Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Connected Learning Communities: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age #teach21esc16

These are my notes from Sheryl Nussbaum Beach‘s presentation, “Connected Learning Communities: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age.” Sheryl’s handouts / resources are available on http://plancast.com/p/36dn.

Slides on Google Docs

Starting with a “Welcome to the Human Network” video from Cisco

Key messages:
We’re more powerful together than we ever could be apart-
– a world where you subscribe to people, instead of magazines

You can know people by the people who they associate with

Driving questions to guide us:
– What are you doing to contextualize and mobile what you are doing?
– HOw will you leverage, how will you enable your teachers or your students to leverage – collective intelligence?

The problem with writing on paper is when you leave this room, that paper will go with you
– I can’t learn from that

Think about how you are going to mobilize what you are learning, what teachers and students in your schools are learning
– leveraging collective intelligence is not about “groupthink”

Great article: “10 Reasons to try Backchannel Chat” by @utechtips

I want to put in a plug for texting on your phone during my presentation (backchannel chat)
– we and our students have learned how to “play school”

Lead Learner
Native American Proverb: “He who learns from one who is learning, drinks from a flowing river.”

Ako Kambon said this morning: “The Decade You Were born in matters”

We actually have four generations of people in the workforce now

David Wylie talks about how in the past, we were “tethered” to our machines, but now with the mobilization of technology we’re not tethered any longer
– Sherry Turkle’s new book, “Alone Together” makes the point that we’re tethered to these devices

While the technology shapes us, it shouldn’t control us

Who needs to learn this first? We do
– You can’t give away what you don’t own
– education in the 21st century should be something DONE to you

YOU (as a teacher) need a website because you need to be “Google-able”
– you need to have a digital footprint and understand reputation management

We ought to be making our own commercials
– teachers need to be telling their own stories

MY COMMENT: BOY I REALLY AGREE WITH THIS!

If you don’t want your students to follow or connect to you on Facebook, consider creating a “professional account” that you use and connect to them with
– If your students don’t see YOU modeling the appropriate uses of social media, where are they going to see it and learn about it?

Accelerating Adoption rates: to get 50 million users
– there is no way we can “do it the way we always have”

2 ways to respond to technology
– complain about it, or “up our game”

It’s about being a connected learner

I’m not “anti-book” (told great story about her daughter taking an annotated paper-copy of a Seth Godin book to his book signing, and he flipped through her notes and left a powerful comment)

We’ve got to start changing our values and dispositions: We should expect everyone to bring technology, and there to be good connectivity everywhere
– we have to think about what we value and how we act

We live in a participatory culture
– to be a producer rather than a consumer of knowledge: that is what we need for our students

Transliteracy:
– the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality, through handwriting to digital social networks

Education is the birthplace of all literacy

MY COMMENT: I WOULD ADD TO THAT, THE HOME AND EDUCATION IS THAT BIRTHPLACE. OF COURSE THE STATS AKO SHARED WITH US THIS MORNING QUESTION THAT

Now talk with others:
– Define community
– Define networks

Communities today change our perceptions of space

Communities are quite simply, collections of individuals who are bound together by natural will and a set of shared ideas and ideals

I want to push you to using tools for a ESC16 community
– setup rooms for different content areas

There is 2 kinds of practitioner knowledge
– empirical research
– contextual knowledge (that is where you are powerful)

Networks are about ME (includes sharing with the network

Killock’s 4 Motivations for Contributing
1- Reciprocity
2- Reputation
3- Increased sense of efficacy
4- Attachment to and need of a group

The social web is based right in line with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: because of esteem and love
– my friends live ‘in there’ (their cell phone, their computer, etc)

Old technology use meant engaging with a machine
– now computers are a portal to people

It comes close to malpractice for superintendent and principals who are NOT helping teachers self-actualize
– what does it take to go up to these higher levels
– you need challenging projects, opportunities for creativity and innovation

What happened with technology in Virginia (with sexual misconduct issues) was not a technology problem – that is a “who we hired” problem

MY THOUGHT: HEAR HEAR. THAT IS SO TRUE.

Referenced in David Logan: Tribal Leadership

3 ways of knowing and constructing knowledge (Cochran-Smith and Lytle – 1999)
– sit and get (passive, includes reading)
– in-practice learning

Professional learning communities need to be led by other teachers
– Shepherds don’t beget sheep. Sheep beget sheep.

MY THOUGHT: THIS IS AN INTERESTING TAKE ON ADMINISTRATIVE / INSTRUCTIONAL LEADERSHIP.

Research shows co-created content is what builds community

MY THOUGHT: THIS IS A KEY RESEARCH FINDING THAT SHOULD IMPACT OUR ONLINE WORK AS STORYCHASERS IN COV / CKV/ CTV

Reference to TPACK: relationships between standards-driven content, pedagogy, and technology (doesn’t look at technology in isolation)

“Teaching the iGeneration” book by Bill Ferrier
– wanted a replacement for standard PPT assignment

Clay Shirky says we should: (slide 68 of 83)
– share
– cooperate (connect)
– collaborate
– collective action

Students are individuals
1 Children are persons and should be treated as individuals as they are introduced to the variety and richness of the world in which they live.
2. Children are not something to be molded and pruned. Their value is in who they are – not who they will become. They simply need to grow in knowledge.
3. Think of the self-directed learning a child does from birth to three- most of it without language. As they mature they are even more capable of being self-directed…

Three rules of passion based teaching
1. move them from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation
2. help them learn self-government and other-mindedness
3. shift your curriculum to include service learning outcomes that address social justice issues

How to blossom someone with expectation: building self-esteem (slide 76 of 83)
1. Examine (pay close attention)
2. Expose (what they did specifically)
3. Emotion (describe how it makes you feel)
4. Expect (blossom them by telling them what this makes you expect in the future)
5. Endear (through appropriate touch)

What will be our legacy as teachers
– Bertelsmann Foundation Report: The Impact of Media and Technology in Schools (available via PDF)
– comparison study of traditional versus very innovative / blended approach
– kids assessed right after the lessons showed no significant differences in learning

Growth is optional: we can dig in our feed: we’re already underpaid, underloved
– get in touch with the reasons we got into education in the first place: because we wanted to make the world better

Are you willing to change – to risk change?

“Be wildly passionate as an advocate for those who can’t advocate for themselves.”

We are the last generation of teachers who can decide whether or not we will embrace and use technology
– the children and kids in our classrooms, however, don’t have that option

MY THOUGHT: THIS IS A GREAT STATEMENT AND QUOTATION

Do you love your students? I don’t care what program you use or you do, if you don’t love those kids and aren’t doing everything you can for them…
– then you are simply putting a bandaid

Change everything about the way you learn, not the way you teach

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