Digital Footprint

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

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

Follow me on Twitter@snbeach

Published by Solution Tree

Resources and slides for this talk can be found athttp://plpwiki.com

• How can the “infusion of contemporary technologies and digital resources” best meet the needs of our learning community?

• How can the the “infusion of contemporary technologies and digital resources” best meet the needs of my personal learning?

Guiding Questions

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

• THE CONNECTED EDUCATOR

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

Shifts focus of literacy from individual expression to community involvement.

Shifts focus of literacy from individual expression to community involvement.

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

Connected Learner Scale

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) –

11

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

Are there new Literacies- and if so, what are they?

Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving

Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery

Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes

Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content

Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.

Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities

.

Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal

Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources

Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities

Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information

Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms..

What does it mean to work in a participatory 2.0 world?

Reflection

What is Do -It- Yourself Learning ?

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

.

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- You are clearly focused on making real progress every single day. 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 win, now.

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

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

Image: http://flic.kr/p/ch6kp3

Be a learner first—leader second • It's all about asking hard questions and then listening deeply

• A connected learner isn’t afraid to admit that they don’t know the answer to a question or problem, and willingly invite others into a dialogue to explore, discuss, debate, or generate more questions. (@barb_english)

• Asking our questions out in the open in connected ways @lisaneale

• I believe that being a connected learner leads to more questions than answers and that is good. I also believe that connected learners have to learn to take risks - exposing your learning and thoughts can be challenging @ccoffa

• Lurkers become learners. Learners become contributors. @sjhayes8

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

It also helps to ask 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 our progress? Or how will I know if we are learning?

“Understanding how networks work is one of the most important literacies of the 21st Century.”

- Howard Rheingold

http://www.ischool.berkeley.eduHow do you define networks?

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.

Photo credit: Cogdogblog

George Siemens

Image: http://epltt.coe.uga.edu/images/2/24/Connectivism_chart.gif

Personal Learning Networks

FOCUS: Individual, Connecting to Learning Objects, Resources and People – Social Network Driven

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.”

Connected Learning Communities provide the personal learning environment (PLE) to do the nudging

Motivations

• Social connectedness

• Psychological well-being

• Gratification• Collective

Efficacy

Use a 3-pronged Approach

• 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.

We 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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Whatis community, really?

Virtual CommunityA virtual space supported by computer-based information technology, centered upon communication and interaction of participants to generate member-driven content, resulting in relationships being built up. (Lee & Vogel, 2003)

A Place to Build Trust and Relationships

A Domain of Interest

A Place to Meet

A Place to Construct Knowledge Collaboratively

CelebrationCelebration

A Community of Practice is a network of individuals with common problems or interests who get together to explore ways of working, identify common solutions, and share good practice and ideas.

• puts you in touch with like-minded colleagues and peers

• allows you to share your experiences and learn from others

• allows you to collaborate and achieve common outcomes

• accelerates your learning

• Improves student achievement

• validates and builds on existing knowledge and good practice

• provides the opportunity to innovate and create new ideas

Looking Closely at Learning Community Design

4L Model (Linking, Lurking, Learning, and Leading) inspired by John Seeley Brown

http://learningcircuits.blogspot.com/2006/06/roles-in-cops.html

This model is developed around the roles and interactions members of a community have as participants in that community.

Healthy communities are collaborative, co-created and designed with evolution in mind.

The New Third Place?

“All great societies provide informal meeting places, like the Forum in ancient Rome or a contemporary English pub. But since World War II, America has ceased doing so. The neighborhood tavern hasn't followed the middle class out to the suburbs...” -- Ray Oldenburg

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

“Organizations tend to

maintain themselves. It’s

only through leadership do

they change.”

Culture of Principled Change

Leadership is about learning together, and constructing meaning and knowledge collectively and collaboratively. It involves opportunities to surface and mediate perceptions, values, beliefs, information, and assumptions through continuing conversations; to inquire about and generate ideas together; to seek to reflect upon and make sense of work in the light of shared beliefs and new information; and to create actions that grow out of these new understandings (Lambert, 1998, p. 7).

Collective Leadership

Leading for Learning: Five Areas of Action

1. Establishing a focus on learning

2. Building professional communities that value learning

3. Engaging external environments that matter for learning

4. Acting strategically and sharing leadership

5. Creating coherence

Knapp, M. S., Copland, M. A., Ford, B., Markholt, A., McLaughlin, M. W., Milliken, M., & Talberg, J. E. (2003)

Leading for Learning: Five Areas of Action

1. Establishing a focus on learning

2. Building professional communities that value learning

3. Engaging external environments that matter for learning

4. Acting strategically and sharing leadership

5. Creating coherence

Knapp, M. S., Copland, M. A., Ford, B., Markholt, A., McLaughlin, M. W., Milliken, M., & Talberg, J. E. (2003)

Distributed Leadership defined…

Distributed leadership does not mean that no one is responsible for the overall performance of the organization. It means, rather, that the job of administrative leaders is primarily about enhancing the skills and knowledge of people in the organization, creating a common culture of expectations around the use of those skills and knowledge, holding the various pieces of the organization together in a productive relationship with each other, and holding individuals accountable for their contributions to the collective result

(Elmore, 2000, p. 15).

…is about creating leadership

density, building and sustaining

leadership capacity throughout the

organization. People in many

different roles can lead and affect

the performance of their schools in

different ways.

Distributed leadership

Distributed Leadership:An Example

An impromptu meeting was convened by a group of teachers who were not comfortable with playground supervision. This self-directed group sketched out a plan and shared it with their colleagues. They agreed to implement the plan and monitor it for a period of time by examining both student discipline data and teacher input. The plan eventually was deemed successful and the ad hoc committee disbanded.

Distributing Leadership:A Developmental Process

(MacBeath, 2005)

• Phase I: Treading cautiouslyPrincipal strategically identifies leadership needs of school, identifies people who have the requisite capacities, and assigns responsibilities to them.

• Phase II: Widening the scope of leadershipCreation of a culture that offers teachers an opportunity to learn from one another’s practice. Principal works to create an enabling environment, encourages shared leadership and a shared vision among staff as to where the school is going. Innovative ideas are encouraged from all members of the school.

• Phase III: Standing backMaintaining the dynamic by supporting others; culture is characterized by mutual trust and self-confidence.

Promoting Distributed Leadership: Six Key Functions (Murphy, 2005)

1. Crafting a vision, delineating expectations for teacher leadership in the school

2. Identifying and selecting teacher leaders, linking them to leadership opportunities

3. Legitimizing the work of teacher leaders

4. Providing direct support

5. Developing leadership skill sets

6. Managing the teacher leadership process

Teacher Leadership“When given opportunities to lead,

teachers can influence school reform efforts. Waking this sleeping giant of teacher leadership has unlimited potential in making a real difference in the pace and depth of school change.”

Katzenmeyer and Moller, Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Helping Teachers Develop as Leaders, 2001

"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.

Real Question is this:Are we willing to change- to risk change- to meet the needs of the precious folks we serve?

Can you accept that Change (with a “big” C) is sometimes a messy process and that learning new things together is going to require some tolerance for ambiguity.

Last Generation