Comments on: Looking forward or back? http://ideasandthoughts.org/2007/07/13/looking-forward-or-back/ Learning stuff since 1964 Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:09:04 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: John Norton http://ideasandthoughts.org/2007/07/13/looking-forward-or-back/comment-page-1/#comment-26775 John Norton Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:12:51 +0000 http://ideasandthoughts.org/2007/07/13/looking-forward-or-back/#comment-26775 Wes, thanks so much for the kind words about our conversation at NECC and the work I'm doing in Alabama with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and the Alabama Best Practices Center. I wanted to make a small distinction between the Alabama activities and another project that I'm heavily vested in called the Teacher Leaders Network, which you've linked to in your blog entry. The two projects are separate, although the "learnings" you mention are certainly drawn from both. Sheryl and I are both independent consultants, so this can get confusing in a hurry! Our Alabama work involved about 200 teachers in 40 Alabama K-12 schools who participated in a virtual curriculum supported by an active virtual community, where they explored the potential of Web 2.0 in the classroom. That project, called 21st Century Schools (alas, not too original as it turned out) was sponsored by ABPC with a grant from Microsoft Partner in Learning. Now -- the Teacher Leaders Network is supported by the Center for Teaching Quality, based in Chapel Hill, NC. It's a group of accomplished teachers (including Sheryl!) from across the USA who we've pulled together into a virtual professional learning community to talk about teacher leadership, important education policy issues, and to generally promote the idea that teachers have unique insights about the best ways to help schools succeed. In addition to carrying on a 24/7/365 conversation, TLN'ers are involved in projects like TeacherSolutions (visit teacherleaders.org), virtual mentoring programs, participation on national panels to discuss key education issues, maintaining a regular essay page at Teacher magazine's website, and lots of other interesting stuff. My main point (I hope) during my NECC chat with you was that virtual professional communities don't just happen or grow into strong, long-lasting entities completely organically. In both our Alabama and TLN experiences, teachers made the decision to commit some scarce and valuable time to these communities because they believed they were viable. And that feeling of viability came as a result of skillful moderation and lots of behind the scenes support. Sheryl and I will likely devote a chapter to this topic in our upcoming book for Eye on Education -- title yet to be determined! As a born networker yourself, you're well aware of the constant attention needed to build and sustain virtual community and relationships. It was great to get to know you and hear of your own passion for maximizing the Web's potential to break out of the confines of traditional school culture. Wes, thanks so much for the kind words about our conversation at NECC and the work I’m doing in Alabama with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and the Alabama Best Practices Center. I wanted to make a small distinction between the Alabama activities and another project that I’m heavily vested in called the Teacher Leaders Network, which you’ve linked to in your blog entry. The two projects are separate, although the “learnings” you mention are certainly drawn from both. Sheryl and I are both independent consultants, so this can get confusing in a hurry!

Our Alabama work involved about 200 teachers in 40 Alabama K-12 schools who participated in a virtual curriculum supported by an active virtual community, where they explored the potential of Web 2.0 in the classroom. That project, called 21st Century Schools (alas, not too original as it turned out) was sponsored by ABPC with a grant from Microsoft Partner in Learning.

Now — the Teacher Leaders Network is supported by the Center for Teaching Quality, based in Chapel Hill, NC. It’s a group of accomplished teachers (including Sheryl!) from across the USA who we’ve pulled together into a virtual professional learning community to talk about teacher leadership, important education policy issues, and to generally promote the idea that teachers have unique insights about the best ways to help schools succeed. In addition to carrying on a 24/7/365 conversation, TLN’ers are involved in projects like TeacherSolutions (visit teacherleaders.org), virtual mentoring programs, participation on national panels to discuss key education issues, maintaining a regular essay page at Teacher magazine’s website, and lots of other interesting stuff.

My main point (I hope) during my NECC chat with you was that virtual professional communities don’t just happen or grow into strong, long-lasting entities completely organically. In both our Alabama and TLN experiences, teachers made the decision to commit some scarce and valuable time to these communities because they believed they were viable. And that feeling of viability came as a result of skillful moderation and lots of behind the scenes support. Sheryl and I will likely devote a chapter to this topic in our upcoming book for Eye on Education — title yet to be determined!

As a born networker yourself, you’re well aware of the constant attention needed to build and sustain virtual community and relationships. It was great to get to know you and hear of your own passion for maximizing the Web’s potential to break out of the confines of traditional school culture.

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