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by Ron Tanner, November 6, 2011 This article echoes some of what Geoff ? said several years ago. When I began teaching a course called "Writing for the Web," three years ago, I pictured myself scrambling to keep up with my plugged-in, tech-savvy students. I was sure I was in over my head. So I was stunned to discover that most of the 20-year-olds I meet know very little about the Internet, and even less about how to communicate effectively online. The media present young people as the audacious pilots of a technological juggernaut. Think Napster, Twitter, Facebook. Given that the average 18-year-old spends hours each day immersed in electronic media, we oldsters tend to assume that every other teenager is the next Mark Zuckerberg. Aren't kids crazy about downloading music, swapping files, sharing links, texting, and playing video games? But video games do not create savvy users of the Internet. Video games predate the Internet and have little to do with online culture. When games are played online, the computer is no longer an open portal to the world. It is an insular system, related only to other gaming machines, like Nintendo and Xbox. The only communication that games afford is within the closed world of the game itself-who is on my team? At their worst, games divert children from other, more enriching experiences. The Internet's chief similarity to video games is that both siphon off audiences from television, which will soon reside exclusively on the Internet. As a delivery system for television, film, and games, the Internet has proved itself a premier source of entertainment. And that's all that most young people know about it. Why wouldn't we educate students in sophisticated uses of the Internet, which is commanding an increasing amount of the world's time and attention? I'm not talking about a course on "How to Understand the Internet" or an introduction to searching for legitimate research-paper sources online (although that is useful, obviously

by Derek Bruff, November 6, 2011. The best justification of the Innovation Lab premise that I have seen. "Sharing student work on a course blog is an example of what Randall Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, of Georgetown University, call "social pedagogies." They define these as "design approaches for teaching and learning that engage students with what we might call an 'authentic audience' (other than the teacher), where the representation of knowledge for an audience is absolutely central to the construction of knowledge in a course."" Often our students engage in what Ken Bain, vice provost and a historian at Montclair State University, calls strategic or surface learning, instead of the deep learning experiences we want them to have. Deep learning is hard work, and students need to be well motivated in order to pursue it. Extrinsic factors like grades aren't sufficient-they motivate competitive students toward strategic learning and risk-averse students to surface learning. Social pedagogies provide a way to tap into a set of intrinsic motivations that we often overlook: people's desire to be part of a community and to share what they know with that community. My students might not see the beauty and power of mathematics, but they can look forward to participating in a community effort to learn about math. Online, social pedagogies can play an important role in creating such a community. These are strong motivators, and we can make use of them in the courses we teach.

This excerpt from an interview with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, PLP founder, captures critical points for PD online. "Will and I agreed that we would only work with teams of school-based educators because the research made it clear that it was collaborative teams within in a school, working together, that really brought about sustainable improvement. That would give us what we needed to anchor the virtual experience in a local context. We also wanted participants to experience a global community of practice-to be able to have conversations with people very different than themselves, with fresh perspectives. Our thinking was that if we put teams of educators who had different ideologies, different geography, different purposes and challenges, all together in the same space, then they could each bring what they did well to the table and people could learn from that. Ultimately that would mean public, private, Catholic, and other kinds of schools; educators teaching well-to-do, middle-class, and poor kids; educators in different states and nations, at different grade levels, and in different content areas and roles. What ultimately grew out of our brainstorming was a three-pronged model of professional development that emphasizes (1) local learning communities at the school/district level; (2) an online community of practice that's both global and deep; and (3) a third prong that is more personal-the idea of a personal learning network that each educator develops as a mega-resource for ideas and information about their particular interests and areas of practice. (These three prongs are described in depth in a new book, The Connected Educator, where PLP community leader Lani Ritter Hall and I tell the story of the evolution of our model and the very solid research base behind it.)

By Kevin Carey in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Issue #15, Winter 2010. In this editorial, Carey (policy director of think tank Education Sector) argues that colleges are not fulfilling their mission to students: costs are rising and students are not learning (or even graduating). He argues for transparency and studies of the effectiveness of teaching and learning, and warns of the education-related lobbies that keep the rest of us in the dark about higher education.

The truth about how to create sustainable conditions for powerful teaching and learning is bred in the bones of schools rather than the brains of researchers or policy-makers. Motivated by this belief, new and restructuring schools that aim to incorporate the CES Common Principles forge connections with other Coalition schools. They rely on each other for support, mutual learning, and perspective.

By Ian Jukes and Anita Dosaj, The InfoSavvy Group, Sept 2006. Jukes and Dosaj look at the challenges of digital immigrants (e.g. adults) effectively teaching digital natives (today's kids).

In the forum (Table 4: Thinkers) there is a PDF of an earlier version of this resouce (2004).

With the tagline "people learning math together" and a claim to be "... the leading online resource for improving math learning, teaching, and communication since 1992." The math forum provides resources, math help, and a "puzzles & problems" tab.

Teaching concise writing

Great presentation on how to use Adobe Connect for synchronous learning by K-8 students and Encarde, a way to communicate with students and parents and keep them responding to deadlines on projects without using email, that most people read late or not at all. This virtual model could also work for SLI.

Southern Regional Board works with 16 member states to improve public pre-K-12 and higher education. The organization works directly with state leaders, schools and educators to improve teaching, learning and student achievement.

The NNER is a membership network for teacher preparation and to improve teaching and learning. The work is based on that of John Goodlad and the Institute for Educational Inquiry.

Website from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. "...the social organization of the research enterprise is badly broken and a very different alternative is needed. " Part of a series on "networked improvement community" that "creates the purposeful collective action needed to solve complex educational problems."

On blip.tv. A series of websites and other technology that aid the teaching and learning process. The resources are are curated by instructional designers at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Instructional Rounds, based on the work of Dr. Richard Elmore, is a process designed to examine what is happening with teaching/learning in classrooms and schools by working with groups of educators (networks) within a school, school district, or area.

Study of select Woodrow Wilson Foundation and Middle College National Consortium Early Colleges and how high school and college partners strive to align secondary and post-secondary standards with college readiness.

MCNC Edgecombe Early College High School students are making boats out of cardboard and learning about business models and investments in the process.

Blog on high school economics and 4th grade collaboration on Lawn Boy book that focuses on economic principles that guide a young boy's lawn mowing practice into a money maker. I like that because it takes sophisticated principles and presents them within an interesting story that grabs 4th graders and high school students. Then through a collaboration online between the two age groups, they discuss the book together through a series of Skype interviews/interactions.

Alexander Russo's This Week in Education, June 22, 2011 chart on College Haves and Have-Nots with great graphics showing the people-side of the data.

Paper examines the mismatch between high school preparation and college expectations; how high schools should prepare students for college success.