Friday, December 28, 2018

3 Strategies for Dynamic Professional Learning

Dear Colleagues,

Recently, I posted as a guest blogger on Classtime. Please take a look at my current thinking about virtual professional learning.


https://www.classtime.com/blog/dynamic-professional-learning/


I look forward to your feedback for extending these ideas. Thanks.


Nick

Monday, July 23, 2018

Role of the 21st Century Teacher

Dear Colleagues:

Typically, teachers are referred to as classroom teachers, fourth grade teachers, high school teachers, mathematics teachers, college professors, or home school teachers. These conventional descriptions focus on where they teach, what level they teach, or what subject they teach. And they tend to sustain the roles and images of teaching in the past!


In the 21st century, we envision an ever-changing and disruptive learning improvement vision and role for all teachers.

  • The role of the 21st century teacher combines what people do best -- nurture and support learners -- with advanced digital technology to do what it does best -- process data, information, and knowledge at the speed of light.
In this role, people will become dynamic learners -- to be their own teachers, able to ask themselves good, new questions and guide both online and collaborative face-to-face efforts in answering them. In this role, 21st century teachers focus on the following vision of teaching as they increase both collaboration and learning:
  • Moving from one teacher and many learners to thousands of teachers for each learner!
The preliminary characteristics posted here and in our WikiTask begin to describe this emerging vision and role in the field of learning improvement. What do you think about the vision and role of the 21st century teacher? Add your ideas to this WikiTask in LearningFront!

Nick Hobar

Sunday, July 1, 2018

What If School Was More Like Twitter?


Dear Colleagues:

What if school was more like Twitter?

I discovered this question in a LinkedIn discussion group for Twitter-Using Educators. It motivated me to envision what a learning venue like that might look like. Well, here are my thoughts for two purposes as part of teachers' daily on-the-job tasks:

For Communication and Information Sharing. Teachers would use social media tools such as Twitter or Syzygy in LearningFront to communicate throughout the day with their followers or colleagues. For example, to find a place to park at a staff development session, share a vision for quality learning, identify what they're reading, share a web link, describe a cool activity in their classrooms, or ask for help on meeting student needs. Teachers would just have fun and learn from their colleagues as a part of their daily workplace! They might post something as simple as "off to eat lunch with my instructional team" or as complex as "what is data-driven teaching?" Simply put, Twitter or Syzygy are social media tools for teachers to communicate with each other when something is relevant and timely to share or inquire about.

For Teaching and Student Learning. Teachers would access and use online templates to construct lesson plans that integrate social media tools such as Twitter. For example, they might adapt the following templates or design their own lessons:



Payoff. The values of this approach are the pre-planning, delivery, and results from using Twitter to achieve a specific content standard. Once the Twitter session is started, teachers would adjust their Tweets to meet the differentiated needs and ideas of the students as the Twitter-generated lesson is taught through online or blended online and classroom settings.  Moreover, the examples demonstrate how a scoring tool would be used to assess both student performance of the content standard and the efficacy of using the Twitter timeline instructional strategy. Now, that's transforming what a lesson plan looks like!

"School as Twitter" is an exciting and evolving concept -- and highly inviting for us to improve upon as we collaborate to engage our students.

All of this thinking stimulated me to raise a new question: What would a standards-based curriculum comprised of "School as Twitter" lessons look like?

Nick Hobar

Saturday, June 30, 2018

Teaching to a Vision of Student Learning -- Not a Standardized Test!

Dear Colleagues:

It may seem counterintuitive, but the most scaled-up evidence of constructivist, projected-based teaching and learning I have observed was supported by standardized performance task assessments and scores. It happened with the MD School Performance Program. 

  • First, a state vision of rigorous problem solving for all students was developed and adopted as the driving force for statewide school reform. 
  • This led to the development of high-level state learning standards in reading, language usage, writing, mathematics, science, and social studies for all students. 
  • Next, state standardized and authentic performance task assessments -- in which students had to produce, construct, or perform something expected in the standards -- were developed to reflect the vision and standards. 
  • Then, local districts developed performance instruction tasks that were aligned with the vision and standards and included formative assessments similar to the state assessments. 
This approach meant teachers taught to a vision of student learning and standards in a constructivist context -- not to a test. Moreover, writing was integrated into each performance task to bolster critical thinking, analysis, and reflection. Many of the state assessment performance tasks were multi-content so more than one subject was assessed and scored in one performance task. 

These factors really made local instruction engaging and worthwhile for all students -- in urban, suburban, and rural parts of the state. Recently, I adapted one of the performance instruction tasks for use in a Twitter timeline as an exploratory project. You can check it out at this link under “Learning with Social Media.” 


Charge on with authentic constructivist learning, assessment, and improvement -- they work for all students.

Nick Hobar