Here Comes Learning!

This presentation was by Will Richardson from Collective Learning (check out his blog) & Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. It went in several different directions although the idea was to sell everyone on the idea of Virtual learning communities for teachers. I was trying to take down lots of commentary and ended up with a lot of short blurbs that aren't directly connected, but I'm going to leave this pretty much as is. There will be several areas that just read "check this out". I intend to do just that, but think it would be valuable for anyone to do the same, so I'm not going to go too in depth in this blog since I haven't gone to all of the links or articles mentioned below.

Making significant shifts in our classrooms takes significant shifts for us as learners (not teachers).

YouTube Video (help with bowdrill set)
See how this kid is showing his learning and then asking for comments/help from the viewers of the video – he shows what he knows, what he did, what he doesn’t know, what he failed with and how he knew he failed. And he asks for help and that is his primary purpose for doing this – to get feedback.
Notice that he didn’t say his name, show his face, or give indications of who he was. He’s using some sophisticated security measures.
How did he know he would get a response? How did the responders find him? How did he connect his needs to the experts who could provide him information?

Virtual learning community/virtual community of practice
Allows teachers to ask for help, to show “weakness” to someone outside of the face-to-face community within the district.

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (book to check out)

It’s what happens after we publish that becomes powerful, collective action. Raw data can be posted, examples can be given by others.
Example, presenter put up a tweet on twitter complaining about Orbitz. Shortly after he gets a call from customer service call from Orbitz completely based off of his tweet.

Online publishing allows for more complex ideas behind the learning of reading and writing.

Hundreds of people negociating to what the entry for the Michael Jackson would be on Wikipedia after his death. (and are probably still doing s0)

Cnet article: survey: teens ‘sext’ and post personal info - check out article (despite the article title, it says that teens are often MORE safe online than we would think)

Kids are using the technologies in way to socialize, and are connecting with adults outside of their physical spaces – sounds bad, but it is teachers that they can connect to – not actual teachers but to connect to people who will teach them.

“new study shows time spent online important for teen development” Macarthur article – check it out

Many students have no one that is showing them how to use these web 2.0 tools for learning and teachers can’t learn how to do that with traditional pd, a three hour “sit and get”. Teachers have to immerse themselves in the technologiy to understand it, understand it, meld it with their own knowledge of content and more importatntly, pedagogy, to start to understand how teachers work with students where students LEARN to use these tools for learning.

What does job embedded professional development look like? Does it look like the Lab classroom Teacher program that they’re putting together? (professional question based on something we're doing in our district)

Partnership for 21st century learning: best practices in 21st century pd - check this out

NSDC’s definition of professional development –and- their rationale for learning communities

Socoial communities of practice need to be designed in such a way that they evolve over time
What develops is co-created and collaborative with multiple opportunities for member feedback and ownership.
You have to take a whole team through the process, not one or two people (wondering: what are the different ways that we can define “team”)

Need to ask ourselves, where are the tools, ideas, and resources to really implement change at a building, in a classroom?