My life has been a whirlwind of activity since NECC and I have found it hard to keep up with blogging. I don't know why, but I feel guilty blogging when I have other deadlines looming. Do any of you experience that? Is it illogical? Should I blog anyway, much like we still get the day to day things done at work of home when we have extra tasks on our "to do" lists or should I take any free moment and put it toward the deadlines and follow Grandmas' rule of "work before play"?

I'd love to hear your take.

Disclaimer: Blogging is like play for me- sheer enjoyment. Not necessarily the writing, as for me the writing doesn't come easy, but the thrill of the hits and conversation that follows.

Community Driven System
The purpose of stealing moments away from my already full agenda this morning though is to share the wonderment of the last week. This week I came to realized more than ever that I am a community driven woman. I believe in the power of the community, the wisdom of the crowd, that the network is more powerful than the node and that none of us are as good as all of us. I believe that School 2.0 means moving from a classroom system to a community system. And now more than ever I also believe that about PD and I mean all PD- conferences(e.g. K12Online08), workshops (e.g. most recently CABOCES Summer Instititue), ongoing, job embedded sync and asysn (e.g. PLP) and as a result I am going to start changing my keynotes even more to flow from a community model as well. As I reflected over the last week I realized even my family operates as a community rather than a traditional family model. I am no loan wolf.

CABOCES Summer Institute
One week ago I landed in Buffalo and was greeted by Rick Weinberg who took me to Selemanca where I would be spending the next week working with educators from the surrounding area. When the day drew closer to the conference Rick shared that unexpectedly numbers were down. I gave him the opportunity to cancel rather than bring me out for just a few people, (I am knee deep in buying my first home in Va and could have used the time) but Rick was firm that they wanted to move forward. I am so glad he made that decision because this week was an incredible week of learning for me personally.

Here are my take aways...

1. When you are focused on educational reform from a community perspective- more is not always better.

 Monday- I had 10 administrators who were with me for one day. The small number enabled me to spend time personally getting to know each attendee. I invited Karen Richardson, Chris Lehmann, and Jon Becker to attend a panel discussion answering their concerns and questions. You can listen to the panel discussion here. The strength of intimacy because of such a small number of participants in the room made me realize that relationship is a more powerful tool when trying to leverage change than having large numbers of people in a room who are passively listening to you talk.

John Norton's wine glass metaphor rings true here- (He was drinking a glass of wine when it occurred to him- hence the name) that it is better to have small numbers of highly engaged people when influencing school reform than hundreds of folks who show up but walk away unchanged by the experience.

Also, on Friday when we knew our numbers would be minimal and we had such brilliant panel members coming from the community (Darren Kuropatwa, Kevn Honeycutt, Allanah King, and Mark Clemente) we made it a teachable moment. We spontaneously opened the Elluminate session up to the world (and they showed up) and we used Ustream and a chat channel as well to show if you offer quality the community will come to you- no matter how rural or small you are.

2. My belief was reinforced that for most newbies, teaching tools in isolation is too overwhelming and a waste of time.

Tuesday I tried to lay the foundation and set the context. I also wanted to help attendees understand the today's digital learner. Wes Fryer (Oklahoma), Laura Deisley (Atlanta), Meg Ormiston (Illinois), and
Sue Waters (Australia) talked about personal learning networks and the tools that support them (listen in here) on Wednesday. On Thursday my plan was to look more closely at tools and their pedagogy and how they best relate to various instructional activities and then on Friday to plan inquiry based instruction with an interactive model of building a PBL mini-unit. For the most part things went according to plan, but Thursday's tools, tools, and more tools left me feeling overwhelmed and tense. I know if I had been a newbie in that audience not having been given the opportunity to use the tools in a meaningful application would have been frustrating. The idea was to create an awareness, not mastery, so that on Friday when we created lessons using the TPCK model we would have a web 2.0 list of applications from which to choose. The result though was painful, at least for me.

I brainstormed with Rick Weinberg and Tim Clarke afterward and what we felt would have worked better was to have four tables- with one of us at each table presenting a tool. Our presentations would include the tool, an activity using the tool, and a chance to reflect on best uses of the tool. Then after 45 minutes we would break for 15 and then could present another tool. We would do that three times (12 tools) and participants could choose which tools they wanted to learn.

I really believe that the best examples of tool instruction are within the context of what you are learning. Like our heating and cooling system they should be invisible. The only time we focus on our heating and cooling is when they aren't working properly. Then we have to rethink the tool. Even Bill Fitzgerald (Funny Monkey) after his discussion on Open Source tools left the attendees with the idea of forgetting the tool- focus instead on what you want kids to know and be able to do- then figure out the right task and tool for the job to help them learn or do it.

3. What is most important to 21st Century educational reform is to listen to kids.

On Tuesday I decided to create a panel of kids from 11th grade to college juniors and talk to them about their reflections on technology. It was the most inspiring part of my week long work. I am still learning from all they taught me during that hour.
Meet Gracie, Maegan, Ryan, Jay, Danny, Christian, Thomas, Caroline and Jesse. You won't be sorry you did.

4. Teachers need time to reflect, explore, and build in the safety net of your workshop.

Teachers, like kids, need you to model and then let them explore authentic use with you there to help. They need to understand how to create lesson plans that use the tools in meaningful ways, but then they need to actually collaborate together to build activities that they can use in school. Activities that leverage the potential of these new mediums for connecting and collaborating.

Typically, in my workshops I only have time to present the shift and the tools- never to actually jump to the most important step of helping teachers contextualize what they are learning. I walked away from this week realizing that this step is what is missing in school reform and why, in my opinion, that change is happening so slowly.

The most exciting time of the conference for me personally was to watch the groups choose a topic- create a concept web, a curriculum web, choose appropriate standards, an essential pedagogy, an appropriate tool and develop several lessons that all integrated not only core disciplines but fell together under a theme, project or problem. The creative juices really began to flow as we constructed together a killer initiating activity that would usher in our year long project and the lessons we would use to teach state mandated content from a passion-based perspective. The tools made sense because they were merely a means to an end- helping students learn about things that interested them from the perspective of a scientist, historian or author.

I am thankful to CABOCES for being willing to invest the time that allowed their educators to not only gain an awareness but to deeply reflect, discuss, and wrestle with the concepts while facilitators and the community stood close to help them make informed choices about change.

While I obviously haven't been blogging- I have been fast at it. I would say I have been busy, but Dean Shareski (our new convener for K12Online)  has taught me we are all busy and I am not suppose to talk about how busy I am, but rather just talk about what I have been up to lately.

  I keep a running "to-do" board above my desk. Lately, there have been too many things to fit them all. My life is full of meaning, exciting and that word I am not suppose to say (whispering ...busy). So busy in fact that I forgot to share about one of my most passionate interests.

ABPC 21st Century Learners- Year 3 Culminating
Anyone who has followed me knows that one true passion I have is the incredible work I am helping to deliver in Alabama around 21st Century literacies. On May 1 we had our culminating celebration for this year's 21st Century Learners journey.

What Was Different in Year 3?
In a word-- students. ABPC's leader, Cathy Gassenheimer felt this year's project with schools needed to have an clear connection to student achievement.  We wanted to developmentally move teachers along the continuum of use and understanding of the transformative potential of 21st Century teaching and learning strategies to actually applying them in the classroom.

We created a student strand and added students as members of the team. Together we looked at how to change teaching to a self-directed process tied to student passion and rigor, as well are core curriculum standards.

During the culminating event students and other team members were led in a fishbowl exercise that turned out to be the most enlightening experience I have had so far in working towards 21st Century educational reform. Students were asked hard questions about how they learn best and evidence of those strategies used by teachers in classrooms. They were asked what do teachers need to change to be the kind of teachers that would help you learn best? Their answers were profound and I realized for the first time I think-- if we would just ask kids what they need, they know and would tell us. Wow. What a concept.

Here are some of the projects from Alabama this year:

WinterboroSchool
Our theme is:  Taking Technology to the next level- The
competitive level. Our teachers have worked in harmony to help our students take
their individual projects to the competitive level.  We decided to
encourage and help our students to compete on the local and state level using
21st century skills we have introduced and use in the classroom throughout
the year. Winning at this level helped validate that we can compete in the
local and state arena using these newly acquired skills.  The publicity
has also been great for the entire county.  It has been a great
success.  We will display our students’ medal winning projects along with
the bling bling they have won in the process. 

West
Blocton
For our student project, we
created a wiki. On this wiki, the
students would choose a book to read that they wanted to carry on a
conversation about in the wiki. Then,
they would rate the book. Next, they
would write why they rated the book the way they did. The next few sentences had to include a
comprehension strategy that they used while reading the book. Whichever strategy they used, they had to
support it with text and tell what detail from the story made them use that
strategy. Then, they would write a
sentence to try to encourage others to read the book, even if they gave it a
low rating.

Finally, they would look at other responses other students had
made and carry on a conversation about their book.

Hewitt-Trussville Middle School
Our team created a wiki as a resource for the teachers.  The wiki
contains descriptions, examples, and uses for 21^st tools in the
classroom.  The wiki also contains information about project based
learning. 
You can find out wiki at http://21centurylearners.wikispaces.com .

Challenger Middle School
Challenger 21^st Century Team Group project:
Our professional development project is called "iTeach
2.0" and we invited the middle schools in our district to become a part of
iTeach 2.0. Each school sent two teachers to a workshop we sponsored to learn
about 21st century tools. We established a wiki for our team and participants
to use to share ideas. Our April face to face meeting was a type of fair where
each school shared a tool or project that they successfully used this semester.
Our computer will display screen shots from our wiki and our display board will
define data collected and cool tools explored during this year’s iTeach
workshops. Our wiki is http://iteach2-0.wikispaces.com .

Student Project:
We invited 18 students to commit their own time to work on a
project they would select. Twelve saw the project to completion. We gave three
basic guidelines: the students must develop their project around an issue that
affects teens, the project must help someone, and the project must be
communicated using technology tools.  Our students brainstormed on their
own private wiki and were very passionate about teen issues! They decided that
they wanted to work on a project related to poverty. The students then researched
and decided that they wanted to adopt an impoverished school in another
country, which led them to Uganda. They
formed an Invisible Children Club to raise money.

The students created posters, a
website and a multi-media embedded PowerPoint to present to the student body.
They learned so much about war torn

Uganda and the
suffering of the children there. They have a basic knowledge of how this war
started. The amazing part is that we have not taught this information to our students.
They have taken a project with very few guidelines and have learned so much!
For this year, the project culminated in a fund-raiser, which raised $1778 in 3
days! This has become a project that encompasses many of the 21st century
skills. Our students are learning about society, geography/history,
communication, discernment, teamwork and many other skills.  We will
display a computer with a timeline/info about their project work and their
presentation.  We will have an additional computer with screen shots of
their webpage. Their website is http://www.freewebs.com/guluschoolproject/

George Hall Elementary
Collaboration is the main thesis for our project. This year
collaboration projects includes Skype interview with Janis Kearney, diarist for
Bill Clinton and author of "Cotton Fields of Dreams",  Elluminate session with children from the
Dominican Republic and a weekly Skype collaboration with 5th grade students in
West Blocton Al. We continued the wiki field trip project using Scaling where
the students were proactive in the production of the projects to go online.

Blossomwood
Blossomwood
Elementary's team project for 2007-2008 has been to obtain more technology
resources for classrooms and adequately train teachers on how to use these
resources.  Promethean ACTIV boards have been purchased for all classroom
units and teachers have attended both training at school and online training
from Promethean.  Today, Blossomwood is displaying some sample classroom
flipcharts, as well as flipcharts that were used to train the faculty.

Clay-Chalkville High School
We will be presenting a Power Point presentation that highlights
some of the work that our teachers have created with their classes to enhance
student learning, as well as to promote communication between the classroom and
the home.

For instance, we have teachers that have created wikis with the
main purpose to keep the students and parents updated on assignments and
projects that are coming up. At the same
time, other teachers use blogs to allow the students become more involved in
the learning process.

Discovery Middle School

Middle School will showcase our journey from local to global connections through a
photostory.  We will highlight our challenges and how we have overcome
them.  We will also share our current projects that will lead us to
district wide integration of Web 2.0 tools.

Mt. Laurel Elementary
Sharing Web 2.0 Tools
Mt Laurel Elementary School is a K-3 school right outside of Birmingham. We are in our second year with the 21st Century Learning Team.

Our team's focus project was sharing Web 2.0 tools with our faculty. We conducted a survey to determine awareness and use of Web 2.0 tools and found that very few were aware of Web 2.0 tools, and even fewer were using them.

As a team we compiled a resource list of Web 2.0 tools. We held a meeting with our teachers and presented an awareness training to share the uses of each tool. We shared examples of how we had been using these tools and how students could benefit from using Web 2.0. We also encouraged them to let us help them set-up any of the tools they would think they would like to use in their classroom.

As of today, the number of teachers that are using Web 2.0 tools has changed by 60%, compared to when we initially took our survey. We now have grade levels participating in projects and teachers using these tools to create works with their students. We have teachers participating in book studies using Wiki’s, classes and parents blogging, podcasting galore, but most of all the awareness of the many tools that are available to each of them to enhance their class lessons and projects.

Cullman Middle School
Collaborative project-based teaching aligned to state content standards, reviewed by students. That is our lofty goal with this wiki. For 2008, we have selected 4 courses to focus on: Social Studies, grades 7 and 8 AND Computer Applications, grades 7 and 8

This project is designed in conjunction with the Alabama Best Practices Center's 21st Century Schools professional development. The project will be developed by a team of teachers and students from Cullman Middle School.

We hope that this will be a treasured resource for educators across the state, the country, and the world. Depending upon the success of the site, we hope to add additional areas of study in the future. We recognize the level of learning and retention of learning that project-based lessons hold for students, as well as the interest it adds to classes. On the outset, this seems like a project designed to aid teachers, and it will do that, but more importantly, this project will aid students in fostering a deeper interest in learning. With the Computer Applications courses, we are fortunate to be embarking upon new territory. At this time there are not specific standards for grade levels, only grade bands. This project will assist us in focusing on learning objectives and organizing those objectives in a sensible format. The student team will be comprised of students involved in

Cullman Middle School's SWAT (students willing to assist with technology) team. The teacher team will select a student team leader that will serve as a liaison to the teacher team.

Dean Road Elementary School
Our team sought to showcase the various ways we use the Smart Board to communicate more effectively among staff members and students. An immense part of our daily communication begins each day with our morning broadcast, WDRE, which features fourth and fifth grade students as broadcasters. Other grade levels are involved by reciting the pledge of allegiance and sharing the daily weather. All parts of the broadcast are viewed through the use of the Smart Board.

Not only do we begin our day with the Smart Board we also use this valuable learning tool in many other ways throughout the day. We display our morning messages, share interactive websites embedded in our daily lessons, and research an endless amount of information that can be easily displayed for all to see. This beneficial tool as helped foster communication through shared lessons created on the Smart Board software that assists teachers in planning and presenting the curriculum in a way that increases the students’ motivation to learn. The Smart Board, found in all classrooms, has become an irreplaceable learning tool that teachers and students just can’t seem to live without.

Fayetteville High School
The Fayetteville High School team has led a 21st Century Learners initiative for 10 schools throughout Talladega County. Modeled after the training sponsored by the ABPC, the FHS team, along with other teachers from Winterboro School, have served as mentors to over 20 teachers in their school system.  The team will display the materials used for this project as well as evaluations from some of the participants in the program.

Wrights Mill Road Elementary
Tech-Know Expo
5th grade students brainstormed topics related to technology that interest them.  Then, they volunteered to teach those topics they felt they were “Tech-sperts” in.  The students prepared presentations for the younger grades and invited parents and members of the community to attend.  Topics ranged from “Lights, Camera, Pinnacle in Action,” to iPod 101 and “How to Convince Your Parents to Let You Get A Cell Phone.”  Students taught about blogging, making avatars, using Blabber, and the latest and greatest in text messaging.

What does music, film, live performances, laughter, passion, reculturation and blogging for charity have in common?-- Western NY's Powerful Learning Practice's culminating celebration!

Holland's team performing a remake of "This Land is my Land" into a Web 2.0 Song

May 22, 2008- 20 school teams in the Western New York region came together to celebrate their learning journey that took place over the last 6 months through a job-embedded professional development opportunity called Powerful Learning Practice. Schools met as teams to master the following outcomes over the course of the year:

Knowledge: An understanding of the transformative potential of Web 2.0 tools in a global perspective and context and how those potentials can be realized in schools

Pedagogy: An understanding of the shifting learning literacies that the 21st Century demands and how those literacies inform teacher practice.

Connections: The development of sustained professional learning networks for team members to begin experimenting and sharing with other team members and online colleagues from around the world.

Sustainability: The creation of long term plans to move the vision forward in participating districts at the end of the program.

Capacity: An increase in the abilities and resources of individuals, teams and the community to manage change.

The culminating celebration is one of the two face-to-face meetings that take place in PLP. It is a time when the schools teams come together and share what they have learned with each other through learning displays, presentations, informal sharing in groups, and a facilitated process that results in bulleted action plans.

PRESENTATIONS

While all the schools teams had an opportunity to share their team projects and what they had learned from being involved in PLP this year, three projects were asked to share more fully from the stage. It was very difficult to decide who should present because most of the projects were just incredible. Those that presented were:

Webster Teams,
Holland Team, and Niagara Academy. But the presentation that stole the show was given by Laura, the 5th grader who authors the blog: Twenty Five Days to Make a Difference.

Will writes about her presentation,

She talked about how she started her quest to get donations for
charities by finding sponsors for her daily good works, how surprised
she is that over 30,000 people have visited her blog since last
December, and how she’s been able to donate over $1,600, 50 pairs of
pajamas, and over 400 books to charities in her area. It’s a great
story and example, one that I’ve shared with Tess on a number of
occasions."

Another PLP participant Mike Maloy adds,

I’ve written on the group’s Ning and in comments on various
blogs about how my learning has been completely transformed. I’ve
written on my own blog about how inspiring and “human” the web can be.
I’ve been awed by Jill Bolte’s “My Stroke of Insight” and Randy
Pausch’s “Last Lecture”.

I can honestly say that Laura’s presentation was one of the
coolest, most enlightening experiences of all my years in education.
Since her presentation I’ve been wondering…If Laura can do what she is
doing as a fifth grader, what will she be able to do in the future? If
Laura can do what she is doing as a fifth grader, why the heck can’t I
be doing more? Will my daughter be inspired do something so special.

I was also incredibly impressed with the creativity in Western NY. For example, Holland's team opened with a Web 2.0 remake of This Land is My Land and closed with Eric Lawton singing an original song he wrote entitled, You've Got to Learn Web 2 Point Oh. You can listen to 2 minutes of that here--> Download youve_got_to_learn_web_2_point_oh.mp3

What a hoot! Not to be outdone Holland's superintendent followed in "American Idol" style with a song he sang A cappella to Will and I. All in all it was as touching as it was entertaining.

Reflecting on how PLP has impacted participants

When asked how has PLP impacted or changed your professional or personal practice those who attended the WNY celebration give many reasons. Here are a few of their responses.

• The resources shared and the connections with the community...I have started to build my network outside of my building.
• Broadened exposure to web 2.0 tools beyond personal use.
• Facilitated collaboration with colleagues within my district (but outside my building) that was little-to-none prior to this.
• It gathered all of the teachers using tech
  together to work on one common goal. Otherwise, we would have just kept working
  independently on our own path. It really pushed our district to start a plan to
  implement and educate others in our district.
• It gave importance to technology and gave those
  of us with a passion and knowledge around technology a voice with our schools.
• Working with other members from my district that
  I usually don't get to see. Their ideas and perspectives during this learning
  process were greatly valued.
• I am no longer embarrassed about what I don't
  know and I am excited about learning and moving forward.
• I am using tools I didn't even know existed
  before this year. I modeled in a regular meeting and taught other staff through
  the process enough for them to say they will go back and use it in their
  classrooms. I want to learn more and use it to help teachers in the district
  support one another to excellence.
• The level of support that is available in this
  network is comforting. There is a lot of knowledge among the PLP community.
• Thanks for the opportunity. It has been an
  excellent, life changing learning experience. I hope we can sustain and spread
  our learning. If I can inspire one other person like I have been I would
  consider it a great accomplishment
• You've opend my eyes to the potential of 2.0 and
  have created a more technologically literate individual! I felt both Sheryl and
  Will's support was awesome very encouraging and empathetic.

  Kickoff Meeting

Culminating Meeting

As I was reading Jennifer Jones' post viral PD today I found myself thinking how cool it is that in a community we all have a piece of the puzzle. One of the challenges we face in the 21st Century though is how we collectively connect ideas in such a way that the big picture becomes clear and everyone can benefit.

I know what you are thinking- ever heard of RSS Sheryl? (Actually, I have been thinking about RSS a lot lately in the work we are doing with PLP). But more my thinking is around managing successful viral PD- with all the feeds, Google Alerts, and other information being pulled to each of us, combined with all the responses from each participant in an active, engaged CoP and the viral spin offs of each community as it grows and becomes more successful through the planned scaling - - how does one manage all the information without missing critical pieces?

I am a community organizer
by trade. I spend most of my day reading, writing, thinking, and
developing community across the nation and around the world. So how do
I decide what to keep and what to toss? As we begin to feel the results of successful viral PD opportunities like what happened in Alabama, how will staff developers keep up with it all? For that matter how will any of us keep up with it all with information doubling every two years now and predicted to double every 72 hours by the year 2010?

As I continue to work within the communities with which I am involved, it is wildly gratifying to see the deep and consequential changes in practice taking place over time with the educators who are involved.  I know the job embedded model works. What I question is how to maintaining these changes in practice over substantial periods of time (sustainability) as the viral impact causes diffusion of the innovation to large numbers of users (spread).

Knowing the role of the <a href="http://www.techlearning.com/blog/2007/07/virtual_communities_as_a_canva_1.php">community organizer is critical in terms of champion building in the beginning when trust and norms are being developed, how will staff developers who oversee multiple communities of practice in addition to maintaining their own learning through their personal learning networks keep up?

In Alabama, (which is one of the Microsoft mid-tier Partners in Learning projects) the community is strong and participants have taken ownership in ways that deepen and sustain the original work via adaptation(shift) as they are innovative and revising the outcomes of what we (the designers) originally intended. It is exciting to find my thinking continually challenged and to be pushed to reshape and recreate the model in new and different ways. (evolution) However, I am finding less and less time for sharing what I am thinking, doing and the evidence I am collecting that points to what is working.

How do we find/make time for reflection? I do believe it is critically important to reflect and be transparent as possible about the processes we are using. Why? Because it helps us all move away from a place of privacy and isolation to one of collaboration and innovation. But lately, I find myself so busy with design and implementation that I neglect reflection, even as critical as I believe it is to have your comments inform my thinking.

In Schmoker's "Results Now" he says, "Isolation --
'professional privacy' as Little called it -- explains why exemplary
practices never take root in more than a small proportion of classrooms
and school. Judith Little found that, "When teachers engage regularly in authentic "joint work" focused on explicit learning goals, ...their collaboration pays off in increased teacher confidence and remarkable gains in achievement."

As more and more teachers reject isolation and seek collaboration,
teaching will become more transparent with teams of teachers excited
and willing to learn from each other. The idea of sharing and
reflecting on 21st Century lesson planning in a virtual community where it can be accessed and reviewed on the Web is one way to help schools move more quickly toward a culture of collaboration
and improved teaching and learning! 

The Reflective Change Agent
Donald Schon suggests that the best professionals know more than they can put into words. To meet the challenges of their work, they rely less on established models and more on improvisation learned in practice. Basically, we test out our theories and ideas via our blogs and through other participatory media and this allows us to collectively develop and design further. Significantly, to
do this we do not closely follow established ideas and techniques - textbook
schemes. Rather, we draw on what has gone before (shift and evolution mentioned above) and we can link this process of thinking on our feet with reflection-on-action.

I think this way of thinking about reflection and leading is going to become more important as knowledge creation picks up an even faster pace. There simply will not be time to formally test each change idea so others can review the findings and determine value before implementation. Rather reflection in action, transparency in our process via conversations with experts on the Web will enables us to spend time exploring why we
acted as we did, what was happening in a group and so on and inform our practice as we move forward. In so doing we develop
sets of questions/answers and this informs our ideas about our activities and practice.

Through our blogs, videos and recordings we engage the network in the process and this means not having to have a
full understanding of things before we act. When looking at a
situation we are influenced by, and use, what has gone before, what might come,
our repertoire, and the repertoire of the community (wisdom of the crowd).  As we work collaboratively we bring collective fragments of memories into play and begin to
build theories and responses that fit the new situation. The change process becomes emergent and organic in nature.

I have been reflecting this morning on how Communities of Practice operate as powerful vehicle's or venues for change both in and out of education.

Communal Living and Community
My first experiences happened as a young woman living on The Farm, the largest successful commune in America. It was there that I first began to see the power of relationships in enabling others toward positive change. How identity is formed through meaningful social interactions and conversations around practice and reform.

"Utopian thought, as the basis of communal ideology, idealizes social
unity and maintains that humanness exists only in intimate and
collective life" (Kanter, 1972, p.32). While on the Farm, my thoughts on justice, sincerity,
honesty, and humanity really started to take shape.The foundation was laid to rethink the status
quo, respectfully question authority, and always stand up against unjust acts towards marginalized populations. The desire to become a voice for the voiceless was birthed.

Christian Community
In my late twenties, I discovered the loving community that comes from belonging to a group of people who are held accountable to one another in relationship under a set of established spiritual beliefs. I came to learn and grow so much as a mother, daughter, and individual through the vertical and horizontal relationships  I developed overtime as a Christian. The molding and shaping of my character and personality through the exercise of being held collectively to a higher standard gave me the tools needed to be self-governed and disciplined. The unconditional love and friendship I received as part of the Christian community, nurtured me through the negative effects of my childhood and the untimely death of my spouse when my daughters were just one and two. The relationships I formed taught me through a social learning process how to be a good mother and a woman of integrity. I am still growing into  someone who tries very hard to embraced personal excellence, always holding myself to this high standard, but yet allowing others to have the grace to choose the path and way they deem best for them.

Virtual Community
In my mid-thirties I got my first computer. I was running a small, innovative K-12 school at the time called Friendship Bridge, as well as teaching preservice teachers at Valdosta State University as an adjunct. Immediately, I discovered bulletin boards and IRC chat and began to establish a network of content experts and friends from around the world who became my personal learning network. We would connect at various times throughout our day sharing what we were learning. There was a solider in Germany who  taught me about networking and hardware, a father and hockey enthusiast in Canada who joined me in experimenting and pushing the new tools to the limit, a brilliant young man in his 20s that was living in Florida who was trapped somewhat by his circumstance and spent his boredom at the public library, sequentially reading every book on the shelf and then sharing with me each author's ideas, and and countless others who each left their mark upon my life- some for my good and some - well, not so good. But it was community and we were all left changed by the ideas of the other.

It reminds me of Tennyson's poem Ulysses:

I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

I continue to be molded and shaped by the relationships I form around the world.

Community of Practice
When I came to Virginia in 1997, I tried to escape education. I worked for awhile as a MCSE trainer helping various network engineers get their industry certifications. I was struck by how competitive the field was and how little community existed. While the money was incredible, I missed children, teachers, and the potential for positive change (both individual and systemic) that I felt as part of that environment. So I took a position with a high needs (many homeless children) elementary school as a computer resource teacher in hopes to give back for all I had been given.

What I observed in terms of community at that small school was what Richard Elmore (2002) describes as a buffer- a protective barrier that discourages and even punishes close,
constructive scrutiny of instruction and the supervision of
instruction. Its primary effect is to protect these two—the heart of
schooling—“from outside inspection, interference, or disruption” (p. 6).

The buffer prevents true communities of practice from developing and from teachers and educational leaders being able to learn more about what is working within the classroom. It prevents teachers from knowing what or how
well they or their colleagues (both local and global) teach. It deprives us all of any meaningful
frame of reference and discourages us from learning from each other.

I remember my mentor Greg Anderson, who served as the principal of my school, warning me that I was using technology as a rebel would - that schools were
based on equity, even if that equity meant schools didn't change to
give kids what they needed, what was good for one school, culturally becomes the
status quo for all schools. Greg, in spirit, supported my change efforts (when
he felt they were in the best interest of children) he just didn't want
a "loose cannon" causing him to lose his job in the process.

I  pushed the teachers at my school to see technology as a communication and collaboration tool. As a way to connect with others and remove the barriers of isolation the four walls of the classroom created. I wanted technology to provide transparency, the same transparency I had experienced on the Farm and in my small school and in the Christian community- between teachers within the local school and beyond.

Judith Little (1993) has often talked about the private, protected world of
teaching:

In large numbers of schools,
and for long periods of time, teachers are colleagues in name only. They work
out of sight and hearing of one another, plan and prepare their lessons and
materials alone, and struggle on their own to solve most of their
instructional, curricular, and management problems.

She and others see this approach of non-interference,
privacy, and harmony as part of the problem in that it prevents us from getting to the root of what needs to change in schools. This culture of privacy and non-interference is fertile soil for maintaining status quo. However, she goes on to say,

Against this almost uniform
backdrop of isolated work, some schools stand out for the professional
relationship they foster among teachers. These schools, more than others, are
organized to permit the sort of reflection…that has been largely absent from
professional preparation and professional work in schools. For teachers in such
schools, work involves colleagueship of a more substantial sort. Recognition
and satisfaction stem not only from being a masterful teacher, but also from
being a member of a masterful group.

It was this kind of community, this kind of meaningful dialog I so fervently wanted to see happen. I wanted to break through the buffer so that collectively teachers could see the status quo for what it was and through the collective wisdom and strong relationships within the community, make a courageous commitment to challenge and change the status quo.

Teacher Leadership and Community

The first opportunity I had for this to happen was within the Teacher Leaders Network (TLN). Terry Dozier, for whom I was leading the Virginia Teacher Leader Forum, sent me in her stead to a steering committee meeting for the development of a national virtual community of practice for teacher leaders across the country. The Center for Teaching quality had gotten the recommendations for 100 top educators who were not only highly accomplished but were articulate and positioned locally as changed agents. What was birthed out of that meeting was TLN and under the loving leadership of John Norton has grown to become one of the most visible groups of teachers impacting educational policy in the nation. It is through TLN that I am personally shaped and challenged daily. This is my community of practice.

Bielaczyc & Collins (1999) describe a community of practice as:

The defining quality of a learning
community is that there is a culture of learning, in which everyone is involved
in a collective effort of understanding. There are four characteristics that
such a culture must have: (1) diversity of expertise among its members, who are
valued for their contributions and given support to develop, (2) a shared
objective of continually advancing the collective knowledge and skills, (3) an
emphasis on learning and how to learn, and (4) mechanisms for sharing what is
learned. If a learning community is presented with a problem, then the learning
community can bring its collective knowledge to bear on the problem. It is not
necessary that each member assimilate everything the community knows, but each
should know who within the community has relevant expertise to address any
problem.

This is a radical departure from the traditional view of schooling,
with its emphasis on individual knowledge and performance, and the expectation
that students/teachers will acquire the same body of knowledge at the same time. Yet this is the model that not only provides systemic change, but holds the potential for a change inititative to push beyond the incremental culture of change expected in schools  to one of exponential reform that produces results now- so that our kids get what they need now, not after they graduate or in spite of the status quo from their own efforts.

21st Century Community

Through John Norton, I met Cathy Gassenheimer of the Alabama Best Practice Center.  Together we wrote a proposal that was funded by Microsoft that took the best of all of our experiences around using community as a vehicle of change and created a 21st Century teaching and learning collaborative that used Web 2.0 tools to connect 40 school teams across the state in exploration and understanding of using personal networking literacies to change their practice.  We are currently in the third year of the project and teachers this year are focusing on the needed changes in pedagogy that relate to the current shifts and new tools. Working with student teams and other stakeholders the outcome of all our community is learning is being seen virally in the spread throughout schools and across the state. Most recently, the state of Alabama has been in conversations with the Partnership of 21st Century Skills to become a partnership state.

Building Community Online

Communities of practice are clusters of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and as they interact regularly, they improve (Wenger, 1998). A driving force behind a community of practice is community knowledge, in which the sum of the collective knowledge is greater the sum of the individual knowledge (Gherardi & Nicolini, 2002) therefore as the collective knowledge grows stronger, so does the individual's knowledge (Bielaczyc & Collins, 1999). They operate on the premise, "None of us
is as good as all of us." Wenger (2004) also suggests that by focusing on the system or the group as a whole, does not imply that the individual should be ignored.

Hall and Hord (1987) emphasized, organizations do not change - individuals do. However, it is through the relationships that learning occurs.
McDermott (in Murphy 1999, p.17) describes it this way:

Learning traditionally gets measured on the assumption that it is a possession of individuals that can be
found inside their heads…[Here] learning is in the relationships between
people. Learning is the conditions that bring people together and organize a
point of contact that allows for particular pieces of information to take on
relevance; without the points of contact, without the system of relevancies,
there is not learning, and there is little memory. Learning does not belong to
the individual persons, but to the various conversations of which they are a
part.

According to Wenger (1998) not all communities are communities of practice. Three
characteristics must be in place: 1) a common commitment to the same sphere of
influence (you couldn’t be in someone's community and not know it 2) community-
members are engaged in activity and discussions; they help one another, and
share information. 3) active practice- members are not just united by interests
but by practice.

So how does community for in online? Are the relationships forged in the blogosphere and other social networking sites like Twitter, Delicious, Flickr, NING, Tapped In, and others ways to build true community? Or are they networking or as some suggest a new learning theory all together called connectivism?

According to George Seimens, the principles of connectivism are:

• Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information
     sources.
• Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
• Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
• Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is
           a core skill.
• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
• Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the
  decision.

Virtual Learning Communities

Emerging technologies such as social networking and other Web-based tools have the potential to offer opportunities for new
kinds of communities of practice for teachers and students. These tools bring
enormous leverage to teachers at relatively little cost — intellectual
leverage, social leverage, media leverage. Virtual learning communities use
technology to established connections across barriers of time and space
(Johnson, 2001). Teachers can participate in discussions at their convenience-
anytime, anyplace.

A burgeoning body of opinion and research
suggests that virtual learning communities are becoming the venue through which
agents for change operate (Palloff & Pratt, 1999: Johnson, 2001; Barab
& Duffy, 1998; Dede, 2003). The potential is enormous, as knowledge capital
is collected and the community becomes a sort of an online brain trust,
representing a highly varied accumulation of expertise.
According to Dede (2003) the
most important challenge for educational leaders today is fostering 21^st
Century skills and knowledge in today's students so they will be prepared to
participate in our global economy. This challenge requires that teachers
understand what types of knowledge and skills are required in leading edge
workplaces and future careers. Teachers will also need to become adept at
higher order cognitive, affective, and social skills such as systems thinking,
creativity, and collaboration. This will require transformational strategies
for developing deeper core content, new models of pedagogy, and development of
personal learning networks (Dede, 1998).

Virtual learning communities are one
way to provide the intellectual, emotional, and social support needed for
teachers to unlearn and relearn contextually in an effort to bring about the
needed behavior changes necessary to make way for the next generation of
classroom practices (Dede, 1999).

Personal Learning Practice

Most  recently, my thoughts around community are playing out in the work I am doing  with Will Richardson through our new LLC Powerful Learning Practice. Both Will and I believe that a teacher needs personal experience with the new literacies, using them to learn about their own passionate interests before applying them to the classroom. The reason many 21st Century teaching and learning projects have failed to make significant changes in school culture is directly related to both the buffer concept mentioned above and a lack of ownership and nurturing teachers need for these strategies to become pedagogically sound.  Learning, applying, and deepening understanding of the shifts in the changing learning landscape and how to use the new Web tools to break through the buffers of isolation occurs best in communities of practice. 

It is with great excitement that I look to 2008 to see how my understanding of community will grow and the new directions I will take in my own personal learning and the relationships I will develop along the way.

The Teacher Leaders Network is one of the communities of practice to which I belong and experience meaning as I learn.  Recently, the discussion has been around what roles a teacher should say yes to from a principal. How many requests are true utilizations of a teacher's leadership skills (which are worth the stress and time away from teaching) and which are just management roles that make the administrator's job lighter.

"Can you tell me HOW to do that successfully and effectively? How can we, as teacher leaders, find that balance between holding the torch high and burning it out of control?"

Here is how I approach the above question in my own life. This
is not an original strategy, it was birthed after reading Covey's book
about families.

I am a goal setter, list maker and pile sorter,
always have been. I have a vision and a mission statement for my
professional goals. The mission statement stays in a prominent place on
my desk as my mantra. My vision is updated yearly so I can change
course with where I feel my faith, passions and societal trends are
directing me. My professional vision also aligns with our family
mission statement. (Each year as a family we revisit our family
vision/mission and share our short and long term goals for the year.)

When an opportunity comes along, as many do for all of us, I
weigh it. I consider- will this in some way move me closer to meeting
my goals? Does this align with my mission? Many worthy opportunities
present themselves- but not all of them fit the narrow focus I have for
my life journey as I know it now.

Sometimes I say yes because an opportunity fits in with
helping to make the world a better place or a random act of kindness.
Sometimes I said yes to the manager type requests my principal would
ask me to do because a) I wanted to be kind and help him, or b) I
didn't have that management skill in my repertoire?  Or it was a skill
I had, but I needed a field experience to research a new way of doing
it. Sometimes I say yes to something that doesn't align to my goals
because I know there will be a networking opportunity that will open up
more opportunities that *do* align with my goals.

On the reverse side- Sometimes I say no and later see that
was probably a mistake. For example, recently I was honored with a
research award. As the date approached for that award presentation
another offer, one that strategically aligned perfectly and would have
been tremendous in terms of networking and future opportunities,
presented itself. I struggled because to accept it meant having to miss
the presentation of the award and I felt that might be unethical. I
tossed the two around for days, do I do all the extra work and invest
the time to be a part of the amazing opportunity or do I honor my
university and those who helped earn the recognition as well as have less stress by attending the award
presentation? Both were noble, both aligned with my mission and goals.
In the end, I chose the wrong one. But that too was a learning
experience that will help me in the the future with finding that
"balance between holding the torch high and burning it out of control"

For me, the answer to the question lies in balance and begins
with having a clear plan for where you are- where you want to be- and
then saying yes to the opportunities that will help you to get there. If
advocating for teacher leadership and educational reform is your
mission- choosing what to say yes to is easy. If changing the world 30
kids at a time is your mission then there you go. The trick is
developing a mission statement that clearly reflects your tacit
objectives as well as your explicit goals and using it to guide what
you say yes to in the multitude of opportunities that arise.

So I am interested-  We all have things in our life we have to do, such as how we earn legal tender. But outside of that, with all the opportunities that present themselves- whether for money - or not- how do you choose what you say yes to? How do you decide what gets your time. How do you find that balance between holding the torch high and burning it out of control?

Photo credit: http://www.susunweed.com/herbal_ezine/images/suzanne_balance.jpg