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professional development 30 day challenge to engage students through blogs

Students at risk of dropping out have shown great capacity. See a news report about Challenge Early College High School and how it has helped to retain students at risk of dropping out.

Another MCNC school wins the U.S. Blue Ribbon Award

Professional Development services aimed at addressing K-12 educational challenges. Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert J. Marzano and Douglas Reeves are a few of the top speakers.

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 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).

Excellent tips on designing learning interactions with relevant and potentially risky on the job challenges as the subject matter

Action Research tips for college bound teens to work together on a project, specifically that challenging phase when team members don't yet know what they want to work on.

Douglas A. Guiffrida writes about Theories of Human Development That Enhance an Understanding of the College Transition Process, 2009. Could have implications for SLI curriculum development. "To encourage the moratorium that Erikson believed is necessary for establishing secure identities, colleges need to provide academic curricula that encourage students to think about the issues most important to their identity development, which can include in-depth study of diverse religious beliefs, political ideologies, career opportunities, and gender role attitudes. College student affairs personnel should provide social opportunities that encourage students to connect with a diverse range of peers and activities to test and challenge both new and old ways of thinking about themselves and their place in the world."

The Common Core organization wants to improve education in America. To do so, they're "promoting programs, policies, and initiatives at the local, state, and federal levels that provide students with challenging, rigorous instruction in the full range of liberal arts and sciences."

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

"Next Generation Learning Challenges is a collaborative, multi-year initiative created to address the barriers to educational innovation and tap the potential of technology to dramatically improve college readiness and completion in the United States."