Education Innovation

What Do You Seek?

Professional Networked Learning Collaborative Defined

In a previous post I introduced the concept of the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative. I explained that this is the evolution of the current Professional Learning Community. Definitions being useful, here are the definitions of the PLC and my PNLC.

Professional Learning Community (PLC)

"Educators committed to working collaboratively in ongoing processes of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. Professional learning communities operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous job-embedded learning for educators." Learning by Doing (2006)

Professional Networked Learning Collaborative (PNLC)

“Educators working together in the ongoing purpose of increasing student learning while sharing physical space, virtual space, or both simultaneously. The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative operates according to the values of ICE³: Imagination, Innovation, Inquiry, Collaboration, Creativity, Curiosity, Exploration, Experimentation, and Entrepreneurship.”
Education Innovation blog: Rob Jacobs 2009

The New Professional Learning Community- The PNLC

Professional Learning Communities are going to change. The change will come in response to technology and the need to adopt it as a part of how a PLC functions.

Collaborative technology platforms are going to have a major impact on the current Professional Learning Community model. Converged Networking, the ability to carry data, voice, and video over a single network will change how, where, and with whom Professional Learning Communities collaborate with.

 

The convergence combined with broadband to school sites, district offices, and wireless devices will create an environment in which PLCs communicate and collaborate regardless of geography.

Converged networking will allow Professional Learning Communities to easily share data, communicate, and collaborate with people in different classrooms, at different schools, with experts at the district office, or with consultants from across the globe.

Location independent, or location non-dependent collaboration will not only be possible, but in many cases might allow PLC to have greater access to a wider range expertise more frequently. Imagine PLC meeting with teachers at other schools to share instructional strategies, or with district personnel to discuss data or potential Special Education issues, or even with consultants via various collaborative technology platforms.

PLCs will be able to leverage talent, expertise, and knowledge independent of geographic restrictions.

This location independence or location non-dependence will increase the calls for Professional Learning Communities to operate with even greater collaboration because more people will be able to be potential members.

Just as communication technologies such as email or cell phones have created an expectation of immediacy, that is, and expectation for immediate response, so too collaborative technologies change the culture of Professional Learning Communities to expect real-time interaction.

Professional Learning Communities will move from “community” to “network.”

From Professional Learning Community to Professional Networked Learning Collaborative. The PNLC.

Essential Education: Good To Great

Essential Education: The Blue Sweater

How To Have "Beautiful" PLC and Team Meetings: 12 Ways To Respond

Part of my ongoing series on "Beautiful" Professional Learning Communities based on Edward de Bono's  book "How To Have A Beautiful Mind"  here are 12 Points to help PLCs respond to each other. 

1. The overall objective in any conversation might be to agree, to disagree, to agree on the difference—and to have an enjoyable and interesting conversation. From moment-to-moment in PLCs you members will feel the need to respond to what has been said. It is natural.

2. If you are in any doubt about what has been said, it is important to ask for clarification. Misunderstanding and arguing at cross purposes are a waste of time and energy.

There is no bigger waste of PLC energy and time than two members arguing because they have misunderstood each other. If there is any doubt about what has been said or what was meant, clarification is needed.

3. Support goes beyond agreement. You can support a point that has been made from statistics, from your own experience, from a shared set of values and so on.

Support in this case does not mean saying, “Yes.” Support in this case means putting forward some point or opinion that actually make the idea or plan of another stronger.

Support can be based on experience, feelings and emotions, values, facts, figures, and statistics, stories, and anecdotes.

4. Anecdotes, examples and stories add liveliness and reality to the discussion. They may be stories from your own experience or ones you have heard and believe to be relevant.

Team members should get used to supporting ideas instead of remaining quiet as a sign of agreement or support. It is important to verbalize support.

5. Stories do not ‘prove’ anything except perhaps to challenge a generalization (by showing exceptions).

Nobody has better stories than teachers. Stories provide a common understanding. Stories are easy to relate to. Stories do not provide proof or evidence, but they are useful catalysts for thinking.

6. Stories illustrate principles, processes, and possibilities. A process that might be complex to explain can be illustrated by a simple story.

Stories can make the complex understandable. The more we understand each other in PLCs the more effective we can be.

7. You may want to go further than just agreeing with a point that has been made. You may want to build upon that point in order to take it further.

You never know how powerful an idea or plan can be. If team members look for ways to take the point further there is the potential for something truly powerful and truly innovative.

8. You may wish to extend a suggestion by enlarging it and growing the suggestion.

Two of the most powerful words that can be spoken in a PLC are, “What if.”
What if you do this? What if we do that? An idea that is extended using “What if” has the potential for developing an idea or plan that has not yet existed before.

9. You can imagine and idea being put into action in the real world. You watch what might happen and describe what you see: in both a positive and negative sense.

Team members should do their best to visualize the plan or idea in practice in the classroom or the school. Imagine it at work in your day. What is working? What isn’t working? What problems are arising? After, make modifications. Fix what might not be acceptable prior to implementing it.

10. You may want to modify an idea to make it more acceptable to yourself, stronger or more practical.

Nobody will understand the impact of an idea or plan more than the person who will have to implement it in their classroom and with their students. If appropriate, make changes that will correct problems or issue. Anticipate what might not work or what needs to be strengthened.

11. Once an idea has emerges it is no longer a matter of ‘your idea’ or ‘my idea’ but an idea to be improved and assessed.

Once an idea has been cast in front of the team, it no longer has a single owner. The entire PLC is responsible for assessing it, making the idea the best it can be, or politely rejecting it.

12. Instead of the usual ‘battle’ of argument there is a joint effort to explore the subject.

Beautiful PLCs know that when they respond constructively, they are more of a community, more professional, and have a greater chance of truly learning. Arguing does nothing but hinder that goal.

The Coming Shift for Professional Learning Communities and Knowledge Workers

A shift is happening in workplaces across the globe. It is an evolution in the ways people will interact, collaborate, coordinate, and accomplish their work. This evolution, this paradigm shift is based around the social media rich ecosystem of the Internet and all of the emerging technologies that it brings into our lives.

 

Case in point, a recent survey conducted by Acrobat.com with Directions Research Inc. The results detail this coming change.

The survey results indicate that, “an evolution in office workplace culture, including the changing ways white-collar workers are interacting and coordinating their tasks, and how business will be conducted in the social media-rich environment of the 21st century.”

The 21st Century Professional has long been described as a “knowledge worker.” This term, famously coined by management guru Peter Drucker, is the very essence of educators and Professional Learning Communities. The survey identified four key categories of knowledge workers:

Leaders - Young professionals who use a variety of emerging technologies both at work and in their personal lives

Actives - Largely over-35 year old professionals who have adapted to emerging technologies to meet the changing demands of the workplace

Followers - The less technically-inclined who rely on e-mail at the exclusion of other technologie

Resistors - Generally older workers who are reluctant to adjust to shifts in the workplace and office technologies

The survey research suggests several trends that have will have an impact on the way Professional Learning Communities will work in the coming future.

1: “The leap in new technology options and the shifting demographics of the workforce mean that the old, traditional way of doing business is rapidly being enhanced by new ways of working. More business will be conducted using emerging communications technologies and social networking platforms.”

Professional Learning Communities will soon be filled members of this “shifting demographic.” They will be comfortable with technology as a natural extension of their work, how they communicate, how they collaborate, how they plan, etc. The technology is certainly going to continue to evolve making it even easier to collaborate virtually.

2. “Technologies that people prefer to use in their private lives will become the technologies people want to use at work...what we call the consumerization of collaboration.”

Technology is going to increase its involvement and importance in all aspects of our lives. The younger demographic will assume these technologies will be used, and demand it if they aren’t.

3. “The younger generation prefers to use multiple channels of communication, often choosing social networks, text messaging or instant messaging instead of e-mail and in-person meetings.”

The coming demographic (and a growing percentage of the current population of educators) will see these technologies as a logical extension of who they are and how they work.

Technology is going to change how Professional Learning Communities collaborate and interact with each other.

Why? The next generation of educators is not going to recognize a functional difference between person-to-person PLCs and virtual ones. The coming generation consider those who participate through the “virtual” technologies as present, as being there. They will live in two worlds simultaneously. And they will be good at it, because for them, it isn’t really two worlds at all. There is just real touch and virtual touch. But it’s all touch.

Professional Learning Communities will move back-and-forth from the conference table to the digital network.

If you are interested, here is the Acrobat Survey.

Tool Up Your PLCs with "25 Tools for Learning Professionals"

25 Tools: A Toolbox for Learning Professionals 2009

View more presentations from Jane Hart.

The Utility of Paradigm Shifting for Professional Learning Communities

Must one abandon an old paradigm for a new one?
Must a Professional Learning Community abandon a current mental model when exposed to a new mental model? Should they resit adopting the new mental model?

 

Authors Yoram Wind and Colin Crook provide excellent insight to this issue in their book The Power of Impossible Thinking.

“Rather than an absolute and irrevocable shift from one paradigm to another—which is the way revolutionary advocates of new paradigms often paint the picture—new paradigms and the old exist side-by-side. If we recognize this, we can take a pragmatic approach in choosing from the new and the old paradigms in addressing any given problem.” 

 “We look at the best models and select the one that works best.”

Professional Learning Communities are the essence of a learning organization. And like all learning organizations PLCs should leverage past knowledge, strategies, and methods to accumulate new wisdom from its current work. Further, PLCs should share current research and new approaches and perspectives from inside and outside the organization.

Think of James Bond. He always had the greatest gadgets to choose from. He didn’t limit himself to a certain set of tools or set of technologies.

I still have a key to my car. I never seem to use it, but I have it. If the battery runs out in my remote, I will need to use that key. I am comfortable with both and use the best one for the situation.

Though I use email extensively, I appreciate when I receive a hand written note. I recognize that email is a superior paradigm for instant communication, but I am comfortable with both.

Professional Learning Communities should recognize the need to adopt new paradigms or mental models. This is a sure sign that the PLC is actually learning.

The first key for Professional Learning Communities is the ability to recognize when their current mental models or paradigms will serve them effectively, and when their current mental models or paradigms will let them down.

The second key for Professional Learning Communities is recognize past mental models or paradigms may have un-expected value. The ability to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of any paradigm, and move back and forth between new and old has powerful benefits.

“Like matter and energy, no mental model is ever really destroyed. It is just ignored. If we walk one-way from the old paradigm to the new, that is a choice we make to turn our back on the old. If doesn’t mean the old model disappears. But if we recognize that it exists and we look back at it once in a while, we may recognize that it has more value than we had expected. We can then journey between a variety of different mental models to gain new perspectives on our challenges.”

This is the most powerful of all mindset of paradigms. That is Professional Learning Communities. I call it the “Utility Paradigm.” All mental models, all paradigms have utility in certain situations. The ability for a PLC to look at a problem through the lens of various mental models or paradigms will provide valuable perspective.

Though my students used laptops, they also used pencil and paper. They used each depending on the situation. Though technology is clearly becoming a greater and greater part of education, paper and pencil still have their place. My students still used their textbooks and novels. These were not replaced when laptops were introduced. We combined the use of both. I picked the most useful tool to accomplish the goal.

According to the authors, there are several strategies that can be useful for determining whether one should add a particular tool or model to your mental teaching tool kit.

Consider the Utility
Is the old model useful to achieve a particular or facilitate a particular activity? Can the new model do this better?

Look for new uses
What are the new uses of the old models?

Put away the old models
If you are not using a model now, set is aside so you can apply the remaining models more effectively.

Don’t trash your old models, archive them
Even when a model has no current utility today and is not included in your active portfolio, it might turn out to be useful to solve some unsolvable problem tomorrow.

Avoid going over to the dark side.
If you either reject the new mindset out of hand, or accept it completely, you lose the ability to choose different ways of looking at the world and you erode your ability to convey the new mindset to the folks back at home.

Create an inventory of potential new models
The more you can be conscious of these different models and actively consider them, the better you will be at recognizing the their time has come

Draw together diverse perspective
If these different views can be heard, the organization will have access to a much richer set of options in addressing its challenges.

Create a tool box of models
By assembling this set of models, you then have the freedom and flexibility to quickly access those that can help most in addressing a particular challenge.

Learn how to be comfortable looking wishy-washy
Embracing a diverse set of models based on utility can make you look as if you feared commitment to a single model. You need to be comfortable working with coexisting models that provide utility in different situations.

Explaining these strategies to teachers will allow them to understand that they don’t have to abandon what they have previously known, but that there is utility in being flexible enough to examine what each paradigm (new or old) has to offer. Framed in the proper way, a discussion that empowers PLCs to examine the benefits of new paradigms and their potential will open up teachers to change on their own terms. What we seek is the change, the road on which the PLC takes is less important than the destination.

Remember, if the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything starts to look like a nail. But the PLC that has a grasp on the “Utility Paradigm” has within it the ability to adapt to the needs of students and changes in education.

Profile The "Groundswell" of Collaboration in Professional Learning Communities

In the book Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies, authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff explain what they call the “groundswell” and how it in transforming our world. 

According to the authors, the groundswell is..
“A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.” 

I think, that the same ideas described in the “groundswell” apply to Professional Learning Communities.

The idea of the groundswell might apply to Professional Learning Communities if, replace technology such as Web 2.0 applications (blogs, wikis, digg.com, Facebook, Ning, Twitter, YouTube, del.icio.us, Diigo, Wikipedia, etc) with…Collaboration.

Technology enables relationships. Professional Learning Communities enable relationships too. Professional Learning Communities rely on relationships to effectively collaborate together to increase student achievement. 

The authors of Groundswell describe what they call The Social Technographics Profile. This profile describes how people participate in the groundswell using technology. According to the ladder there are six levels of participants.

I have previously posted here (Technology Leadership Is Literacy Leadership) on how I believe the Social Technographic Profile is has a relationship to literacy.

Now I see a Professional Learning Community relationship.

Groundswell has two main components: technology and people.

Professional Learning Community has two main components: thoughts and people.

Based off of the Groundswell Social Technographic Profile ladder, I offer what I call the "Professional Collaborative Profile" of Professional Learning Community members.

All Professional Learning Communities have creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators. Sadly some have inactives as well. They question is how can you harness the individuals on each rung of the ladder to create the most collaboration among members?

In the book Groundswell, the authors describe a simple test to tell if a technology enables new relationships.
1.    Does it enable people to connect with each other in a new way?
2.    Is it effortless to sign up for?
3.    Does it shift power from institutions to people?
4.    Does the community generate enough content to sustain itself?
5.    Is it an open platform that invites partnerships?

Might these same questions apply in some sense to our Professional Learning Communities? Might these same questions relate to the rung your PLCs occupy on the Professional Collaborative Profile?