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.

I have been spending some time recently responding to a listserv discussion that has many brilliant, award winning teachers on it who are not sold on the idea that we really are going to have to change education to remain relevant; that *they* are going to have to change.  I thought I would share my most recent letter.

One member writes-
I've been waiting and wondering when someone would take up the thread that Mark began during our "Here Comes Everybody" discussion, wherein he talked about how the printing press put scribes out of work and wondered whether or not technology would have a similar effect on teachers.

Change is Here
The way we "do" school in the 21st Century will change. Teacher will be/is being redefined. (Lord knows it is time- while the rest of society has changed in its response to technology, education has
remained timeless the last 100 years.) What we have to do is ask ourselves what principled changes need to take place in order to remain relevant in the lives of the students we teach?

It Doesn't Change Some Things- It Changes Everything
With knowledge expanding at the rate it is and the world changing at a dizzying pace- to keep the status quo is to accept obsolescence. Teachers will need to accept the fact that even with all we have invested, the pace of change is going to demand us to unlearn and relearn. Every major technological innovation through time has demanded it of its users.  Think of the world and how it functioned before electrification and the how it functioned after electrification- before television- after television (the way we fought wars and politics alone because of TV changed drastically)-- As Mark alludes to, technology doesn't change *some* things, it changes *everything*. Before TV, the thought of allowing someone to interrupt you constantly trying to sell you things you didn't want was unheard of- people were run out of town for such antics. But now it is part of our culture- to the tune of 500 channels-- which have figured out that by providing mediocre content (like reality TV)  we will sit still and let them sell us things we do not really need and we will hum their jingles and use their products, all the while our culture becomes more and more superficial and kids lose out on developing deep, meaning (which they are so capable of grasping).

Incremental is becoming Exponential

Technology is and has changed society and the students we teach. The question isn't are you preparing for 21st Century teaching and learning- rather the 21st Century is here. The party has started. The kids have already arrived. We are 8 years into it.

Ask Them- They Know
Want to know how a 21st Century learner learns? Ask them. You will be amazed at what you hear and if you are smart- you'll act upon it. Sylvia Martinez says we are trying to solve this 21st C PD issue in schools with 6% of the population (teachers) when 94% of the population (kids) are better positioned to help us learn what we need to know to be successful. Turn your classrooms into learning ecologies- learn with and from your students. Get rid of top down, expert driven instruction methods and nurture self-directed discovery- both your own and theirs. Turn your passions into classroom curriculum. Get excited and mentor your kids integrating your passions with core content and foundational knowledge. Help them develop a love and understanding for culture and our rich heritage. Advocate hard to get the metrics we are using to measure classroom effectiveness changed- for we teach what we measure. Leverage NCLB to push for personalization of curriculum in an effort to meet AYP and all the various needs of your subgroup populations.

It Isn't "If", it is "When"
Technology WILL redefine schools- good or bad- it will/is happening. We are one node, one means, one stop in a 21st Century learners learning journey and options. We need to be having conversations about how to make sure that their time spent with us is preparing them for jobs that haven't been invented yet and enabling them in authentic ways to be a productive member of society now. As Dave Mathews says, "The future is no place for your better days." 

And teachers need to be driving these discussions and this change- not policy makers. However, it will require you to redefine yourself. It will require you to unlearn and relearn which means an implementation dip in terms of personal power and knowledge-- but oh well, you are in this for kids remember? This will be messy, but you can't give away what you do not own. You have to own these tools and concepts before you can give them (empower) your students with them. However, once you do- get out of the way and let them show you all the ways to use them to learn that
you never dreamed possible.

Want to be amazed? Check out Laura (a 5th grader's blog) from a project I helped lead in WNY. How many of you can say you have the attention of 30,000 readers and that companies who are known for their giving acts are in regular contact with you? http://twentyfivedays.wordpress.com/   

We think as teachers -- oh ok blogs can help kids learn to write - they will supplement what I,  the teacher does. When the kids think-- hmm blogs, you mean people can hear me? Watch what I can do with this- outside of school- in another node (space) of learning- my home.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach
Virginia Beach
Networked Learner

photo credit: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/careers/images/articles/stages_of_change.png

Picked this up via MiddleWeb's biweekly newsletter-

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