I am a big fan of Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital: How The Net Generation Is Changing Your World and co-author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
Don Tapscott, Vicki Davis aka CoolCatTeacher, and Julie Lindsay of E-Learning Journeys fame, have teamed up to create the Net Gen Education Challenge. They are taking on some of the true X-Problems that face education, world institutions, and institutional thinking. It looks like a great opportunity for students and schools alike.
Don explains the challenge below...
I’m delighted to say that I’ve again joined with Vicki Davis (Westwood Schools, USA) and Julie Lindsay (Beijing (BISS) International School, China) to issue two global video challenges on how the social web nurtures teaching, learning, collaboration, and innovation for the 21st century.
Just as we did last year, the Net Gen Education Challenge is a call for ideas to shape the future of education. However, this year we’ve also added the MacroWikinomics Challenge. We’re looking for ideas on how to fix the world’s institutions, such as business, government, social service, and the institutional thinking that prohibits creative problem solving.
The genesis of this year’s challenge goes back to the forming of the Flat Classroom Project, which was founded in 2006 to connect Julie Lindsay’s classroom at the International School in Dhaka, Bangladesh and Vicki Davis’ classroom at Westwood Schools in Camilla, Georgia. The project has grown to link more than 1,500 students from 20 countries in four projects with face-to-face conferences. The projects harnesses leading Web 2.0 technologies to connect students in powerful learning environments where they learn, connect, and improve their cultural understanding. For more details, visit www.flatclassroomproject.org.
This year’s grand prize winners for the Net Gen Education Challenge and the MacroWikinomics Challenge will receive US$1,000 and a one-hour webinar by me to include members of the winner’s organization or school. Each of the ten finalists will receive a signed copy of Grown Up Digital by me and a personalized signed copy of Wikinomics by me and Anthony D. Williams.
I’m also inviting people to nominate any school within the K-12 range for the eChalk School Prize, a prize that awards a school anywhere in the world with eChalk’s Anytime Package – a suite of online communication and collaboration tools pioneered specifically for teachers, students and parents – for one year. The prize includes a school website, group and class webpages and workspaces, safe email accounts for faculty, staff and students, and parent access accounts – all in one place to support learning. The winner of the eChalk School Prize will be determined by the school that receives the most votes.
Please join me and the online community to discuss the impact of emerging trends and technologies in building a sustainable future. Video submissions and school nominations will be accepted until May 10, 2010. Learn more at http://grownupdigital.ning.com/
“Each step on the ladder represents a group of consumers more involved in the groundswell than the previous steps. To join the group on a step, a consumer need only participate in one of the listed activities at least monthly.”
I believe that each rung of the Social Technographic ladder presents a unique literacy challenge for our students.
As an educator you know the standards, the curriculum, and the methods to bring about literacy. If technology is not part of that you are missing a major component of what our students will need in the coming years. Our students need to be able to climb the "ladder" and it is your job to make sure they get those opportunities.
Top Rung: Creators
These
are the people who, at least once a month, publish a blog, put an
article online, maintain a website, or upload music or videos. In the
United States, about 18% of us on are the top rung or creators.
The percentage is only going to go up. So, what are you doing to prepare your students to be creators? How are you preparing your students to occupy the “top rung” of the Social Technographics ladder?
If you think about it, this is a question of literacy. For example, here are the writing standards for 6th grade in California:
Narrative
write narratives, that(1) establish and develop plot and setting, and choose a point of view that is appropriate to stories
(2) include sensory details and concrete language to develop plot and character
(3) use a range of narrative strategies (e.g., dialogue, suspense)
Expository
Write expository compositions (e.g., description, explanation, comparison and contrast, and/or problem/solution) that
(1) state the thesis or purpose
(2) explain the situation
(3) follow an organizational pattern appropriate to the type of composition (e.g., if problem/solution, then paired)
(4) offer persuasive evidence for the validity of the description, proposed solutions, etc.
Research Reports
Write research reports that
(1) pose relevant questions narrow enough to be thoroughly covered
(2)
support the main idea(s) with facts, details, examples, and
explanations from multiple authoritative sources (e.g., speakers,
periodicals, on-line information searches)
(3) use a bibliography
Persuasive
2.5. write persuasive compositions (or letters for grade 5) that
(1) state a clear position in support of a proposition or proposal
(2)
support the position with organized and relevant evidence; and (3)
anticipate and address reader concerns and counter-arguments
The standards seem to say that we want students to be creators. The question I have is; are we preparing our students to occupy the top rung in the groundswell. Remember, 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.”
In other words, the groundswell is what is taking place in this new ecosystem called the web where any person, in any place, can be a producer of media. Or, as Clay Shirky says, every person is a one-man media outlet.
So why only 18% participation? Obviously this is an optional activity. Nobody has to be a creator. In our classrooms we require that our students be creators. We want all of our students on the top rung. We ask that our students create stories, research reports, projects, and narratives. We are teaching the next generation to succeed in this new online ecosystem. The standards seem to suggest we have the right intentions, but do those standards prepare our students for life in the groundswell? I think it depends on the teacher. The greater the teacher's understanding of the power of the groundswell in the online ecosystem, the better the assignments will utilize technology as part of learning and mastering the standards.
The next rung down: Critics
Critics react to what has been created. This is similar to the responding to literature standard.
Response to Literature
Write responses to literature that
(1) develop an interpretation which exhibits careful reading, understanding and insight
(2) organize the interpretation around several clear ideas, premises, or images
(3) develop and justify the interpretation through sustained use of examples and textual evidence
Again, the question becomes, are we properly preparing our students for being a critic in the groundswell?
When I was a student, I was never allowed to comment on what other students wrote. Even in college, my job was to create. The only opportunities I had to be a critic was in writing a book report. Most of us are simply not used to commenting on blogs. We were not trained to do it as students and we had so few opportunities in our academic lives to practice it. But, our students are growing up in the online ecosystem that allows them to comment and critique nearly everything. They can comment on a song, a picture, a video, place a comment on a blog, put a book review on Amazon, or review a product on CNET.
Their world is the world of the critic. Are we as educators equipping them to succeed in this world? Are we preparing them for life on the second rung? What opportunities do your students have to critique what others have created?
The next rung down: Collectors
Collector collect RSS feeds, save website to Del.icio.us, vote for sites on Digg, and accumulate all forms of created digital media from the online world.
So, what standards address that? How are we preparing our students to be effective collectors of information? What opportunities do our students get to practice the art of selective information collection? How do our students learn to filter information for their select needs? How are we preparing our students to be literate collectors?
The next rung down: Joiners
Members
of Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orcut, etc. are all joiners. These are
the people who maintain profiles on social networking sites. My guess
is that most of our students are far ahead of most of their teachers in
this aspect. But, how can we teach our students the skills necessary to
properly maintain these sites for optimal effect and leverage their
power to further themselves via networking?
Our students are natural collaborators and net-workers, but how are we making them literate in the power of networks?
The next rung down: Spectators
Spectators
consume what the rest produce. This is the largest part of the
groundswell. This is about making choices. What they choose to consume
can enhance our students’ education. So, our students need to make
choices that will enhance them as people, as students, as informed
citizens, etc. Of course kids will always choose the strange and
offbeat, but we can equip them to understand what sorts of media are
important for them to consume. What opportunities are your students
getting to be selective literate spectators?
The bottom rung: Inactives
These
are the people who are not impacted by the groundswell at all. For our
students, it might those students who have no access to technology and
the web. I still meet students and parents who have no web access. If
the school isn’t providing it, and they have no access at home, when
are these students given chances to move from inactive to spectator, to
joiner, to collector, to critic, or to creator? We need to think about how we
can provide opportunities and resources for them to climb the Social
Technographic ladder. It is a literacy issue for life in the 21st
century.
Catalytic Questions
In what way is your leadership preparing your school and your students for the literacy of technology?
Is your personal leadership and catalyst or hurdle in the implementation of technologies that will provide opportunities for technology literacy?
In what ways do our current literacy standards meet or fall short of the issues and challenges faced by our students at each rung of the Social Technographic ladder?
In what way can we better prepare our students to be literate creators of information?
How might this look in a classroom?
In what ways can we provide opportunities for our students to be literate critics of created information?
In what ways can we prepare our students to be literate collectors of information?
What might this look like in the classroom?
How might we prepare our students to leverage the power of networks?
In what ways could we prepare our students to make literate choices about the networks they join and the information they place on those networks?
In what was are we preparing our students to be literate spectators of information?
How might we better equip our students to make excellent choices in the information they consume each day?
In what ways can we provide resources or tools to move the non-participating Inactive up the Social Technographic ladder?
This week's Idea Jar features just a sampling, a smidgen of posts from Scott McLeod's Leadership Day 2009.
Five steps to get you started in implementing technology at your site From Keeping Kids First blog
Learning to Ride/Learning to Trust From Leading 180 Days blog
Leadership Day: Change the Debate from Andrew B. Watt's Blog
How Principals Support Videoconferencing from Videoconferencing Out on a Lim blog
15 questions to ask about the technology leadership in your school district from Dangerously Irrelevant blog
Top Ten Ways to Predict the Future from Ed Tech Leadership blog
A shared vision to support student learning from edtech VISION blog
What's in Your 21st Century Toolbox? from PLN- Not Just My Initials blog
Leadership Day - The Pace of Change from Practical Theory blog
Four Pillars of Technology Integration from nashworld blogNo Fear, No Hope from Creative Tension blog
School Leadership and Educational Governance: On Silos and Onions from Educational Insanity blog
Tech Whisperer: drive out fear from Re-Siver blog Are you ready to lead a revolution at your school or in your district? Leadership Day 2009.
Intro: The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative
Back in 2002 in his book Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution Howard Rheingold predicted that, “The ‘killer apps’ of tomorrow’s mobile infocom industry won’t be hardware devices or software program but social practices. The most far reaching changes will come, as they often do, from the kinds of relationships, enterprises, communities, and markets that the infrastructure makes possible.”
The prediction, as we now know, was spot dead on. The technology has transformed our relationships, how we are able to collaborate, how we now define communities, what constitutes a network, and what kinds of work we are able to do.
According to Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman, authors of X-Teams, “…team effectiveness is not just a matter of managing well around the conference table. Success also depends on team’s reaching out across their borders to find needed information and expertise.”
It is this intersection of collaboration and technology that has now allowed us to create and leverage a new form of boundary crossing Professional Learning Community. It’s called a Professional Networked Learning Collaborative.
Definition: Professional Networked Learning Collaborative
“Educators working together in the ongoing purpose of increasing student learning and achievement while sharing physical space, virtual space, or both simultaneously."
No longer is the work of educational teams limited to face-to-face around the table collaboration. No longer is specialization or the knowledge base limited to who is physically sitting in the meeting. No longer is email viewed as the technology of choice for collaboration. No longer are teams limited by geography. No longer should great ideas remain trapped inside particular grade levels, departments, or schools. Technology has allowed us to change all that. Technology has created a new reality.
The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative seeks to leverage the new reality of education.
Individual educators used to operate under this model.
Educators understood the value of collaboration, and so the Professional Learning Community arose.
But technology has changed that world. The 21st Century educator now operates under this model.
by courosa
Technology Enabled Collaboration
How is that technology has changed collaboration so greatly? First, technology enables different types of relationships. Virtual relationships are now possible and have become commonplace outside of educational settings. Networks of all sorts (Facbebook, Ning, Twitter, etc.) webcams, Skype, etc. have changed the very definition of presence. Second, technology has changed who is part of the team. Team members can now be virtual. Members no longer tied to geographic limitation can provide input, ideas, and collaborate in real-time for any location on the globe. The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative enabled through technology expands the borders of membership to include specialist, consultants, district staff, etc as part of the team.
From Community to Network
The person is the portal to the network. The person is an autonomous communication and collaboration node. Each member can potentially leverage not only their network, but also the network of others who are in their network. This principle is known as Metcalfe’s Law. The number of potential connections between nodes grows more quickly than the number of nodes. The total value of the network where each node can reach every other node in the network grows with the square of the number of nodes. In other words, when PNLC members connect their networks, it creates more value than the sum of networks independently.
The essence of the PNLC is that the “who” of potential members and collaborators is increased exponentially because of individual members networking through collaborative technology platforms, the “what.”
As sociologist Barry Wellman said, “Each person operates his networks to obtain information, collaboration, orders, support, sociability, and a sense of belonging”
So, just at the individual educator has become networked, so too must the Professional Learning Community. And when a PLC becomes networked, it becomes something different. The PLC becomes the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative.
PNLC members will fluidly move between the physical and virtual networks to communicate, collaborate, and share ideas, data, strategies, and information. Each member being a portal or node to their individual network makes the PNLC exponentially stronger, knowledgeable, and wise.
PNLC are able to maximize individual members’ networks to the advantage of the whole.
Networks have now become so much a part of our lives that physical presence is no longer necessary for a member to “present.” Howard Rheingold calls this “presence of those who are absent.” PNLCs can call on a district specialist, consultants, teachers, and staff who are in different physical locations (even different time zones) and who will be able to collaborate, contribute, cooperate, and share just as if they were present physically.
As anthropologist Mizuko Ito puts it, “As long as people participate in the shared communications of the group, they seem to be considered by others to be present.”
Virtual participation = presence = collaboration = results
The Collaborative
The community model served the professional learning community well but the time and technology have changed. The collaborative is the new model. 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.
As each PNLC member’s Personal Learning Network overlaps with other team members it becomes much different from the local context of a community. Overlapping Personal Learning Networks form the "collaborative" in the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative. We have moved from face-to-face community of physical space to the technology enabled virtual and physical space collaborative.
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.
Microsoft research sociologist Marc A. Smith put it this way. “Whenever a communication medium lowers the cost of solving collective action dilemmas, it becomes possible for more people to pool resources. And ‘more people pooling resources in new ways’ is the history of civilization in seven words.”
The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative allows educators to solve education problems, increase student achievement, share strategies, and analyze data, etc., with members who are physically present “at the table” and with educators who are virtually present from anywhere on the globe. The PNLC allows teams to leverage not only their knowledge, but also the knowledge of other educators, specialists, consultants, etc., from anywhere else virtually.
For example, if a team was discussing the needs of a student with special needs, they could network in specialists from the district office or the county office, or a specialist/consultant in another state.
Not Just The Same…But Different
The very enterprise of the typical grade level or subject matter team will be different as technology enables networks to allows for new levels of data analysis, planning, lesson design, etc. The reality is that what grade levels or subject matter teams will be able to do compared with what they do right will not just more or better… it will be different.
PNLCs will live by the values of ICE3: Imagination, Innovation, Inquiry, Collaboration, Creativity, Curiosity, Exploration, Experimentation, and Entrepreneurship.
PNLCs will leverage their A.W.A.R.E.N.E.S.S
Why The Need
There are six “key drivers” that I see pushing Professional Learning Communities to evolve into the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative. They are Technology, Wisdom Stewardship, Cultural, Accountability, External Approach, and Continuous Change, Choice, and Disruption. These six “key drivers” are having a major impact on education and make the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative uniquely suited to handle the impact effectively.
1. Technological: convergence of video, voice and data over Internet Protocol (IP) and other collaborative technology platforms.
2. Wisdom Stewardship: exploiting the best expertise, talent, and knowledge regardless of geography.
3. Cultural: the increasing desire for real-time feedback, the expectation of immediacy and the compression of time and space.
4. Accountability: Increasing transparency in complying with expanding federal, state, and local laws in addition to categorical program monitoring requirements, and labor contracts.
5: External Approach: The need for organizations and teams to look outside themselves to expand their network with new members who are sources of learning, creativity, and innovation.
6. Continuous Change, Choice, and Disruption: Increasing rate of development in the number of choices, options, disruptive ideas & technologies, and new paradigms.
So today, and increasingly in the future, it is the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative that will allow schools to best handle these drivers of change. The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative embraces and seeks to leverage the technological changes because in so doing, they are better able to utilize the resources of time and talent because they have accepted the cultural shift toward immediacy of real-time interaction, and therefore is better able to handle the increasing compliance issues facing education. With both and internal focus and external approach members are better able to handle, and in fact embrace, the continuous change, new disruptions, and increases in choices and options.
The Technology Advantage
The advantage to the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative is the ability to leverage “Converged Networking”, the ability to carry data, voice, and video over a single network, which changes how, where, and with whom Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives can collaborate.
The convergence combined with broadband to school sites, district offices, and wireless devices will create an environment in which PNLCs communicate and collaborate regardless of geography.
Converged networking will allow Professional Networked Learning Collaborative 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 PNLCs to have greater access to a wider range expertise more frequently. Imagine PNLCs 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.
PNLCs will be able to leverage talent, expertise, and knowledge independent of geographic restrictions.
The Technologies
The tools of the trade for the PNLC are many. Evan Rosen has complied an excellent list of tools complete with descriptions in his book The Culture of Collaboration. Find the list here.
Tools of The Trade: Technologies of the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative
As communication and collaboration technologies become more pervasive, they will fade into the background and PNLCs will focus on the work. Just as we don’t “see” or think about the electricity that is powering the lights in our classrooms and offices, powering our copy machines, etc. the computers that we run our communication and collaboration platforms on will disappear into the background and we will be free to focus on “what” and not the “how” of these technologies.
The widespread availability and acceptance of those tools Professional Learning Communities will move from “community” to “network” and “collaborative”, creating the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative. Schools, teachers, and students will be the better for it.
So the question is, are you ready to lead it?
Creator and Developer of E.I--EducatationInnovation
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