Multi-faceted Refractions

One of the most transformative conferences for me, over the past two years, is the K12 Online Conference (k12onlineconference.org). It began last Monday, with the posting of the Stephen Heppell’s keynote conversation, “It isn’t the 20th Century Anymore, So Why Should We Teach Like As Though it Was“.  Some of you heard refered to as working with the OWPP on their school design project, during our North Shore Educational Summit.

Today and for each of the next nine school days, four presentations will be posted online for your viewing. The conference conveners have made the presentations available in audio only, and video formats. Each is less than 20 minutes in length, making them very accessible to you to view.

Over the past two conferences, whose presentations are still available, I have been introduced to tools such as wikis, Moodle tricks, and GabCast.

When you have a chance, check out the different presentations. They will be worth the time and energy invested.

Also check out the three remaining live events, the two fireside chats (October 25th @ 9:00 a.m. and October 30th @ 7:00 p.m.) and the When Night Falls (October 31st - November 1st, from 7:00 p.m. - 6:59 p.m.) These events allow you to connect with educators around the world , sharing the thoughts and ideas collected over the next two weeks. You can join in even if you haven’t had a chance to sample the presentations.

Today we assembled as a faculty to kick-off the 2008-2009 academic year. This is an exciting day, especially for those of us who work most of the year, as old faculty return with tales of adventures from the previous ten weeks and we welcome in the new members of the teaching community at school.

Like many schools, we begin the year highlighting the themes and topics that we will address for the upcoming year. Last year, the school created a new strategic plan which outlined the areas of exploration for us for the upcoming year.

There are three areas of focus for us in the upcoming year. They are Diversity, Environmental Sustainability, and Service Learning. This is in addition to the technology agenda, of trying to create a cadre of teachers who will seed a professional learning community to talk and communicate about best practices, as we determine our future direction and whether we implement a 1:1 program.

What was interesting while listening to the various presentations from each of the leaders spearheading the initiatives was that our challenge is going to be how we progress in each of these areas, since we will be competing for attention and energy above and beyond the normal day-to-day classroom experiences. Many of the groups, including my technology vision, are going to ask teachers to meet, discuss, and develop priorities and action plans to further the initiative.  It may be dangerous and we may be working at opposition to each other, which may cause neither of the initiatives to gain traction and momentum.

What is interesting is that the solutions, engaging students to take ownership, gathering buy-in from a diverse constituent base, develop curriculum that is more problem-based in nature, could be complimentary and brought together under a single umbrella.

Rather than being four different initiatives, we should try to consolidate our efforts into a single plan for 21st Century Learning. This way, we can combine efforts. There is no reason that they Environmental Sustainability project create service learning projects which utilize technology tools to create spaces for collaboration, communication, and allow for different groups to connect both synchronously and asynchronously to provide a wider group of diverse individuals to challenge and expand our assumptions, making the wisdom of the group greater than that of one part.

Instead of competing, we should consolidate efforts, so that each project can utilize the strengths of the complimentary other priorities while maintaining its unique identity.

That is our school’s challenge for the year, how to create a community and culture that is complimentary and builds cooperatively rather than compete against each other for the two most precious commodities for teachers, energy and attention.