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I would definitely share my own thoughts, my own experiences, and my own reflections on how the environment of learning is changin

I would be very transparent in my online learning activity and try to show people in the school that it’s OK, that it has value. I think it’s very hard to be a leader around these types of changes without modeling them.

students should be able to create, navigate, and grow their own personal learning networks in safe, effective, and ethical ways.

And now we’re moving into what they call a “lifelong learning” model—which is to say that learning is much more fluid and much more independent, self-directed, and informal. That concept—that we can learn in profound new ways outside the classroom setting—poses huge challenges to traditional structures of schools, because that’s not what they were built for.

So, I think we need to focus more on developing the learning process—looking at how kids collaborate with others on a problem, how they exercise their critical thinking skills, how they handle failure, and how they create. We have to be willing to put kids—and assess kids—in situations and contexts where they’re really solving problems and we’re looking not so much at the answer but the process by which they try to solve those problems. Because those are the types of skills they’re going to need when they leave us, when they go to college or wherever else. At least I think so. And I don’t think I’m alone in that.

I almost defy you to find me anyone who consciously teaches kids reading and writing in linked environments. Yet we know kids are in those environments and sometimes doing some wonderfully creative things. And we know they’ll need to read and write online. You know what I’m saying? But educators would read Nicholas Carr’s book, and their response would be to ban hypertext. It just doesn’t make sense.

“Why do you blog?” That’s what we need. We need people who are willing to really think critically about what they’re doing. I’m not an advocate of using tools just for the sake of using tools. I think all too often you see teachers using a blog, but nothing really changes in terms of their instruction, because they don’t really understand what a blog is, what possibilities it presents. They know the how-to, but they don’t know the why-to. I’d look for teachers who are constantly asking why. Why are we doing this? What’s the real value of this? How are our kids growing in connection with this? How are our kids learning better? And I definitely would want learners. I would look for learners more than I would look for teachers per se.

And I think we have to move to a more inquiry-based, problem-solving curriculum, because

it’s not about content as much anymore. It’s not about knowing this particular fact as much as it is about what you can do with it. What can you do with what you understand about chemistry? What can you do with what you’ve learned about writing?

What does it look like? Kids need to be working on solving real problems that mean something to them. The goal should be preparing kids to be entrepreneurs, problem-solvers who think critically and who’ve worked with people from around the world. Their assessments should be all about the products they produced, the movements they’ve created, the participatory nature of their education rather than this sort of spit-back-the-right-answer model we currently have. I mean, that just doesn’t make sense anymore.

Online learning should originate from everywhere on the globe, not just from the U.S. and other technologically advantaged countries.

The best online learning programs will not simply mirror existing forms of university teaching but offer students a range of flexible learning opportunities that take advantage of new digital tools and pedagogies to widen these traditional horizons, thereby better addressing 21st-century learner interests, styles and lifelong learning needs.

This can happen by building in apprenticeships, internships and real-world applications of online problem sets. Problem sets might be rooted in real-world dilemmas or comparative historical and cultural perspectives. (Examples might include: “Organizing Disaster Response and Relief for Hurricane Sandy” or “Women’s Rights, Rape, and Culture” or “Designing and Implementing Gun Control: A Global Perspective.”)

The artificial divisions of work, play and education cease to be relevant in the 21st century.

Both technical and pedagogical innovation should be hallmarks of the best learning environments. A wide variety of pedagogical approaches, learning tools, methods and practices should support students' diverse learning modes.

Experimentation should be an acknowledged affordance and benefit of online learning. Students should be able to try a course and drop it without incurring derogatory labels such as failure (for either the student or the institution offering the course).

Open online education should inspire the unexpected, experimentation, and questioning--in other words, encourage play. Play allows us to make new things familiar, to perfect new skills, to experiment with moves and crucially to embrace change--a key disposition for succeeding in the 21st century. We must cultivate the imagination and the dispositions of questing, tinkering and connecting. We must remember that the best learning, above all, imparts the gift of curiosity, the wonder of accomplishment, and the passion to know and learn even more.

myriad ways in which technology allows students to connect with other students, field experts, and other teachers around the world,

learning is deeply pleasurable, if not always fun (doing hard things is not always fun, but worth it)

that students are good at deciding for themselves what kinds of remediation they may need and how best to get it (in consultation with an advisor or other students)

assumption that everyone has a stake in their own learning, that

Many of the conventional school environments I'm in are distinctly flat, arid, uninteresting places, physically and intellectually. Bulletin boards that could date from my own elementary school line classroom walls, with publisher's slogans about trying harder or doing your best. Adults choose what goes on the walls , and the aesthetics of learning spaces seem almost deliberately ignored.

"It's not about the technology, it's about rethinking how learning happens."

Learners within a global, digital commons have the right to work, network, and contribute to knowledge in public; to share their ideas and their learning in visible and connected ways if they so choose.

The best courses will be global in design and contribution, offering multiple and multinational perspectives.  

The best online learning programs will not simply mirror existing forms of university teaching but offer students a range of flexible learning opportunities that take advantage of new digital tools and pedagogies to widen these traditional horizons, thereby better addressing 21st-century learner interests, styles and lifelong learning needs.  

Both technical and pedagogical innovation should be hallmarks of the best learning environments.

Open online education should inspire the unexpected, experimentation, and questioning--in other words, encourage play.

many businesses are now finding that the pace of change demanded by the global economy and facilitated by various technologies is requiring them to rethink how they are organized. Many are restructuring themselves as learning organizations—organizations in which new learning and innovation are the engines that drive the company.

Knowledge Forum is, of course, not the only online learning environment available. Others of note include FirstClass, WebCT, and Blackboard. Palloff and Pratt (2001) note that, whatever online environment is used, "attention needs to be paid to developing a sense of community in the group of participants in order for the learning process to be successful"

How does it work? In practice, the teacher presents students with a problem of understanding relevant to the real world. It could be a question such as What is the nature of light? or What makes a society a civilization? The focus here is to make student ideas, rather than predetermined activities or units of knowledge, the center of the classroom work. The next step is to get the students to generate ideas about the topic and write notes about their ideas in the Knowledge Forum (KF) database, an online environment with metacognitive enhancements to support the growth of the knowledge-building process. In generating these ideas, the students form work groups around similar interests and topics they wish to explore. These groups are  self-organized and dynamic; the teacher does not select the members, and members can join or leave as they choose. Idea generation can take place during these group sessions, during which all students are given the chance to express their ideas, or in individual notes posted directly to the KF database. While in a typical classroom setting ideas or comments generated in discussion are usually lost, the KF database preserves these ephemeral resources so that students can return to them for comment and reflection. Students are then encouraged to read the notes of other students and soon find that there are differing schools of opinion about the problem. The teacher's job is to ensure that students remain on task and work towards the solution of the problem under study by reading each other's notes and contributing new information or theories to the database

Although much attention has been paid to the laptop computers that have been provided to students in the district, Mr. Edwards insists that the conversion isn’t about devices.

The digital conversion happening in Mooresville has required everyone in the district—including students—to “aggressively embrace continuous learning,” said Mr. Edwards. For instance, educators should continually be working toward their own professional goals and expanding their instructional knowledge, just as students are expected to add continually to their knowledge base.

“You have to clearly send signals that mistakes, bumps, and turbulence are part of the landscape. It happens, and it’s OK, and if things don’t go right, that’s normal,” said Mr. Edwards.

“If you don’t know what you’re going to measure, and carefully collect data along the way, you will not have that story to tell six or 18 months later,” said Ms. Cator, a former director of the office educational technology for the U.S. Department of Education.

In Albemarle County, for instance, students sit on the district’s tech advisory committee, participate in surveys about the district’s strategic goals, and provide feedback about budget initiatives, virtual learning, and other strategies through a county student advisory committee, said Ms. Moran.

Building a Culture of Innovation School leadership experts outline several ways districts should work to create an atmosphere in which good ideas can flourish, including: • Develop strong leaders who encourage informed risk-taking and experimentation rather than protection of the status quo. • Establish an expectation of continuous learning and improvement from every person at every level of the organization. • Craft a clearly defined and articulated vision for the district, and make sure everyone understands it and adheres to it. • Foster an environment in which people have the power to change course quickly if a project or initiative isn't working. • Empower everyone in the district, from students to teachers and administrators, to take on leadership roles. • Ensure a seamless infusion of technology throughout every sector of the district to produce efficiencies and collect meaningful data. SOURCE: Education Week

That relationship meant that, rather than working in relative isolation, our faculty worked together to create and implement standards-based projects. Rather than acting as directive teachers, our faculty members were more like coaches in a student-led inquiry environment. Rather than relying on books and worksheets, our faculty led students through a less certain learning path. Rather than perceiving critical thinking as a "result" (of directive teaching), we saw it as essentially an immersion mode in which exploration informs and develops students' thinking processes.

Finally, we identified student evaluation instruments to use throughout the project, including the culminating product.

Throughout any given project, we must be able to informally touch base at any time. Backup resources should be available (when computers fail, for example). We need to plan together in a very detailed, day-to-day way. We have to be able to easily communicate "on the fly." How we introduce the project to students is much more important than we thought (and we thought it was very important). As a teaching group, we must maintain a flexible, problem-solving attitude to productively work through the inevitable implementation challenges.

n addition, we are still grappling with how to best prepare our students to be successful in a project-based learning environment when they have difficulty working together cooperatively.

Typically our grading systems reward successful test taking more than successful learning.

Create an environment where they have as much freedom as possible. 

If you’re content isn’t relevant to the learners, they’ll just tune out and you’re wasting time and money.

If you do need to assess their understanding, perhaps there’s a better way to do so.

I think that all students entering in to a 1:1 community SHOULD read this post so they can grasp the gravity of the situation.

They are changing the way we are thinking here at Van Meter.

I recently connected with the mayor of our town. He is going to help me with my interest of public relations. I hope the more I learn about communication, and public relations the easier it will be in college, and in the business world.

It is a change, and some people don't like change, but I believe it is a change for the better.

when one is a novice in a field, you have limited working memory about the topic. This means there is little space to do hard, unfamiliar work. It’s quite possible that working with others,

dmit that time alone is a problematic measure for any study because “what takes one student ten minutes to complete may take another student twenty”), three of which I have included here.

Third, “requiring student interaction just for the sake of interaction may lead to diminished completion rates. Again, standards for online teaching should not contain arbitrary thresholds for required interaction.”

This doesn’t mean we should discourage interaction, but it does mean we should not measure the quality of a program based on inputs like seat time.

ome teachers get whiteboards and dazzle themselves, while the students, for the most part, crave the media-rich environments in which they live when they are not in class. It is a conundrum to say the least.

Allowing teachers to fumble along implementing technology experiences haphazardly is no longer productive or effective.

"harbinger of innovation" meaning someone who keeps up with new educational technologies by attending conferences and staying connected with other knowledge brokers.

Second, he/she must have time to develop classroom (or outside of classroom) technology-related activities.

Third, these select individuals must be excellent teachers and know how to explain complicated technology to digital immigrants.

Fourth, knowledge brokers have to be available to help the teacher learn the technology, help introduce it to the students (or stand by while the teacher does the introduction to help with the expected problems), and be willing to return calls - shouts - for help immediately.

Finally, knowledge brokers need to be catalysts for change in the school environment which means that they have to be able to assume all four roles PLUS coordinating all the present and future technology integration. In other words, they have to love it and embrace it and get the teachers to feel the same way.