Education Innovation

Naked Professional Learning Community Meetings

Sometimes Professional Learning Communities need to work naked. (No, not that kind of naked.)

In a recent article in the The Chronicle of Higher Education José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University has challenged his colleagues to "teach naked"—by which he means, without computers and machines. He is removing computers from his lecture halls and asking his professors to “teach naked.”

PLCs might benefit from the concept of “nakedness.”

In the hundred of hours I have participated in PLC, often I have seen PLC struggle with a lack of focus and engagement on the part of team members. The reason for the struggle was that instead of focusing on each other, members were focused on their laptops. Team members were “nose down” in their laptops looking at their Google docs, student data reports, etc. Even worse, some just checked out and were instant messaging colleagues or responding to email.

In these cases, I suggested that the team PLC naked.

To PLC naked means to take the time before the PLC meeting to print reports, gather student work samples, and prepare any other documents and resources ahead of time. The goal is to have the information at hand and accessible for use during the discussion so as to avoid faces and minds lost behind computer screens, which, as we can all attest too, sometimes becomes it’s own distraction. It’s a simple solution for a common problem. Come prepared and close those laptop lids.

When teams PLC naked, they are demonstrating that the discussion, questions, and powerful dialogue is more important and more of a focus than their computer screens. If your PLC has had issues of engagement of focus try a naked PLC.

Presenting Sticky Ideas

Presenting Sticky Ideas

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Information Cascades in Professional Learning Communities

Have you ever considered that the first person to share an idea, their knowledge, their opinion, or give input to their Professional Learning Community may create a sequence of events that prevent the PLC from making the strongest most informed decisions possible?

Naturally, we assume that paying close attention to our peers in a PLC and thinking heavily about what they say is key if we are to be an effective PLC. But does it?

Cascade des Tufs - Baume les Messieurs - Jura - France
Originally uploaded by louistib

James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom Of Crowds writes of groups, “Information isn’t in the hands of one person. It’s dispersed across many people. So relying on only your private information to make a decision guarantees that it will be less informed than it could be. Can you safely rely on the information of others?”

We need the information of others if our PLCs are to be effective and powerful. The collective decisions of the PLC will impact student achievement, so it is crucial that the decisions made are the best decision possible and based on the most accurate information, data, and knowledge of the PLC members.

But there is an interesting paradox at work here. At issue for many Professional Learning Communities is a phenomena Surowiecki calls an “information cascade.”

“Collective decisions are most likely to be good ones when they’re made by people with diverse opinions reaching independent conclusions, relying primarily on their private information. In cascades none of these things are true. Effectively speaking, a few influential people—either because they happened to go first, or because they have particular skills and fill particular holes in people’s social networks—determine the course of the cascade. In a cascade, people’s decisions are not made independently, but are profoundly influenced—in some cases, even determined—by those around them.”

Who speaks in a PLC matters. Who speaks first in a PLC matters too.

Many Professional Learning Communities succumb to a problem with the information cascade when the fail to get all of the available information from each teacher. “So to supplement their own information, people will look at what others are doing.”

If you start with an incomplete picture of what students are achieving, or what the best teaching strategy needed is, then PLC are bound to end up making a decision that is not a good as it could be because that decision is based on incomplete information.

For example, imagine a PLC has meet to discuss the best teaching strategy for a particular standard. Imagine that the first person to speak is a strong, knowledgeable, capable, and proven teacher. He or she explains what he or she believes to be the best teaching strategy for this particular standard. As this point, instead of sharing their ideas, knowledge, etc, many teachers will agree with this teacher’s idea and comment in favor of it. This, then, impacts the next teachers, who seeing the first two speak in favor of the idea, joins in agreeing with the strategy.

And on it goes, following a sequence of choices based on incomplete information. Because the other teachers do not share their ideas, but sequentially agree to the first, the possible strategies that could have been picked from fall from several to just one.

“The problem starts when people’s decisions are not made all at once but rather in sequence…”

The decision is therefore made on incomplete information, which naturally means it is not the strongest decision it could be.

“The fundamental problem with the information cascade is that after a certain point it becomes rational for people to stop paying attention to their own knowledge—their private information—and to start looking instead at the actions of others and imitate them.”

In the PLC example above, the teachers who speak after the first couple of teachers are simply imitating what has come before them. They choose to agree with the strategy selected instead of presenting their own ideas, possibly excellent ideas.

“But once each individual stops relying on his own knowledge, the cascade stops becoming informative. Everyone thinks that people are making decisions based on what they know, when in fact, people are making decisions based on what they think the people who before them knew.”

So, the first person to present and idea, state their opinion, or give their input, can begin a sequence that takes the PLC to an entirely different place than it would have if everyone had given their private information or knowledge prior to the PLC making their final decision.

“Instead of aggregation all the information individuals have, the way a market or a voting system does, the cascade becomes a sequence of uniformed choices, so that collectively the group ends up making a bad decision…”

Until all members of the PLC have share their private information, knowledge, and ideas then the group is working with an incomplete picture and will make decisions that are not the best they could be.

“The fundamental problem with cascades is that people’s choices are made sequentially, instead of all at once. There are good reasons for this—some people are more cautious than others, some are more willing to experiment…”

A first year teacher is more likely to hold back and go with the rest of the PLC members’ ideas and not speak up. A highly capable teacher may dominate the group decision making as the rest simply defer to him or her. The reasons can vary but the results are the same. Decisions made on incomplete information.

“But roughly speaking, all of the problems that cascades cause are the result of the fact that some people make their decisions before others…One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying.”

Now that is a paradox. The idea is to keep people independent until the group has all the information, until the PLC has a complete picture.

One method I have used is to have teachers write their ideas down prior to coming to the PLC meeting. During the meeting I ask that each teacher share the ideas they have written down regardless of what they hear from others. In other words, you can’t change your idea based on what someone has just said. You need to put the idea out there and share it with the group. Only after everyone has shared his or her ideas do we make a decision. Usually pulling aspects of the many ideas shared into a stronger plan or decision than would have existed without everyone’s input.

This has the benefit of keeping PLC members independent in their thinking, respected and valued for their contributions, and affirmed because their thoughts were given the same opportunity of success as any other presented to the PLC.

That is Education Innovation.

11 Traits of Highly Creative Students

Dean Rieck is a highly creative and successful direct marketing copywriter. He recently posted this piece “Do You Have These 11 Traits of Highly Creative People?” on the wonderful site Copyblogger.

As my title suggests, these 11 traits should be encouraged and developed in our students.  Standards, standardized testing and approved curriculum is important, but is not enough. We need to develop what students will truly need in to be successful in the future. Creativity is the edge they need and we need to do our best develop it.

So with thanks to Dean, here are 11 highly creative traits that students need to develop.

1. "Have the COURAGE to try new things and risk failure. Every big breakthrough starts as a harebrained idea. This doesn’t mean you should constantly go off the deep end, just that you should balance your routine portfolio of solutions with an investment in the new and untried. Over time, the risk is usually worth the reward."

2. "Use INTUITION as well as logic to make decisions and produce ideas. When Matt Drudge designed his Web site, he listened to his gut instead of the Internet gurus. He kept it simple, small, fast, and some would say ugly and primitive. But it works for him, making The Drudge Report one of the most recognizable and popular sites in the world."

3. "Like to PLAY, since humor and fun are the ultimate creative act. Which is to say you just have to lighten up. We all have goals, and quotas, and deadlines, but it’s not life and death. When you enjoy yourself, your brain relaxes and is able to produce more and better ideas. One of those ideas may be just what you’re looking for."

4. "Are EXPRESSIVE and willing to share what they feel and think, to be themselves. Blogging is the ideal arena for injecting your personality into your work. People are emotional creatures and respond better to people who appear real, honest, and open. Not only is it more interesting, it can also be more persuasive."

5. "Can FIND ORDER in confusion and discover hidden meaning in information. Research and critical thinking are key tools for the creative person. Information is to the brain what food is to the stomach. So-called “writer’s block” or creative burnout almost always results from a lack of fresh information and having nothing meaningful to say."

6. "Are MOTIVATED BY A TASK rather than by external rewards. You must like the challenge of writing, explaining, teaching, and persuading. Sure, you can make money along the way, but if you’re in it just for the money, you’re not going to be a fountain of new ideas."

7. "Have a need to FIND SOLUTIONS to challenging problems. Even the most creative writers won’t have a solution for everything. If they claim to, they’ve stopped thinking. Highly creative people are those whose eyes light up at a question they can’t answer. That’s the opportunity to learn something new and produce remarkably creative content."

8. "Will CHALLENGE ASSUMPTIONS and ask hard questions to discover what is real. Writing, blogging, or business rules aren’t really rules, only rules of thumb. If you want to wield true creative power, you will always take what others advise with a grain of salt. (That includes all of us gurus who love to don our pointy wizard hats and pontificate on the secrets of success.) If you don’t know something from personal knowledge or experience, you don’t know it at all."

9. "Can MAKE CONNECTIONS between old ideas to produce new insights. Combine the little doodles you make on a white board with online video and you get CommonCraft, a new approach to explaining things to people in a way they can easily understand. Sometimes the best solutions are simply two old ideas jammed together."

10. "Will PUSH THE ENVELOPE in order to expand the boundaries of what is possible. There was a time when no one thought you could make money on the Internet. Now it’s a huge, multi-national business platform. Instead of dividing the world into the possible and impossible, it’s better to merely divide it into the tried and the untried. What have you not tried yet?"

11. "Are willing to TEST new ideas and compete with others based on results. Isn’t that what they mean by the “market of ideas”? Isn’t that what business competition is about? If you’re afraid of being wrong or losing, your creativity will suffer."

We are sending our students out into a globally competitive world. Core knowledge, literacy, the ability to think and learn should be combined with creative traits to prepare students for the future they will face.

Idea Killer B.I.N.G.O.

If you intend to encourage creativity in your Professional Learning Communities then your teams need to be comfortable with new ideas. Sounds easy, but as we know, it's harder than it sounds. People are all to quick to kill ideas. Like a fine wine, ideas need some time.

Here is some insight from the great Paul Williams of Idea Sandbox.

"One key reason new and potentially innovative ideas don't get implemented at companies is because skeptics and scaredy cats kill ideas when they're first proposed. They use killer phrases like: "We've tried that before." and "Yeah, but..."

"Great ideas often sound "wild and crazy" at first. They can go against the established guidelines and the status quo. (And then there are those who are afraid the new idea will put them out of a job). To help give ideas a chance, I've created an Idea Killer BINGO card.

 

"This will help you to identify when people use killer phrases that nip ideas in the bud before the idea has a chance to grow.

"This card is meant to be used for awareness, rather than played as an actual BINGO game. If in a meeting you have more than one or two of these pop-up... Your team needs professional help. You should stop the meeting immediately because your team probably won't create anything new and meaningful.*

"Your next meeting should be about how your team needs to be less critical, pause before they pounce, and try to build on an idea - see where it can go... Instead of just killing it.

"You can find more "killer phrases" at the Killer Phrase Central section of Chic Thompson's What A Great Idea site."

I love Paul's idea and would love to use the Idea Killer BINGO card in Professional Learning Communities or team meetings as a tool to get PLCs to give ideas some think time before killing them off to quickly.

Catalytic Questions:

1. Instead of figuring out why an idea won't work, what would happen if your PLC figured out how to make the idea work? 

2. When presenting a new idea, what negative reaction would you expect? How can you deflect it?

3. In what way is fear interfering with critical discussions of new ideas? How might you mitigate the fear?

4. How might embracing the creativity in others encourage more creativity in your PLC?

5. What might happen if you told your PLC that for 5 minutes they have to show how the idea could work and benefits of it, before they were allowed to attack it?

6. How would changing the context of an idea allow it to be considered more carefully?

7. What are the unintended consequences of "killing" idea to quickly?

Pirates and Edupunks Stick It to Big Education

Imagine Joey Ramone as your principal, a punk rock principal for a rock-n-roll school. Scary? It shouldn’t be. That is what you might get when you combine Matt Mason, pirates, punk rock, do-it-yourself, Edupunks, Big Education, and the Open Model of Education.

I previously blogged about author Matt Mason (Teach Students to be Pirates and Plagiarists?). According to Matt Mason, author of The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism, “The punk rock perspective is a subversive mind-set we can all use, especially now that we have equally subversive technologies.”

From the punk rock philosophy comes three separate ideas that will spell trouble for the future of education, but complement the Open Model of Education. Beware of pirates.

Philosophy 1: Do It Yourself (D.I.Y.)
“Today we live in a world where doing-it-yourself doesn’t seem that radical at all. We accept that anyone is capable of becoming a change agent.”

And that includes students. Students no longer need to wait for you to teach them what you think they need to know. Students can go create their own Personal Learning Networks of teachers, mentors, friends, and anyone anywhere who has something they want to learn. It's about choice, freedom, and change. Students crave it and with technology, they can get it. Our outdated notions of teaching students locked in a classroom will have to give way to the Open Model of Education that is focused on the student and their learning because, “Limitations suck.”

“It seems that ownership of the means of production—the backbone of capitalism—is falling into the hands of the masses. But soon the notion of ‘owning’ the means of production may itself be redundant.”

In other words, nobody owns teaching anymore. Nobody controls what students want or need to know. It’s now about the learning and that means nobody owns our students minds or bodies.  They get to learn from anyone, anywhere, at anytime, and for their own reasons, not yours.

“DIY is about becoming more independent. The more independent we become as a society, the more industries become decentralized. Indeed we may reach a point where there is no ‘industry’ left at all, in its place many vibrant local markets producing value, but not controlled exclusively by big players.”

We have Big Oil, Big Insurance, Big Drug Companies, Big Tobacco, etc. But, I say we also have Big Education. Big Education is a system. It is not about the teaching or learning so much as it is about the supporting an organization that does many things other than teaching (maintains things, buys things, monitors things, pays for things, transports things, paints things, cleans things, trims things, builds things, repairs things, etc).

These things have nothing to do with learning, but have a lot to do with maintaining the system. The key here is that Big Education operates on the premise that learning takes place in certain place and from certain people. Big Education exists to support those places and those people, but in the end does a lot to support the organization itself.  Big Education is going to have to adapt to D.I.Y. learning.

Big Education is the “man.” And DIY is about sticking to the “man.”

Philosophy 2: Resist Authority
“Punk resisted authority and saw anarchy as a path to a brighter future. Punk capitalists are resisting authority, too--by leveraging new D.I.Y. technologies and the power of individuals connecting and working together as equals. This twin engine of the new economy is creating new ways all of us can live and work, leaving old system for dust. Technology + Democracy = Punk Capitalism”

Students are going to pirate their own education. You figured out the best way to teach subjects, now they are going to use your “best practices” for themselves. Teachers and professors have developed research based teaching methods for ensuring the best learning. Now, students and educational entrepreneurs are going to pirate those ideas and do it themselves. The Open Model of Education leverages technology and best practices to give learning and teaching anyone. They are not stuck in your system, following your rules they are following pirate rules, which means there are no rules.

Philosophy 3: Combine Altruism with Self-Interest
“Punk had high ideals—it looked aggressive and scary, but through its angry critique of society and subversion of it, it sought to change the world for the better.”

The Open Model of Education can look at little scary to someone who committed to Big Education. It takes their power away by changing the focus from teaching to learning. It allows students and other to pirate the best educational practices and methods and use them to meet their needs and interests.

But this is going to make education better. A focus on every student learning in manner and style that is uniquely best for that student. What could be altruistic than giving a person the best education possible? What could be more beneficial than giving every person a chance to succeed to their highest potential? As a country, is not in our best interests to ensure that our students receive the best learning possible? It is in our self-interest that we change. It is in our own self-interest that the students pirate “Big Education”.

“Pirates create positive social and economic changes, and understanding piracy today is more important than ever…”

Another term for this DIY learning is called Edupunk. Wikipedia describes it this way…

“Edupunk is an approach to teaching and learning practices that result from a do it yourself (DIY) attitude. [1][2] The New York Times defines it as “an approach to teaching that avoids mainstream tools like PowerPoint and Blackboard, and instead aims to bring the rebellious attitude and D.I.Y. ethos of ’70s bands like The Clash to the classroom.”[3] Many instructional applications can be described as DIY education or Edupunk.”

“Edupunk has risen from an objection to the efforts of government and corporate interests in reframing and bundling emerging technologies into cookie-cutter products with pre-defined application—somewhat similar to traditional punk ideologies. [6]

“The reaction to corporate influence on education is only one part of edupunk, though. Stephen Downes has identified three aspects to this approach:

    * Reaction against commercialization of learning
    * Do-it-yourself attitude
    * Thinking and learning for yourself [7]

Sticking it to the man. Sticking it to Big Education.

Edupunk rock pirates of the Open Model of Education, that's Education Innovation.

7 Signs of Creative Professional Learning Communities

Professional Learning Communities are a proven element of building successful schools. While a major proponent of PLCs, I argue that creativity is often lost in the meeting process and the examination of student achievement data.
 
Author of Group Genius, Keith Sawyer, has spent years researching what makes for effective creative teams. Not just effective, but teams that are creative and innovative at what they do. Keith has identified seven key characteristics of creative teams.

1. Innovation Emerges Over Time
“Successful innovations happen when organizations combine just the right ideas in just right structure.”

The main issue here is time. Having enough time for teachers to meet and not only plan lessons, analyze student learning data, and prepare to meet student learning needs, but time to get creative. Often problems re-surface because teachers only have enough time to manage the problem, but not truly solve.

Secondly, the processes and values that schools choose to use when teachers meet is a key factor as well. According to Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma and Disrupting Class, “The reason why innovation often seems to be so difficult for established firms it that they employ highly capable people, and then set them to work within processes and values that weren’t designed to facilitate success with the task at hand.”

2. Successful Collaborative Teams Practice Deep Listening
“Most people spend too much time planning their own actions and not enough time listening and observing others.”

Stephen Covey might say, “Seek first to understand.” Deep Listening is a doorway to trust and understanding. Being able to hear and truly understand the issues, feelings, and values involved in a team’s discussion requires that team members put aside their agendas and spend time listening deeply to what other team members have to say.

Deep listening will help teams understand what Tim Hurson, author of the book Think Better, calls “What’s UP.”  What are the underlying principles at work here? Teams need to listen to each other to understand these underlying principles and trust that they will be addressed in their work together.

3. Team Members Build On Their Collaborator’s Ideas
“When teams practice deep listening, each new idea is an extension of the ideas that have come before.”

In other words, the best ideas are a mash up of the team’s ideas. Ideas are like Legos or Tinker Toys. Individual ideas can be combined and built into a great idea. Much like a recipe, the individual ingredients work best when they are combined into a wonderful dish.

4. Only Afterwards Does The Meaning Of Each Idea Become Clear
“Even a single idea can’t be attributed to one person because ideas don’t take on their full importance until they’re taken up, reinterpreted, and applied by others.”

Often, we react to the new idea by attacking or fleeing from it, "We can't do that." or "It'll never work."

Teams need to avoid attacking or fleeing from and idea by not being too quick to respond to ideas. Like a fine wine, ideas need time to breathe.

Think of the team like a band of improvisational actors. “Individual creative actions take on meaning only later, after they are woven into other ideas, created by other actors. In a creative collaboration, each person acts without knowing what his or her action means. Participants are willing to allow other people to give their action meaning by building on it later.”

5. Surprising Questions Emerge
“The most transformative creativity results when a group either thinks of a new way to frame a problem or finds a new problem that no one had noticed before.”

Teams need to take time to reframe problems and ask questions. The major weakness of most PLC teams I have watched or participated in is a failure to ask questions of themselves and each other and a failure to reframe problems to get to underlying issues.

Believing you have the answer or the solution before you are even sure of the real issue is a failure of many PLC teams. Teams must learn to question their assumptions, their ideas, their data, and their plans.

Questioning and problem reframing might lead to the surprising result of finding new problems. “That’s critical because creativity researchers have discovered that the most creative groups are good at finding new problems rather than simply solving old ones.”

6. Innovation Is Inefficient
“Improvised innovation makes more mistakes, and has as many misses as hits. But hit can be phenomenal; they’ll make up for the inefficiency and the failures.”

Failures are part of the process. PLC teams should expect for some of their ideas not to work. That is part of the creative process. Think of the story of Edison and the light bulb. It supposedly took Edison thousands of attempts to get it right. But when he got it right, he changed the world.

“When we look at an innovation after the fact, all we remember is the chain of good ideas that made it into the innovation, we don’t notice the many dead ends.”

7. Innovation Emerges From The Bottom Up
Principals and managers, get out of the way.

“The improvisational collaboration of the entire group translates moments of individual creativity into group innovation. Allowing space for this self-organizing emergence to occur is difficult for many managers because the outcome is not controlled by the management team’s agenda and is therefore less predictable.”

Principals, you need to let go of the process and let PLCs develop their creativity and innovation.

Most Principals, “…like to start with the big picture and then work out the details. In improvisational innovation, teams start with details and then work up to the big picture.”  This is especially true when teams are creating and innovating from student achievement data. PLCs need to be free to discover the big picture based on what they discover through the data.

These 7 signs of creative teams would demonstrate your PLC to be more creative in their approach to the PLC process than the typical team. It is important that PLCs ask and discuss what they want students to know, how they will know if students know it, what will they do for students who know it, and what will they do for students who don’t; but to do so creatively will make the team all the more effective and innovative.

The model I have advocated here at Education Innovation is the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative. The PNLC operates around the values of ICE³(Imagination, Innovation, Inquiry, Collaboration, Creativity, Curiosity, Exploration, Experimentation, Entrepreneurship) Creativity and Innovation are two of the key components that are expected of PNLCs. The PNLC embeds creativity and innovation into its work because it is a core value of what the PNLC is. In either case, PLC or PNLC, the more creative the approach the easier it will be for teams to adapt, meet the complex needs of students, and reach the goal of all PLCs or PNLCs....results.

The "Loosely Coupled" Improvisational School Organization and Culture

As someone once said, “In any bureaucracy, paper work increases as you spend more and more time reporting on the less and less you are doing”

_{Photo by Durotriges}

According to Keith Sawyer, author of Group Genius, “In most companies, bureaucracy prevents innovation from emerging.”

Education is not immune to the damaging effects of bureaucracy, and in many ways suffers even more due to the number of government agencies adding to the layers of bureaucracy. Federal, state, county, district, and site level rules, regulations, processes, procedures, and mandates have created a maddening level of inefficiency.

Albert Einstein once said, “Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work”

Educators are faced with the task of creating an environment that can harness the wisdom, creativity, and intellect of their teachers and staff as a means of mitigating the harmful creep of bureaucracy. The key is to create schools and districts that are built on collaboration. Collaborative teams that can be assembled to harness their combined talents into innovations and solutions for schools and districts.

As detailed in his book Group Genius, Keith Sawyer describes collaborative organizations. Collaborative organizations are made up of teams who, “…form and reform, their structure emerging improvisationally from the bottom up, and membership is largely self-selected.”

Imagine a school site in which staff members from all grade levels, or department, or other areas volunteer to use the collaborative leverage of the group to innovate ideas and solutions to improve instruction, management, and the operation of the school. Teachers, janitors, counselors, psychologists, coaches, instructional aides, parents, and managers collaborating together from the bottom up to meet the needs of the school site.

Keith Sawyer calls these Innovation Labs.

Education is an ever-changing bureaucracy and districts and school sites must not just deal with change, they must come to expect and even welcome change. It must be embedded into the culture of a school and a district. “Innovation today is a continuous process of small and constant change, and it’s built into the culture of successful companies.”

Three characteristics would be the basis of the collaborative organization and an Innovation Lab. “The culture of the collaborative organization is based on flexibility, connection, and conversation.”

In his book The Social Psychology of Organizing, Karl Weick suggested what he called “loosely coupled” organizations. Bringing staff members together when needed into loosely coupled teams that innovate, create, and develop solutions for the school or the district. Like Lego blocks that can be brought together, disconnected, or re-formed easily without much disruption to the school or district. The benefit is a loosely coupled organization is much more innovative than carefully planned organizations.

According to Sawyer the, “University of Maryland reviewed the previous ten years of studies of organizational design; their conclusion was that team-based companies performed better than traditional bureaucratic firms.” Team-based schools and districts are better.

The Innovation Lab which is, “made up of people from different corporate functions representing all stages of product development, including purchasing, manufacturing, marketing, engineering, service, and finance—result in quicker product development times.”

The Innovation Lab is faster at solving problems and innovating because of the combined cross functions represented on the team. Breaking people out of their department, district office, or grade level silos allow the Innovation Lab to leverage the various knowledge, wisdom, experience, and insight to the team.

These sorts of teams have also been referred to as cross-functional teams. Regardless the label, imagine the speed and efficiency these teams could bring to solving problems, issues, and innovating ideas at the district or site level. All too often great ideas fail to work because some other concern or issue was not considered and anticipated because all the people that would be required to work together to implement the idea are not at the table at the moment it is conceived and developed.

Instead of running an idea by various departments or concerned persons after the fact, why not include them in the development of the idea. Innovation Labs can experiment with a high number of ideas and innovations because those required to work together to implement the innovations are communicating in real-time. Not in their silos after the fact.

“We’re really collaborating and building ideas together as opposed to the old model where everyone works in silos.”

How can you build a culture that is comfortable with change in your district or at your school? Think about issues and problems that have arisen in the past. How would an Innovation Lab or a collaborative organization have changed the outcomes of those issues and problems? Creating a culture of collaboration could be the key to taking a PLC, a school, or a district to the next level.

None of us is a smart as all of us.

This is why the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative is so necessary. The PNLC model leverages the "loosely coupled" idea due to it's scalable membership. The collaborative includes members of the typical community who are physically present with each other, but also includes community partners, useful outsiders, specialists, consultants, professors, etc. who join the network as virtual team members for a time to help the work of the team. These "loosely coupled" outsiders expand the boundaries of team membership through technology that allows for virtual membership.

The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative creates an environment and a culture that makes innovation and improvisation easier because of the PNLC focus on K.W.O.K. Technology allows teams to connect to islands of expertise located in any geographic location. Technology allows teams to archive their learning and share with others. The sum result is that technology allows the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative to “Know What Others Know” (K.W.O.K.).  Knowing what others know and sharing what you have learned is what I refer to as Wisdom Stewardship. Technology makes it easy for educators and schools to be good stewards of available wisdom and to know what others know.

The Great 8: Catalytic Questions For Your Thinking

1.    What is a stake for your school or district? Can you afford not to create a collaborative organization?

2.    What kinds of questions should you be asking yourself about your collaborative models?

3.    What other organizations can you look to as a model of a good collaborative culture?

4.    What assumptions are you making about the level of collaboration and the ability of your teams? 

5.    What is one step you can take right now to increase the collaboration taking place in your school or district? What might it look like?

6.    Reframe the issue. Is it an issue of flexibility among staff, connection, or conversation? Is it a problem of communication, access, or time?

7.    What criticisms will people have when you begin to create Innovation Labs or great collaboration? Anticipate and plan for solutions. Choose the idea that is easiest to implement.

8.    Can you substitute one process, procedure, and regulation with one that will increase collaboration?

2 Ways Professional Learning Communities Can "Think Better"

I spend a lot of time working with Professional Learning Communities. I am always striving to ask catalytic questions that will help PLCs creatively approach the instructional issues they face with their students.

Two of the most powerful questions I use with PLCs are…
“What’s up?”
 “In what ways might we…?”

U.P. and I.W.W.M.W.

For example, I was working with a first grade PLC when one of the teachers mentioned that she has a parent volunteer work with students one-on-one to practice their addition and subtraction facts. The rest of the team pointed out that won’t work in their classroom because they have no parent volunteers.

When struggling with an issue or question, it is often important to get to the underlying assumption. Tim Hurson, author of Think Better, calls this “What’s U.P.?” What is the underlying principle? I pointed out to the PLC that in this case the underlying principle with having a parent volunteer was not access or lack of access to a parent volunteer, but the concept or idea of one-on-one practice with addition or subtraction facts. In other words, “What’s U.P?” with parent volunteers is students getting one-on-one practice.

So I asked, “In what ways might we create opportunities for students to have one-on-one practice with addition or subtraction facts without parent volunteers? In what ways could we automate the process so that parent volunteers where not necessary?

One teacher quickly pointed out that she could have student work together as partners with flash cards. Another said students could use the computer center and an addition or subtraction program. The teacher with the parent volunteer said she would ask if the parent could visit other classrooms on different days. Other ideas were offered up as well. 

The bottom line is that the PLC moved from a problem that seemed to be insolvable to coming up with and sharing ideas by first identifying the underlying problem, asking themselves, “What’s Up?” After discovering the underlying principle, they then asked themselves, “In what ways might we…?”

Great questions lead to great results.

Catalytic Questions:

1. In what ways might you help your PLC to be more creative in their thinking?

2. When was the last time you asked your PLC to try a new thinking or creativity technique?

3. In what ways might you “sell” the idea of trying new thinking or question generating techniques?

4. How might the PLC change if one day you only allowed them to ask question. No statements, just questions?

5. If your PLC fail to ask enough questions of each other, in what ways could you ensure that they do? Tally number of questions asked? Mandate a certain number of questions?
What might it look like when you ensure questions get asked?

6. How might your PLC respond if you instructed them not to ask any questions? How would they feel about the need for questions if they were not allowed to ask any?

7. What patterns typically arise in your PLCs that prevent or discourage questions being asked? How can you anticipate and prevent these patterns from developing?

8. How would your PLC processes or protocols benefit from a fresh look at them?

Show and Tell

At school, the great teachers are the teachers who will show you, not tell you.

^{by George Eastman House}