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.

There is a price to be paid for community driven learning- TIME. There are only so many hours in a day to invest in reading, learning, writing, and all that goes with being part of a community of learners. The benefits far outweigh the cost, so I am not complaining, however, it is beginning to impact the time I had previously devoted to blogging.

I was reading a post on Our Virtual Class Blog called 2.0 Riptide. He quotes Konrad Glogowski who after finishing his dissertation establishes research questions that  he hopes to be able to
work on in the near future:

1. How do we prepare teachers to teach 21st century learners whose
   lives are based on rich interactions in multiple online environments?
2. How do we help new teachers move away from what Marshall McLuhan
   once called the “imposing of stencils” and adopt a practice of probing
   and exploration?
3. How do we help new teachers acquire the courage to transform their
   classrooms into communities of learners and transform themselves into
   participants who can embed themselves in those communities?

These questions are near and dear to my heart because they are the very questions I have found myself grappling with for the last four years. As I have shared before, years of experience working in several large projects that look directly at these very  issues (ENDAPT, TLN, ABPC 21st Century Learners, ASSETOnline and now Powerful Learning Practice) it seems I keep coming full circle to networking, community of practice, true collaboration and what my friend John Norton terms "mutual accountability" among teachers.

MUTUAL ACCOUNTABILITY
John asked recently on TLN, "What's the difference between "negative competitiveness" and a willingness to trade narrow accountability measures from the outside for collaborative accountability -- where teachers hold one another accountable for teaching quality? He suggests that until teachers seize that ground, they will always be on the defensive and easy targets for top-down reform.

One teacher's response caught my attention-

Teachers need to be seen as professional leaders in their districts and
communities, leaders able to work together to improve student learning...  Teachers are either working as silos, not
interested in collaboration, or scared to show their areas of
vulnerability for fear of ridicule or reprisal.

To "[seize] that ground", convincing administrators, public opinion,
media, etc. that collaborative accountability is the best method for
improvement, I believe we must expand our playing field.  We need to
seize the grounds of media and public opinion regarding education,
testing, school and community partnerships, and the nature of
improvement and change.  This requires organization.  Where is the
teacher voice?

Then it hit me, this is exactly where participatory media can make its biggest impact. Allowing teachers to network together online first - forming personal learning networks around areas of passion and interest and gaining comfort and trust in the nonthreatening use of the medium helps to give teachers the confidence they need to use these tools to hold each other accountable for learning.  Using tools like Twitter, Tapped In, NING, Blogs, wikis, Ustream, Diigo, Elluminate, etc, teachers who understand how to "seize the ground" can apprentice teachers who are emergent in their understanding of such concepts. Conversing and working at it together in spaces that are somewhat separate from the local context, educators can learn within the safety net of the community and develop the self-efficacy skills and boldness needed to generalize what they are learning to their local context.

WHY IS IT EASIER TO COLLABORATE TOGETHER ONLINE THAN IN OUR SCHOOLS?
One of my consulting projects this year has been for CTQ's ASSETOnline project. I have had the wonderful experience of working with Anne Jolly, a professional learning community expert. In a recent conversation online she asked teachers if they liked collaboration and if not, why not. In her true researcher form she compiled the results.

Frustrations that lead to a preference for working
alone in some cases.
These include . . .

1.  Not knowing what collaboration really means
2.  Not knowing what is actually expected from those collaborating
3.  Insufficient implementation support
4.  Not finding real value in collaboration
5.  Different teaching philosophies among participants/ little to share
6.  Doesn't spring from teacher's needs
7.  Dictates and limits from administrators about content for collaborative meetings
8.  Teachers left out of decision-making
9.  Lack of modeling/understanding of collaboration by administrators
10. Need space to be creative - tricky to do this in teams
11. Lack of training for collaboration
12. Lack of trust and comfort in sharing with other teachers - feeling threatened
13.  Not enough time
14.  Getting everyone on the team on the same page is hard
15.  "I don't like meetings!"  :-) - a waste of time that could be spent grading and preparing
16.  Need more time for self-reflection rather than group reflection
17.  Others on the team pass off other's work as their own
18.  Too much talk and not enough action
19.  Not enough clout - except in the classroom
20.  One person does all the work
21.  Merit pay breeds competitiveness rather than sharing
22.  The education system is designed for isolation - and the status quo is strong
23.  The atmosphere can be punitive
24.  The school setting doesn't support collaboration
25.  Teachers are overwhelmed and trying to survive difficult situations
26.  Lack of communication about changes and the reason for changes

Feeling that collaboration works at times too, such as when  . . .
1.  Teachers see value in the collaboration
2.  Teachers have similar teaching philosophies and complementary skills
3.  Collaboration is more natural and spontaneous than structured
4.  Collaboration springs from teachers' needs
5.  Collaboration is not mandated
6.  Teachers make decisions about what they collaborate on
7.  Administrators practice what they preach
8.  The atmosphere is trusting, respectful, and comforting
9.  The school is successful at supporting collaboration
10. Teachers have time to think through together what they want for their kids
11. There is time for introspection as well as collaboration

I am curious-
How do you feel about collaboration?  Do you feel safe enough in your school to "sieze the ground" or do you hesitate to share for fear of ridicule or reprisal. Do you feel collaboration online is easier than it is locally in your own schools or organizations? Or do you feel the same hesitancy to publish and as a result become "clickable?" Do walled gardens (private online communities of practice)  make you feel safer in terms of being transparent enough to hold each other accountable for what kids are learning in our schools?