Saturday, February 14, 2009

Navigating and Coaching at Maritime Industries Academy

Dear LearningFront Colleagues:

The Keel!
In maritime terminology keel means the lowest longitudinal timber of a vessel, on which the framework of the whole is built up. Well, the teachers’ data-driven lessons I observed yesterday are beginning to establish the “keel” for building the “maritime” theme into the school’s daily instructional sea. Thanks to “clone-a-task” we were able to share and edit many lessons during the coaching sessions. Can’t wait until next month to see the results of the lessons that were designed!

Nick Hobar
President, LearningFront

Monday, February 9, 2009

LearningFront and Alternate Routes to Teacher Certification

Dear LearningFront Colleagues:

National Conference!
I’m scheduled to present the following session at 11:00 AM on 6 April 2009 at the Renaissance Marriot Hotel in Washington, DC at the annual conference of the National Center for Alternative Certification:

Title of Presentation: "Advancing the Frontier of Teaching through Online Learning Communities"

Brief Summary: Online learning communities offer one of the most exciting ways to collaborate, share information, and support alternative routes to certification. Discover in this session how you can build or join a network of online colleagues or teams, use Web 2.0 professional tools to improve teaching and learning, and communicate worldwide.

Objectives of the Presentation: Participants attending this presentation will learn how to:
  • Build or join an online learning community of colleagues and teams;
  • Combine social and professional networking with Web 2.0 development tools to improve pathways to teaching;
  • Overcome content, communication, time, and location barriers as colleagues collaborate, co-create, and share resources to expand their frontiers of learning.
My Thoughts: I think that LearningFront has much to offer candidates for initial teacher certification because it places the tools of teaching at their fingertips and provides ways to share and collaborate among peers, mentors, and school and program staff. Wow! When armed with WikiTasks, Clone-a-Task, IM, and Colleague and Team messages, prospective and their experienced supervising teachers and teacher educators can increase their communication and productivity at the speed of light!

Here is the link to learn more about the conference:

http://www.teach-now.org/tneventdisp.cfm?tneventid=18

I hope you can make the conference!

Nick Hobar
President, LearningFront

Saturday, February 7, 2009

School-Based Coaching Sessions

Dear LearningFront Colleagues:

Steelton-Highspire High School! I just finished three days of one-to-one and small group coaching with teachers at Steelton-Highspire High School in Steelton, PA near the capital city of Harrisburg!

The teachers are engaged in a school-based instructional improvement strategy targeted at increasing student performance on the PSSA reading, mathematics, writing, and science assessments. Most of the teachers are using LearningFront and TaskBuilderOnline to plan, teach, score, and analyze the results of monthly data-driven lessons. One of the key parts of the process is the identification of best practices from the results of the lessons. The best practices are shared with all teachers in the school district through shared folders on the district server and as WikiTasks in LearningFront. 

Next time you login to LearningFront, check out the WikiTasks from Steelton-Highspire High School.

Nick Hobar
President, LearningFront

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Teacher Workshop in Baltimore

Dear LearningFront Colleagues:

Maritime Industries Academy High School! Last week we completed a start-up workshop for teachers at the Maritime Industries Academy High School in Baltimore Maryland. 

Teachers, school improvement leaders, and curricular specialists from the Baltimore City Public School System were on hand to learn about LearningFront and to develop data-driven and standards-based lessons using TaskBuilderOnline. The teachers will develop similar lessons, teach them, and score and analyze the results each month as part of their school’s instructional improvement strategy.

The curriculum specialists are collaborating with the teachers and will be able to “Clone” lessons back and forth for feedback and support. Each teacher “cloned” a workshop lesson to the principal at the end of the workshop while the principal’s
Task Folder was projected on a large screen -- a very cool way to measure the productivity of the workshop! I encourage you to consider making one of these LearningFront pioneers your colleague and to search their work using WikiTask on the tool bar in LearningFront.


Nick Hobar
President, LearningFront