Rowland Foundation

"...some of the most innovative thinking is not coming from above, but from the ground level, where the action is. Teachers and students in local schools are making their own plans on how to meet these demands and tie efforts together to improve student learning. The laboratory is the school itself, and the benefactor supporting the research is Vermont's own Rowland Foundation."

This is my second MOOC; I am already addicted to learning this way. I have been taking ideas on how to move the platform for advisory discussions onto a Google+ Community.

I am completely energized by the MOOC experience. One of my seniors tried it: a human physiology course out of Yale. She was overwhelmed, but grateful to experience the caliber of a "university" course. She ended up dropping after a few months. The pace and rigor were beyond her horizons, but she tried it. We had a conversation about when is it okay to fail. She was finally in a place where she hit the wall. How many of our students hit the wall when they are in a college and paying for it? How many discover only too late that they are in the wrong major?

I can't wait to hear about your experience at our meeting. (Maybe with the extra time I have on my hands now I will give one a try...I've signed up for two, but never got started.) You have my gears spinning about MOOCs and the VTed community. First, I wonder how many schools would be willing to allow students, with oversight and guidance, to participate in a MOOC for credit? Second, what could a Rowland led VTed School Transformation MOOC look like? I see different fellows leading separate sections, sharing ideas and school transformation experiences with class participants who in turn share their own thoughts, inspirations, and challenges. Could have real potential to bring voices together from across the state.

"By the end of this year, Android will be in more devices than the next four competitors combined (Windows, iOS, Mac OS, and BlackBerry). Before the end of this decade, Android will be in nearly as many devices as all other operating systems combined."

Makes me wonder about what #EdTech curriculum should look like. Are we teaching skillsets which have the diversity necessary to meet our students' future needs? How much of our teaching focuses on mobile applications? How is the mobile experience planned into what/how we teach...of using technology that is not based upon using it while sitting on our backsides.

Here's a tool I've been using with my CSS Professional Development classes. It's taken from the International Center for Leadership in Education. You can find a more colorful version on their site (http://www.leadered.com/rrr.html).

"Chance favors the connected mind." Why the Rowland Foundation Group Diigo can be the keystone to school change in Vermont. How do we create a system where we can allow our collective "hunches" to come together to form something bigger than the sum of their parts?

This reminds me so much of the Rowland Foundation! Tremendous potential in our network of educators...provided we can use technology to sustain ongoing collaboration.

"Technology and social media specifically have provided tools that enable educators to connect, communicate collaborate and create. That ability makes a difference in individuals. It enables reflection and relevance. It is also creating two groups of educators, the connected, and the unconnected. The discussions of the connected seem to be focused on the future and moving toward it. The discussions of the unconnected seem to be steeped in the past with little or very slow-moving forward movement."

Really a great post by Vermont Superintendent Dan French. In this he talks about educators from across districts and beyond "utilizing the collective wisdom of their peers." He sees a potential providing an opportunity for educators where "Curriculum development and professional development are 'open sourced' with best practices being identified, implemented, and evaluated much more quickly across a group of schools since teachers are no longer working in isolation within their own schools or districts." I can't imagine that there isn't a person among us that wouldn't agree with the concepts he puts forward here. I think we as a group already have the pieces in place to implement what he proposes. If we were to come together as a true PLC I think that we could not only greatly help with transformation in our individual schools, but could have a profound and powerful impact on education across Vermont.

Here is the link to a Pew Research survey about teachers and tech use. You can read the summary at this page, and/or download the pdf from there to read later. The document is pretty long, but has some interesting data, even given the fairly narrow survey sample.

"In isolation neither the research nor the teacher seems to have much of a chance for sustained discovery, growth, and positive change." (p. 39) "Faculty members are changing how they teach and making informed choices when it comes to teaching strategies. They feel empowered and are encouraged to take risks, are fostering collaborations in their teaching and are talking about teaching. For some, the change in how they teach has been radical. For others, the change has been small but still noticeable." (p. 42) And to what do the conveners attribute this success? "We saw that we are learners together in this learning community and we are our own best resource: Our collective knowledge is an invaluable asset." (p. 43) Retrieved from: http://www.cs.kent.edu/~volkert/science-learning/files/sirum-madigan.pdf

As educators do we model those "best practices" for learning which we expect from our students? How do we... "Engage ... in active learning experiences; Set high, meaningful expectations; Provide, receive, and use regular, timely, and specific feedback; Become aware of values, beliefs, preconceptions; unlearn if necessary; Recognize and stretch ... styles and developmental levels; Seek and present real-world applications; Understand and value criteria and methods for (our own) assessment; Create opportunities for (peer to peer) interactions; ...; Promote (peer) involvement through engaged time and quality effort" Retrieved from: http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/cii/resources/outcomes/best_practices.asp

Sharing, and sharing online specifically, is not in addition to the work of being an educator. It is the work." Ewan Mcintosh

"For those who share this common commitment (and really, who among us does not?),there is, I am arguing, a moral responsibility, a strong one, to share our educational initiatives and innovations: to summarize them, share their key elements, show examples of them in practice, and, at best, reflect upon their successes and lack thereof."

"This is also an essential element of educational leadership. Leadership is showing the way to others and making it easier for them to follow, it is empowering others to benefit from your example, take inspiration, and improve upon your advances- to stand on your shoulders."

"...valuing each child's sense of imagination and curiosity."

Leading School Transformation (EDLP 380) is a graduate-level course that brings together educators who are leading transformation efforts in Vermont schools. The course will build on the Rowland Foundation Transformation Conference at the University of Vermont through professional dialogue, personal refelection, and related readings. EDLP 380 will help participants develop school-based projects based on the latest research related to school transformation. Participants will read The Big Picture by Dennis Littky and Drive by Daniel Pink and develop strategies to lead change at their schools.

This is the slideshow from my session at the 2012 Rowland Conference on School Transformation at UVM. Even with the minimalist zen presentation style, there are still some concepts, quotes & statistics which may be useful if you're making the case for change at your school.

Charlie MacFadyen & Robin Fawcett, two very talented colleagues, gave this presentation at the CVU School Transformation in 2010 with support from the Rowland Foundation. While you need Charlie & Robin to get the full effect, the slides alone provide one of the best explanations of authentic assessment I know of. It's also a terrific example of "zen presentation".

"Charting a new path forward in education by sharing positive stories of change, providing perspective on key issues, and giving you the news and analysis you need to take action."

"Internships came back as the most important thing that employers look for when evaluating a recent college graduate," says Dan Berrett, senior reporter at the Chronicle. "More important than where they went to college, the major they pursued, and even their grade point average."

What does this mean for high school students? If colleges are looking at putting more students in internships themselves...will they recruit students who already have some level of experience in an internship during high school?

"We are moving away from the model in which learning is organized around stable, usually hierarchical institutions (schools, colleges, universities) that, for better and worse, have served as the main gateways to education and social mobility. Replacing that model is a new system in which learning is best conceived of as a flow, where learning resources are not scarce but widely available, opportunities for learning are abundant, and learners increasingly have the ability to autonomously dip into and out of continuous learning flows."