Thinking About Learning

Teacher collaboration has been a strong push in my district this year with an emphasis on Professional Learning Communities.  We’ve had a district focus on DuFour’s book, On Common Ground.  As part of that effort, quarterly “On Common Ground” meetings have been held with elementary administrators, instructional coaches, TISs, and interventionists to promote a data-driven, results-oriented culture.  At the school level, grade level teams have been meeting weekly to plan instruction and common assessments and to analyze results.  We’ve just completed the spring administration of MAP testing for reading and math, , and I’ve had teacher after teacher come up to me, beaming about their great scores and how many students met or exceeded the anticipated growth index.  After such an intense year of hard work, teachers are able to see the great results that can be achieved through collaboration.

In an effort to carry collaboration another step further, I worked with a small group of TISs to create a district-wide database of teacher-created lesson materials.  Our district web master took our recommendations and created a searchable database.  Teachers can upload interactive whiteboard lessons, PowerPoints, WORD docs, spreadsheets, handheld activities, and many other files.  The database is searchable by subject, content strand, grade level, and keyword.  We’re excited about this project because it will enable teachers to share and find resources from other people in our district who teach the same standards.

Over the last several months, however, I have come to realize that collaborating within the district is still too narrow of a vision. Through my own PLN, I have been amazed and delighted to discover that there are excellent educators around the globe who are willing to share their resources and knowledge, and sometimes I can receive an answer faster than if I sent an email to a colleague.  A month ago, I was experimenting with Ustream, and I was running into a playback issue.  Not knowing anyone in district who was using it, I posted a question about it on the Classroom 2.0 Ning, I had received a reply with a checklist of steps to try.  This list helped me narrow down my issue to reach a solution.  And from where did my speedy assistance come? From Carlos Ferrer in Rykjavik, Iceland!  Recently I was preparing a lesson on folk tales for 5th grade, and I had already spent a lot of time searching for resoures.  I posted a query on Twitter and quickly received 3 good leads, including a great link to video on an interesting New Zealand legend from allanahk in Nelson, New Zealand.

Yesterday morning, ironically, Wes Fryer posted a link on Twitter to an article he had written on the ISTE blog on iTouch and iPhone apps for Education, and his opening sentence was “The power of Twitter and personal learning networks continues to amaze me!”

I’ll close with these words from a post on Twitter by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach: “It is time to end the practice of solo teaching. Today’s teachers must learn in collectively built, widely shared, cohesive networks.”
That’s what I want for my teachers, because I’m convinced that it’s a vital element in raising student achievement.