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"... Claudio Sanchez reports on a program intended to help teachers regain a passion for their profession" (November 15, 2002).

Dennis is a former English teacher and administrator in urban and suburban schools for many years. Dennis has always gravitated toward K12 leadership, learning and technology topics. He has graduate degrees from Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English and Harvard University's School of Education. In addition to blogging about K12 learning, leading and web 2.0 tools/pedagogies at innovation3.edublogs.org, he is president of the Massachusetts affiliate of ASCD, a member of the Leadership Council for ASCD; a member of the Massachusetts Working Group for Educator Quality; Co-Facilitator of the Massachusetts High School Redesign Task Force; and a member of Massachusetts STEM Summit V Planning Committee. The web 2.0 conversation is not about technology tools; it is about student learning. Dennis subscribes to the definition of Professional Learning Communities that Rick and Becky DuFour and many other leaders of education have espoused. In simple terms, * learning (for us and for students) is our purpose, * we can improve student learning if we learn together collaboratively, and * monitoring student learning is the only way to know: 1. what students are learning, 2. how we are teaching and 3. how we get better at it. A former English teacher and administrator in urban and suburban schools for many years, he has always gravitated toward K12 leadership, learning and technology topics. He has graduate degrees from Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English and Harvard University's School of Education. He is married with three children and four grandchildren. Among other things, he loves running, cycling, kayaking, contemporary poetry, photography and the outdoors. In the summer of 2007 his professional life changed when he attended the Building Learning Communities Conference 2007 and in three days experienced, for the first time, the power of Web 2.0 tools and their potential for transforming schools and learning. That experience

This [Buck Institute for Education] rubric describes beginning, developing, and Gold Standard levels for Project Based Teaching Practices for K-12 teachers" (What is it? ¶1, 2016.06.10).

A site from the US with a superb collect of professional development videos for teachers to improve their skills and knowledge of teaching and learning in a range of areas and subjects. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Video%2C+animation%2C+film+%26+Webcams

embrace the potential revolutionary power of the digital tools that have defined the first decade of the 21st century

Self-Directed Learning "When students are motivated to create work that they share online, it ignites an independent learning cycle driven by their ideas and energized by responses from peers."

"Self-Directed Learning When students are motivated to create work that they share online, it ignites an independent learning cycle driven by their ideas and energized by responses from peers."

"This year, our K-6 staff began learning in a new virtual way using Twitter. After a couple staff in-service trainings and after school workshops, parents and teachers ventured into this new educational Twitterverse. As we enter the final week of school, I'd like to share it's initial impact on teaching and learning from my principal's lens."

"Metacognition (or thinking about thinking) is the secret to and driving force behind all effective learning. If you want your students to learn as much as possible, then you want to maximize the amount of metacognition they're doing. It's a pretty simple equation. The only problem is that most classrooms are set up to promote metacognition in the teachers, not the students."

In 1997, I said that "The Web is not the future, but a dynamic part of today."; the same still holds for Web 2.0 and beyond. It's an evolution (webolution - http://wgraziadei.home.comcast.net/Webolution.html ) not a revolution. It's time to STOP strategic planning and START strategic TEACHING.

21C teaching

This year my school district in Vermont ventured into a sort-of BYOD/1:1 hybrid program. We realized the importance of allowing our students access to technology to enhance their learning, but the infrastructure wasn't in place to tackle a traditional BYOD. .. Instead, we chose to be creative with our technology and professional development.

Richard Byrne advises teachers to activate page-level permissions when giving students access to classroom websites for blogging or digital portfolio development (2012.05.24).

TeachersFirst offers this model for elementary (or middle) schools to build skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening systematically in a schoolwide model including students, teachers, and parents. The free web 2.0 tools suggested here are by no means the only tools that might work. These exemplary tools were chosen by the TeachersFirst Editors for ease of use and versatility in classroom and home use, and could easily be implemented at grade levels other than those suggested here. As students and teachers master a new tool at each grade level, they develop rich literacy skills and vital technology skills, all in the context of reading, writing, speaking and listening across the curriculum.

"...[A]n informative resource page for preservice and inservice teachers who are interested in finding good WebQuests for early childhood, elementary & secondary students" (Home, ¶1, 2011.08.23).

"As writing skills have become more important than ever in this age of e-mail, instant messaging, and texting, NWP teachers are keeping up with the times by using technology to improve their students' writing abilities."

Digital competences go beyond e-skills and consist of the ability to access digital media and ICT, to understand and critically evaluate different aspects of digital media and media contents and to communicate effectively in a variety of contexts. It involves the confident and critical use of ICT for employment, learning, self-development and participation in society. Digital competences are one of the eight key competences identified and defined by the EU

At the heart of all that we do as teachers lies the act of learning. Our hope is that our actions inspire our students to engage in a process that results in their acquisition of new knowledge, mastery of new skills and the development of capacities and dispositions which will prepare them for life beyond our classrooms. Increasingly our focus is on developing the skills and dispositions our students require to become life-long learners. We recognise that in a rapidly changing world, the capacity to take charge of your personal learning journey, to become self-navigating learners is essential. 

Particular patterns of pedagogy have been of most interest to me across the years, particularly those that shift the focus from what the teacher does to what the student does. With this shift comes an emphasis on understanding how students learn and with this knowledge in mind developing learning experiences that will allow them to develop their skills for learning.