a global project.
• Model quality curriculum planning and authentic technology integration by using the Understanding by Design method and following the MYP Technology Design Cycle while using a selection of digital tools that teachers might want to apply in their own project.

Here’s how I’m thinking I might organize the day:

9:00 – 9:15: Warm-up, get to know participants and their experience with this type of project. Use pre-assessment survey to determine teams and grouping.

Clearly state the goal that participants will develop and plan a global project to be used in August, based on their curricular needs following the UbD process and using the technology design cycle.

9:15 – 10:30: Share a revised version of the Connecting Classrooms Across Continents presentation which builds understanding of the value of global collaboration, focuses on practical tips on how to develop a global project, and shares examples from a selection of classrooms and grade levels.

The rest of the day is structured hands-on work time following the MYP Technology Design Cycle, with opportunities for participants to work in groups, but come back to the larger whole at the beginning of each stage of the cycle for tips, strategies and introductions to the various tools needed.

10:30 – 11:30: Investigate: Start with a round robin or “final word” activity (in groups) with an article that really highlights the benefits of global collaborations. Then, provide participants with a wiki with links to authentic global collaborations to explore to get some ideas/inspiration. Next, have teams brainstorm (maybe using inspiration or one of the web-based mind mapping tools) a global project that would enhance a current unit in their curriculum.

Lunch

12:00 – 1:00: Plan: Start with an intro or overview of the UbD process (depending on what participants already know) to help design the project with the end in mind. Begin to build a unit planner using the same wiki, with template provided.

1:00 – 2:00 Create: Create the “home base” for the project – a wiki, Ning, blog, whatever. Demo some tools teachers might want to use to learn some tricks for how to use whichever tool is best for the task. Begin connecting with other teachers that might be interested in participating around the world through sharing on a Ning or Twitter (or anything else that we can think of). Focus on actually creating the online space that students will use in August.

2:00 – 2:30: Evaluate: Share projects with the larger group, reflect on process so far & what needs to go next

2:30 – 3:00: Feedback survey for me, links to all projects on the wiki, any final questions answered.

What do you think? Would you want to attend a session like this? What else would you do to make it a positive experience for the participants?

It’s that time of year again. The time when all fifth graders start worrying about moving up to sixth grade. The transition from top of the elementary school to bottom of the middle school is not an easy one to make, as I so clearly remember.

So, as part of our CoETaIL course 2, Chrissy, Diane and I have developed a fun, quick and simple project to help ease the transition to middle school for our grade fives. Last year Diane and I did a very similar project with her ESL students and it was a huge hit!

One important facet of the project is to realize that all fifth graders around the world are going through the same challenges, so, as one aspect of the project, we have created a very simple VoiceThread (and wiki) and would love to have other students contribute and share their concerns:

We would absolutely love it if you and your students would be willing to share their thoughts about moving on to sixth grade with us! If you’re interested, please add your info here or leave a comment on this post and we’ll contact you directly.

There are a few things I particularly love about this project

• The emphasis on natural conversation, which is really difficult for grade 5 students when working from a script and recording themselves (as you can hear when listening to our excellent, but very scripted grade 5 podcasts).
• The focus on bringing in our students’ individual cultures and personal experiences by asking them to reflect on a specific inspirational saying in their first language. I have this vision of the conversation our students are having with their parents when they ask them about inspirational sayings and how this can help them deal with the challenges they might face in life.
• The looks on the students faces when they realize kids all around the world have the same concerns as they do, that we’re all the same in so many ways.

Just in case you’re interested, here’s our UbD unit planner for grade 5 core classroom and ESL pull-out:

Established Goals

ESL specific

• Extend oral language through conversation
• Build confidence with oral language, especially in a conversational format

Grade 5

• Retain natural fluency during presentations and/or recording
• Build confidence to engage in spontaneous dialogue based on focused topics

Both

• Develop and uncover strategies to cope with life changes, through the lens of transitioning to sixth grade

Enduring Understandings

• Conversational language is crucial to efficient and clear communication
• Conversational dialogue requires all participants to be responsive
• We all have cultural teachings to draw upon when facing difficult situations

Essential Questions

• Why is conversational language important to communication?
• How can we improve our conversational language?
• How can the words of wise people help us discover changes we can make within ourselves?

GRASPS Task

Goal: You will produce a podcast that showcases strategies, teachings, inspirational sayings and experiences to help fifth grade students succeed in sixth grade around the world.

Role: You will work in teams to research, author, record and broadcast your podcast

Audience: Students moving on around the world though iTunes, class blog, and the internet.

Situation: You are moving on to sixth grade and need a variety of strategies, teachings, inspirational sayings and experiences that will help you succeed.

Product Performance: Your podcast will be posted on the class blog and on iTunes. A successful podcast will include:

• Strong, clear speaking voice
• Modulated voice with emotion and emphasis
• Teachings or inspirational sayings that can directly provide guidance for students transitioning to sixth grade
• 3 strategies linked to an experience that sixth graders will have designed to help fifth graders succeed
• A written script with proper grammar
• Engaging language, intro & outro, and audio enhancements.

Extension:

• Video podcast
• Adding still images to the podcast
• Personal podcast

Six Facets of Understanding

Explain: After completing a self-assessment of your oral language (through GB recording), explain which areas you, personally, need to improve upon, why and how you will you have improved.

Interpret: Share an inspirational saying via the class blog (in translation if not in English) and describe a personal experience when this saying was beneficial. Sayings could include personal images, or audio recordings.

Apply: Collaborate with partner classes around the world to produce a VoiceThread describing the challenges and opportunities of moving on, as well as find commonalities among all students.

Perspective: Listen to a “real” podcast or book about a life change (anything that can be found and is appropriate). Discuss as a class, or in partners, how the broadcaster or author coped with the change using strategies, inspirational sayings or teachings.

Self-Knowledge: Personal Action Plan: Begin with a personal reflection of a similar experience to determine your successful coping strategies, develop an action plan to put those strategies, along with the new ones learned during this unit, into practice next year.

Empathize: In partners, role-play the first day of school – one person is the teacher, one is the student. Reflect on the experience with your partner.

Final Thoughts

We would love for you to join us in this project! Please feel free to leave a comment here or add your school to the wiki. We’ll be working on the VoiceThread during the last week of May, but please feel free to add your comments whenever you’re ready!

Over the past two and a half years I’ve been focusing on helping teachers make connections with other classes around the world. For the most part, our collaborations have been about general topics – book reports, water, persuasive writing, enhancing oral language, things that almost any classroom teacher would be able to connect with, and they’ve been great!

But this year, inspired by Clarence Fisher‘s ThinWalls project, I’m looking for something new, something deeper. A real connection based on shared goals and common assessments. Something that will last longer than your average globally collaborative project. A classroom connection, based on specific curricular needs, that will last an entire school year.

I’m fortunate to be working with so many wonderful teachers at ISB and around the world that are willing to be patient and wait until we find just the right classes with just the right needs. They are willing to build these collaborations from the ground up, focusing on student learning, and taking the time to plan meaningful and authentic experiences for all involved.

One of these projects is our fifth grade Students Teaching Students podcasting and blogging collaboration around the Lucy Caulkin’s Readers and Writer’s Workshop.

In order to ensure that all classrooms involved share the same goal for the project, we are following the Understanding by Design model of curriculum planning. And to make sure that we’re all in it from the ground up, we’re planning via a Google Doc. Although I’ve used Google Docs at school with team members a lot, I haven’t yet used them for curriculum planning across time zones and schools. I’m looking forward to seeing how it works out.

So far, all of the project participants are listed on the Doc, with contact info and class details carefully noted. We have determined the basic focus of the unit and are starting to share tips and advice with each other. Over time, I’d love to use the Doc (or a Calendar) to plan common events or activities.

For example, here is what we have so far for this project (all a work in progress):

Enduring Understandings:

• Good readers use strategies to deepen their understanding.
• Good readers read fluently and with expression, paying particular attention to the conventions of grammar.
• Authentic audiences encourage good reading and writing.
• Collaboration and communication both inside and outside the classroom will prepare students for being productive citizens within our global society.

Essential Questions:

• How do I use reading strategies to deepen my understanding?
• Why is fluency important?
• How does my audience influence or affect my reading and writing?
• How does collaborating with others help me to learn?

Assessment:

• Student self reflection
• Teacher self reflection
• Class blog as portfolio

GRASPS Task:

Goal: Your goal is to entertain your audience with personal stories about reading strategies
Role: Broadcasting team: On-Air Personality/Show Host, Producer, Writers, Mixing Team, Manager
Audience: Peers at ISB, both younger and same-age, partner classes around the world
Situation: You need to teach your audience effective reading strategies
Purpose: To collaborate with your  team to effectively communicate reading strategies to a wide audience

Supporting activities ideas to build understanding (brainstorm):

• commenting quality – rubric for commenting
• specific points in the year where you pick an earlier piece of writing that you rework and link back to old version to see the growth

Planned activities to support learning (brainstorm):

• Introduction to online safety
• Introduction to blogging
• Introduction to GarageBand/Audacity
• Podcasting a written piece for fluency
• Posting a podcast
• Read a story from a book for practicing fluency to be podcast later
• Developing quality commenting skills
• Collaborative teaming to develop a podcast focused on reading strategies
• Reflective pieces of writing on the blog

I love the idea of being able to plan a curricular unit for several classes all from one Google Doc. This is my idea of collaboration – everyone literally on the same page and working towards the same goals. Although I’ve done quite a few of these projects before, I usually ended coordinating via e-mail and never really “flattening” the planning process – I inadvertently usually had all planning go through me.

This type of process, with the project clearly outlined, is the way I would normally plan a project with a classroom teacher face-to-face. How amazing and easy it is to now do the same thing, anytime, anywhere, with a Google Doc!

I’m hoping that this transparency in planning, and the clarity in goals for the unit, will help us stay focused throughout the year and enable us to dig deeper with our students.

What do you think? Have you ever used a Google Doc to plan this way? Have you ever had shared curricular goals that are ongoing throughout the year with another class, in another country? How did it go?

Many of us are the lone voice of change in our institutions. Some may be lucky to have the support of their administration, or to have a group of teachers ready and willing to change their teaching practice, or even to have a small team to work with, but very few seem to have a whole-school focus on changing the way we teach and learn (except for maybe one, of course).

So, if you don’t have a school-wide focus on changing practices, and you don’t have ongoing professional development offerings at the institutional level, and perhaps you don’t have the expectation to change from “the top,” where does the energy to change come from?

It comes from us, the lone voices. If we are not energetic and enthusiastic about moving forward, if we are not constantly offering ideas for how to engage students, if we are not tirelessly promoting new ways of thinking, who else will do it?

I worry about apathy, about giving up when the institution doesn’t value the same things we do. Or when the institution is so big that we know it will take years to reach the tipping point. I worry that when our lone voices stop bringing the energy and enthusiasm for learning in a new way, it will just fall by the wayside.

Why is it important to always keep institutional change in mind as the ultimate goal? Why not merely keep working for small-scale change on a daily basis, and hope that things will gradually improve? For one thing, the stakes are too high not to be thinking about the big picture. As Scott McLeod’s K12Online presentation points out, schools as institutions are themselves in real danger of becoming obsolete.

Referencing Dr. Clayton Christensen’s work on disruptive innovations, Scott shows that institutions that don’t embrace change early enough will simply become obsolete and disappear once the change they have ignored happens. Similar to the old land-line phone companies who didn’t switch to mobile networks fast enough, unless schools start thinking about technological changes now and new types of learning that will arise in the near future, there might come a point when everyone decides that we don’t need schools as institutions anymore – and it may be approaching sooner than we think. Either way, it’s clear that most schools will not embrace disruptive innovations (in this case, technologies used for learning) until it’s too late.

As Scott points out, we can no longer make decisions based the assumption that people will always need schools. In fact, these disruptive technologies can and will become so much more useful than the current state of our schools, that the “customer base” schools have come to expect, may in the near future no longer exist, simply because there are so many more meaningful ways to learn outside of that institution. Think about the last time you used a public telephone booth – almost overnight, the entire infrastructure of public phone booths became irrelevant to its customers. Unless we (even as lone voices) keep working towards embracing and changing with these disruptive technologies, the school classroom may become the “public telephone booth” of the future.

So how can we, those of us who believe in these disruptive innovations, help influence the outcome of schools as institutions, before they become obsolete? And how can we find and implement the best approaches towards reaching that change? Something I’m worried about is repeating the same strategy or approaches to the point of diminishing returns, or in getting trapped using ineffective methods repeatedly and hoping for the best.

Jon Becker’s K12Online presentation discusses some recent research about the role and effectiveness of technology facilitators, specifically in the United States.  He contrasts two different styles of technology facilitation: the collaborator and the salesman. The collaborator is one that attends team meetings on a regular basis, continually sharing new ideas for how to embrace technology within the core curriculum that teachers are focused on. The salesman is one that sits in the lab or an office, waiting for teachers to approach him or her with an idea, and then sells the “wow factor” of certain tools based on that teacher’s needs. Based on Jon’s synthesis of the research, the collaborator approach is far more effective, meeting the teacher’s pressing needs of teaching the curriculum, while being a constant partner in the learning process.

In terms of thinking about how to work towards school-wide change, there’s no question that the collaborative approach is a step in the right direction. Working at the team level authentically embeds the facilitator into the schools infrastructure – albeit at a much smaller scale. Teachers will naturally be more receptive to suggestions simply by virtue of the fact that the facilitator is an informed, contributing member of the team. Not only will the collaborator get a better picture of all of the intricacies of a specific team, but they will be so much more knowledgeable about that particular team’s needs. This could be one way to begin to institutionalize change – by working through the school’s existing infrastructure, and consistently demonstrating enthusiasm and energy for new ways of teaching and learning that are directly relevant to the teacher’s needs at that level.

Along with the team approach, I love the idea of Viral PD that Jen has been talking about for ages – why wait for the PD you need to be offered by an institution that doesn’t realize they need it (or isn’t ready to provide it)? I love the fact that it is grassroots, but it’s organized, with a clear structure and focus and it allows for people to learn at their own pace without having to “wait” for help. Methods of professional development for educators should reflect the new ways we teach and learn, increasingly through online networks and user-created content, just like Julie Lindsay‘s E-Learning for Life Ning with her teachers in Qatar.

I especially love the idea of having a “home base” for this type of professional development. This is something I’m always promoting for the projects I conduct with students, why wouldn’t we use the same approach when teachers are learning? If we can start building an infrastructure now, a place where teachers can effectively share what they know, that infrastructure can be used when the broader shift begins to happen and the institution finally embraces the changed nature of professional development. Taking the time to thoughtfully implement this infrastructure now, can then become the foundation for a changed approach to professional development at the institutional level.

I understand that change is slow and that each small step we take is valuable, but I am a planner at heart, and I would like to find a strategic way to approach these small steps so that they lead to something more. I don’t mean “strategic” merely in the sense of being complex or clever. To me, it means an approach that’s transparently organized, with definite goals and a clear focus on the future. If you’re lucky enough to be working in a team, being strategic might also mean coordinating time to work together, or methods of cross-pollinating and sharing the team members’ insight. Being strategic in this sense would mean concentrating on deliberately putting structures in place in the present that could help bring about future systemic change. Whenever I plan a project, I always start with the end in mind, so why can’t we do this with teachers? Even if it is a small group of teachers, we can be thoughtful and coordinated about how we help build their understanding, right?

So I’m starting to think about how I can use the Understanding by Design process with my seedlings (or Tribes, if you prefer). Maybe taking the ISTE Standards for Teachers and designing “units of study” that would help build teacher understanding of one standard at a time? Developing authentic tasks and experiences for the teachers I’m working with that would demonstrate their understanding at a deeper level. Instead of letting the learning be hit or miss, dependent on totally arbitrary factors, perhaps I could use this approach to help coordinate the learning among the teachers that are already interested? Does anyone else have experience using their classroom unit planning methods as the framework for collaborating with fellow teachers? What methods get the best results? What extra factors need to be accounted for, and what needs to be modified, when thinking of teaching peers as a type of “unit planning”?

Without the energy and enthusiasm of even just one lone voice in the school (whether it’s a tech facilitator or a classroom teacher or a librarian or specialist), none of this will happen. As so many of us like to say, we need to be the change we wish to see in the world, but can we organize and strategize enough to provide an infrastructure for others to adopt and adapt to these changed perspectives, eventually, perhaps the whole institution? Is this one way to ensure that the changes, ideals and ideas brought by one lone voice can outlast their time at one specific institution?

What do you think? Is it possible to be strategic (in the sense that even small groups of learners outside of the institutional PD structure can be organized and focused) when you’re the lone voice?