Education Innovation

What Is Your Collaboration ROII (Return on Investment for an Interaction)?

During times of collaboration, do people consider your ideas good enough to "subscribe" to or do they just scan, skip, or even worse, consider them "spam?"

One of my favorite blogs is Lateral Action. Contributing writer Rajesh Setty posted about whether bloggers, Twitters, etc., could know if their ideas were succeeding in influencing their audiences in a positive way. His idea is that the audience would “tell them” by the manner in which they responded to the online content. 

This got me thinking about how we know if the ideas we share in team meetings, staff meetings, etc., are influencing the "audience" of our co-workers or team members. Are they responding to what I am saying. Are they listening or ignoring me? Are they subscribing to my ideas and sharing them? Or do they simply see my ideas as "spam" in the conversation? 

In many ways...how we react to the ideas we hear during times of collaboration is similar to how we respond to the content we encounter daily on the web. 

Great ideas engage us. We hear great ideas and then want to leverage them. Some ideas transform the way we think about a topic or problem. And some ideas just waste our time. 

What I found interesting, is this closely mirrors how we tend to collaborate with each other. 

Rajesh suggests there is 9 ways people respond to content. Spam, Skip, Scan, Stop, Save, Shift, Send, Spread, and Subscribe. Remixing these, I found there are 9 ways we respond to ideas when we collaborate in our teams.

1. Spam: “If your content does not provide a reasonable ROII (return-on-investment for an interaction) for the reader or is self-serving or simply useless, the reader will mark it as spam. Posting something that may be assessed, as “spam” is the fastest way to losing credibility.”

If your ideas, thoughts and comments do not provide any benefit to your team, or worse, seem self-serving as opposed to meeting the needs of your team or organization, you are going to lose credibility as a member. Make a contribution through collaboration that benefits the team and the organization.

2. Skip: “The reader makes an assessment that he or she won’t lose much by reading it. In this case, the reader has not written you off yet but if you consistently create content that is worth “skipping,” the reader might write you off.”

The worst thing that can happen to you as team member is to have others stop listening and stop giving any consideration to your ideas, thoughts, and comments. If you consistently fail to add to the discussion in a positive way, or focus on yourself instead of the issue at hand, the organizational needs, etc., people are going to consider your ideas, thoughts and comments worth skipping.

“Skipping” is a failure in collaboration.

3. Scan: “The reader thinks there are only a few parts that are of relevance and wants to get right to the core of the content and skip the rest.”

Cut to the chase. The most valuable resource for your staff is their time. Don’t waste people’s time. Effectively collaborate by getting to the point, being succinct, staying on topic, driving to the core of the issue, and providing possible solutions or ideas to the issue at hand. If you want team members to stop, focus, consider your ideas, and collaborate on them--get to the core quickly.

4. Stop: “The reader is touched by the article and stops to think about the article, it’s relevance and what it means to him or her personally and professionally.”

During team meetings our sharing goal should be to get members to "hear" things that make them stop, take notice, and want to dig deeper. Great ideas, meaningful comments, powerful solutions make teams stop, think, and collaborate to create impact for the organization.

5. Save: “The content is so good that the reader might want to re-visit this multiple times.”

Smart teams will save great ideas and revisit them. Smart teams will save the best ideas and look for ways to use and apply them in new situations. Knowledge Management should focus on content that is so good your organization will want to revisit it. 

6. Shift: “The article is transformational. The reader is so deeply affected (in a positive way) by the article that it shifts some of their values and beliefs. In other words, this piece of writing will transform the reader and make him or her grow.”

An important aspect of any organization or team is the word “learning.” Learning teams and organizations are always learning from each other, from current research, from experience, etc. Learning teams and organization adjust or shift what they do, how they do it, or what they know when they apply what they have learned.

7. Send: “The content is not only useful to the reader but also to one or more people in the reader’s network. The reader simply emails the article or a link to it to people that he or she cares.”

When learning organizations or teams learn something of value, they share it with others to make a bigger impact for the organization. Sharing knowledge, ideas, and solutions by “sending” them on to others in their networks is what learning organizations or teams do. It is at the heart of collaboration.

8. Spread: “The reader finds the article fascinating enough to spread it to anyone and everyone via a blog, twitter or the social networks that he or she belongs.”

Spreading ideas through our networks is a characteristic of a learning organization. Technology should be viewed as a natural part of how it works. You should take the time to spread ideas through your organization and networks. Learning organizations and teams spread smart ideas.

9. Subscribe: “This is the ultimate expression of engagement and a vote of confidence that you will continue to provide great content. When the reader wants to continue listening to your thoughts, he or she will subscribe.”

Subscribing is the end result of trust and credibility. All teams are more effective when there is trust. When you prove you are trust worthy, that you have knowledge and ability, and collaborate with your team, you become credible. Team members “subscribe” to credible team members.

Rajesh Setty gives a few more things to consider that are equally valuable for team collaboration.

1. Understand Your Audience
“…your audience should be the center of the focus and not you. The more you know about your audience, the better you can connect with them.”

The better we can connect with each other in our teams, the better collaboration we will have, and the better results we will produce for students.

2. Check Your Objective

 What is the purpose or goal of your team meeting? If you don’t know what you are walking in the door to discuss then you probably aren’t prepared. If you are not prepared you are not going to be able to add your best during collaboration. Know your objective.

3. Unleash Your Creativity

“You know the audience and you know the purpose... Now the next step is to unleash your creativity and create something that will generate the kind of response that you are looking for.”

Unleash your team’s creativity through purposeful collaboration and intentional creativity.

4. Learn from Feedback

Pay attention to the response and feedback you are getting from other members. Notice if they are spamming you, skipping you, scanning you, stopping for you, saving you, being shifted by you, sending you, spreading you, or subscribing to you. Reflect and then adjust your collaboration style to get the results you want.

It really comes down to having a high ROII,"Return on Investment for an Interaction."

 

Why Networked? The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative

When I explain the concept behind the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative one of the biggest misconceptions I have to overcome is educators’ understanding of how a network is different than just searching the Internet. Some educators ask, “Isn’t this just a PLC using a search engine?” Or, “You mean using the Internet during a PLC meeting.”

So I thought I would try to explain why the Network is different than just using a search engine, and why, for those of us working in Professional Learning Communities, the network is so powerful.

Search Engine	The Network
The Lesson Plan	The Lesson Designer
Book	Author
Photo	Photographer
Data	Researcher
Idea	Innovator
Music	Musician
Invention	Inventor
Program	Programmer
Historical Event	Participant who experienced it
What to do	Voice of experience that tells you how to do it and why
Public information	Behind the scenes
We have to know what we are looking for	Anticipates what we need and directs or provides it for us
Created	Co-create new knowledge
Find it	Attract it
Algorithm	Thinking
Static information that is locked on-line	Dynamic knowledge that can cross over into touch space (face-to-face)
Explicit Knowledge and Information	Tacit Knowledge and Know-how

It is the Network and the power of learning, sharing tacit knowledge, and co-creating new knowledge, the “network effect”, that makes a difference for the educators and the students they serve. It is the network that transforms a PLC into a PNLC.

Overcoming “The Search Barrier” in Professional Learning Communities

This is the third in a series of four posts about barriers to collaboration in Professional Leaning Communities.

According to Berkley and INSEAD professor Morten T. Hansen, author of Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid The Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results, “The Search Barrier” concerns people who are looking for information and people, and but are not able to find them easily.

“Many companies are familiar with the adage, ‘If only we knew what we know.’ By that they mean that somewhere in the company, someone knows the answer to a problem, but the rub is that one who has the problem cannot locate the one who has the answer. That’s the search barrier…. the search barrier concerns the inability to find information and people in the company.”

Schools are becoming no different. As the increasing need for meeting state and federal accountability standards combines with increasing shifts toward more technology, transparency, and complexity, members of Professional Learning Communities are being asked to solve problems of student learning, manage data information systems, and leverage the knowledge and expertise of many who are outside of the team. As these trends continue, the search barrier is going to become more of a problem that teams will need to confront.

According to Hansen, the search barrier manifests itself in four typical ways.

1. Company Size
“The bigger the company, the greater the search problem.”

Obviously, not every school or district is going to face this issue. But, many schools and districts are so large that one hardly knows all the staff and finding who has the information, knowledge, expertise, or data to help Professional Learning Communities solve problems is a challenge.

2. Physical Distance
“Companies that are spread across cities, regions, countries, and continents have bigger search problems than those that reside in one place. People prefer to interact with others who are close by.”

Many school districts cover many cities and regions. Making a trip to the district office for some is often quite a trek. Some school campuses are immense is size. We naturally like to interact and work with people who are near us. If it takes a great deal of time and effort to go to the district office to find support, or we would rather not walk all the way across campus, we will limit those whom we can collaborate with and the expertise from which we can draw from.

3. Information Overload
The trend of data-driven instruction has resulted in students taking a multitude of grade level, district, and state assessment. This data is aggregated into data management systems such as Data Director or Edusoft. Combine this with other student data such as attendance, demographic info, etc and the result is a massive amount of available data on students. Teachers are awash in data and struggling to cope with it all.

All this data creates a paradox. “In a rush to help people get the information they need, companies have put in place databases, intranets, and knowledge-management systems, but these have created their own problem: too much information.”

Professional Learning Communities must struggle with the “Total vs. Useful Ratio” of data.

“Information overload makes search harder because of information noise—the ratio of the total amount of information available to the amount of useful information. Information systems, including knowledge-management systems, increase the noise ratio by making too much information available, and that complicates the search for the right type of knowledge or person.”

Professional Learning Communities have enough to accomplish without having to swim
through a mountain of data. What is needed is not all the data or information available, but the right data or information. That is why common formative assessments in the classroom are so useful. It is real time and focused on the current needs of the current students.

4. Poverty of Networks
How many steps does the average teacher have to go through to find someone who has the expertise or knowledge they require? For some very well connected teachers, those types who seem to know everybody, it might not be more than one or two. But teachers who are new to the district, new to a school, or new to a department, it might require that they go through three or four people before they find the person with the expertise of knowledge that they require.

“It may be a small world for a few well-connected people, but it’s a big world for many others, and that’s a formidable barrier to search.”

Professional Learning Communities offer a bit of a remedy in that members can begin tapping into each other’s connections when searching for expertise, information, and data. With the advent of social media and the resulting ability to create Personal Learning Networks, searching can become easier and wider as PLC members share and tap into their Personal Learning Networks. This shift toward a technological element that creates “virtual members” or “useful outsiders” is at the heart of the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative model. It is a model designed to overcome the barriers of size, distance, and poverty of networks.


K.W.O.K. Knowing what others know is a term that I use when talking about the power of the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative to harness networks and groups through technology to bring a greater amount of knowledge and expertise to the team. Be it a PNLC or a PLC, overcoming the search barrier is going to become an increasingly larger issue as the educational landscape becomes more diverse, more transparent, more accountable, the need to being able to find the right information or the right expert to help PLC or PNLCs meet the needs of their students is going to increase.

Professional Learning Communities and the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative are going to have to adopt networking and data analysis into their core competencies to be able to overcome the search barrier to collaboration.

Part 1: Overcoming the "Not-Invented-Here" Barrier in Professional Learning Communities

Part 2: Overcoming the “Hoarding” Barrier in Professional Learning Communities.

Overcoming the "Not-Invented-Here" Barrier in Professional Learning Communities

This is the first in a series of four posts about barriers to collaboration in Professional Leaning Communities.

Professional Learning Communities and Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives must confront and overcome for typical barriers to collaboration. According to Berkley and INSEAD professor Morten T. Hansen, author of Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid The Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results, these four barriers to collaboration are common in most organizations. Schools then, would be no different.

The Not-Invented-Here Barrier

“…the not-invented-here barrier, which arises when people are not willing to reach beyond their own units to input and collaborate.”

PLCs and PNLCs need to develop a collaborative culture that is open to ideas from outside of their teams, schools, districts, etc. Typically, the not-invented-here barrier will manifest itself in 4 typical ways.

1. Insular Culture
“People who work together can develop an insular culture. As they spend time with each other to the exclusion of outsiders, they restrict the influx of new viewpoints and reinforce their own beliefs.”

Schools are especially susceptible to this problem. Typically grade level members or subject level members spend a great deal of time together in PLCs. But they also eat lunch together, talk to each other before and after school. There is not the same level of interaction with the rest of the staff and almost zero interaction with teachers from other schools in the district, and near non-existent interaction with teachers from other districts. This creates a very insular culture. Professional Learning Communities should understand this problem and seek proactive ways to break out of these “silos.”

The reason I strongly advocate the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative is because it is built on the premises that information, expertise, knowledge, data, research, superior methods and practices, can be found outside of the typical PLC. The PNLC is designed to network and reach out of the typical PLC “silo” and connect with “useful outsiders” all around the school, district, state, or globe.

It is human nature that the, “…more close-knit a group becomes, the more the members turn inward and close themselves off from the world.”

An insular culture is lacking in cognitive diversity and perspective. PLCs must look for ways such as the PNLC or others, to free themselves from the problem of an insular culture to view ideas from out as a resource to be leveraged. “Not-invented-here” could actually become a reason to embrace a new idea, instead of a reason to ignore a new idea.

2. Status Gap
“If individuals think that they might have higher status than others, they will not reach out to collaborate with those ‘less worthy’ human beings.”

Fortunately, most educators at a school enjoy equal status, with the exception of those that are viewed as unprofessional, lazy, or inept by their peers, and those whom administrators tend to favor.

Occasionally I have discovered that within Professional Learning Communities members begin to feel like their ideas do not have merit. These people tend to feel like they are a lower status than the rest of the group. Consequently, the problem of “Information Cascades” can develop. These members do not feel comfortable to share with the group because of their perceived “lower status.”

Professional Learning Communities must ensure that all members enjoy equal status in the team.

3. Self-Reliance
“When a norm takes hold that says, ‘You should fix your own problem,’ people tend to resist reaching out for input.”

This is absolutely contrary to the purpose of the PLC and the PNLC. The purpose is to help each other solve problems and work together to better student learning. If the students belong to everybody, then so do the problems.

Professional Learning Communities must recognize that many have a deep-seated belief that they need to stay quiet about their problems and struggles so as not to burden others. These beliefs must be rooted out, exposed, and dealt with. No team member can be allowed to believe they must go it own their own because they would be a burden.

Further, the belief that “I know it all and don’t need others help,” is equally damaging. This belief must be confronted and dealt with if the PLC or PNLC is to have a truly collaborative culture.

4. Fear of Revealing Shortcomings
“Reaching out to someone and saying, ‘We’re not doing well in this area and need help,’ can be interpreted by others as failure: ‘These guys are not very good.’ People sometimes fear exposing their weaknesses to others, especially to experts. By asking for input, people expose their vulnerability, allowing others to stand in judgment.”

Judgment, failure, and weakness are very emotional terms. Most educators I know are very capable and very committed, but never the less, at some point, we all need help and we all have something to learn. A strong culture of collaboration does not judge, does not interpret calls for help as signs of failure. To the contrary, strong PLCs and PNLCs need members who are willing to ask for help and feel comfortable doing so because a safe emotional environment has been created in the team.

No one wants to reveal shortcomings, but that is small price to pay if students will benefit in the long run. All educators need to realize that by opening up and confronting their shortcoming, they can strengthen themselves as professionals by learning from our peers and in the case of PNLCs, those in our extended Personal Learning Networks.

While we give many assessments through the year to become very familiar with the shortcomings and needs of our students and make efforts to help them overcome them, we as educators are judged on the results of but a few high stakes tests. Can we afford to wait to overcome our shortcoming until after the fact?


Professional Learning Communities must develop a collaborative culture that overcomes insular cultures and silos, is status neutral, overcomes the tendencies of self-reliance, and eliminates fear and judgment. PLC and PNLC that have done that will be able to overcome the not-invented-here barrier to collaboration.

Practicing Wisdom Stewardship in Professional Learning Communities

Professional Learning Communities need to demonstrate A.W.A.R.E.N.E.S.S, an acronym for focusing on A specific task/goal, Wisdom, Abilities, Response-ability, Education, Network, Experiences, Skills, and Scalable.

The “W” in AWARENESS is Wisdom. By Wisdom I am referring to Wisdom Stewardship. Wisdom Stewardship is the term I call for the surrounding, broadening, learning, capturing, and sharing of the best ideas and solutions within a Professional Learning Community.

Surrounding
Professional Learning Communities that practice the Wisdom Stewardship associated with AWARENESS surround themselves with the best knowledge and the best talent.

The “best knowledge” simply means that the Professional Learning Community seeks the best information, data, ideas, practices, methods, strategies, research, etc., from the best sources. PLC practicing Wisdom Stewardship have a drive for the “best knowledge” they can get their hands on, from the best sources, and use it to increase student achievement.

The “best talent” means that Professional Learning Communities are constantly using their individual and overlapping Personal Learning Networks to network and connect with the very best sources of “best knowledge.” It is important to note, that the “best talent” may be sitting at the table or maybe across the country depending on what is needed. Professional Learning Communities that practice Wisdom Stewardship must always view each other as starting point for “best knowledge” and “best talent”, but be humble enough to extend into their networks and scale up their membership as needed.

In other words, Professional Learning Communities that have AWARENESS combine the “best knowledge” and the “best talent” to create wisdom which they become stewards of. 

Broadening:
While the primary starting point for pursuing “best knowledge” and “best talent” will always be the members of the Professional Learning Community sitting together, having AWARENESS requires the PLC to use their Personal Learning Networks to broaden their scope and their reach to obtain “best knowledge” and “best talent.”

Technology based collaborative networks (Twitter, Facebook, Ning, etc.) allows PLC to increase their “surface area” of reach and access to knowledge and talent. Using technology to increase “surface area”, PLCs are demonstrating good stewardship of wisdom, regardless of geographic location or formal connection to the school or district.

Broadening insists that teams use their technology based Personal Learning Networks to seek out diversity of perspective. Teams should have multi-disciplined networks filled with people from a many disciplines in, and I would suggest, even out of education. Teams should seek the greatest cognitive diversity (to a point) that is possible. Broadening from themselves to a diverse team of “useful outsiders” whose wisdom can be called upon and leveraged by the team.

Learning:
As Michael Fullan would say, “Learning is the work.” Professional Learning Communities demonstrate Wisdom Stewardship when they learn together, especially when they learn in context together. PLCs that practice AWARENESS should make every attempt to learn with each other and in context. PLCs that use Wisdom Stewardship develop capacity as individuals as well as a team. Growing in skills, in knowledge, in methodology, experience, and ability, together, is being a good steward of team wisdom.

Capturing:
Wisdom Stewardship also requires that wisdom, those best ideas, best practices, innovations, etc., be captured. There are numerous technology platforms that can be used to capture the wisdom of the team and teams can follow their own preferences, but whichever technologies teams choose to use to capture their wisdom, the best choices will be those that are easy to use, easy to access, and easy to share. Being a good steward of wisdom means that there must be a way to go back, to remember what has been learned or what has been done. Wisdom Stewardship asks the team to gather, collect, save, archive, and memorialize their wisdom for future use.

Sharing:
The final key to Wisdom Stewardship is sharing out the wisdom with others. Professional Learning Communities who practice Wisdom Stewardship are very concerned with K.W.O.K, or Knowing What Others Know. This is the Japanese concept of “Yokoten.” An idea, or wisdom, must be shared. PLC must overcome the hoarding culture and develop a culture of yokoten, which insists that for the good of the school, the students, the district, and education in general, great idea, solutions, and wisdom is shared with others. The technology choice in which the team captured their wisdom should make it easy to share with others.

Wisdom Stewardship surrounds, broadens, learns, captures, and shares the developed wisdom of the team to benefit students and their peers. It is a key part to having a Professional Learning Community that has AWARENESS.

Note: It is for all of the above that I believe the Professional Learning Community will need to evolve into the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative.

Journey to the 4th Dimension of Education: Teaching, Learning, and Collaboration in the Palm of Your Hand

Imagine, education (teaching, learning, and collaboration) in the palm of your hand. That is education in the 4th dimension. 

If you haven’t seen the Nokia video (Go Play- 4th Screen) on YouTube, you really should take a look. In the video Nokia shares the idea they call the “Fourth Screen.”

The First Screen was the movie screen. People gathered in the public space of the movie theater to see the world presented to them through the lens of the movie camera. History and entertainment were all brought to the big screen. People, together in public, were able to laugh, cry, cringe, cheer, and share emotions together.

Just as moviegoers watch together, so too, do students learn together in the classroom. But the First Screen and the classroom share some flaws. Both require the people it serves to come to it. Both function off a set schedule. A both limit their offerings. Choice, time, and location are the limitations of the First Screen and the classroom.

The Professional Learning Community model operates according to the principles of the First Screen. Members must be present together and obeys a set schedule. Professional Learning Communities are limited by time, location, and physical presence just as the movie screen (First Screen). 

The Second Screen was the television screen. People were connected to the outside world through a menu of television programs. People could learn about the world around them and talk about what they were watching. Television was able to reach more people. Those people required a greater variety of programming. But, instead of sharing the screen with the public, the Second Screen was shared in privacy of the home alone or with family and friends. Strangers were not part of the Second Screen experience like it was in the First Screen experience.

The Second Screen and the classroom still shared some limitations. The participant was required to be in front of the television in a fixed location, just as the student is required to be in fixed classroom. While television increased the choice and variety of its offerings compared to the movie screen, the content was still decided upon by others. Just as the variety of subjects and standards students are required to learn has increased, those subjects and standards are still decided upon by someone other than the student. So called experts controlled programming just as so-called experts control curriculum.

The Professional Learning Community shares some of the limitations of the Second Screen as well. Participants are required to be in fixed geographic locations and the meetings remain a largely private affair, limited to just the few team members. Fixed locations and small private membership are traits of the PLC and the Second Screen as well.

The Third Screen was the computer screen. The computer screen changed the way we work and play. The Internet allowed people from all over the world to pursue their particular interests and to form virtual communities on-line. The Third Screen allowed people access to more information than they could have imagined. It opened up access to new types of media and allowed people to participate in creating, sharing, and talking about all types of media. But, though they belonged to “communities” they were still virtual communities. Choice had never been greater and the ability to participate in the creation, consumption, commenting on, or collection of information and media was available to many.

The Third Screen seemed to be the penultimate in screen evolution. However, the Third Screen and the current model of 21st Century Education still share some limitations and flaws. Participants of on-line communities and students are still limited to access to the Internet access, either hard-wired or wireless. The Third Screen is limiting in that much of the community is virtual. No true person-to-person interaction. Virtual space will never match touch space in the most powerful aspect of human interaction. In education, the technology that exists for students is still limited by access for all, the need for the majority of students to be present in the classroom to use the technology, and for education to focus the technology on the individual instead of creating communities.

The Professional Learning Community lacks much of what the Third Screen provides. The Professional Learning Community model is not equipped, for good and for bad, for leveraging the virtual community as part of its work. While the PLC still maintains important touch space interaction, it does not benefit from what the “virtual” can bring to the work of the team. The virtual allows for expanding membership, for access to knowledge, data, expertise, and information from virtual members unbound by geographic limitations.

The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative is built around the idea that teams need to Know What Other Know (K.W.O.K.) and Wisdom Stewardship. Through the virtual connections of team members’ Personal Learning Networks the best knowledge can be shared (K.W.O.K.) and the best expertise can be accessed (Wisdom Stewardship) The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative makes use of what the Third Screen has brought to education.

The Fourth Screen, according to Nokia, is the screen that you take with you. The Fourth Screen allows the user to leave the virtual community behind and take the technology out into their actual community. The Fourth Screen allows the user to take advantage of the ability to create, share, collect, and comment, with their virtual or real community. It takes the user back in the realm of the First Screen, back out into the public.

The Fourth Screen is the Open Model of Education. Users and students can be in public, interacting with the world or their communities. They can exist in both virtual space and touch space. They can introduce their virtual community to their touch space community. And it can happen anywhere, at anytime. Choice, unbound by time and geography, accomplished with portable technology. Information and knowledge unfiltered by experts and content created, consumed, collected, and discussed without limitations. This is the Fourth Screen and this is the Open Model of Education. Learning at anytime, from anyone, in anyplace, and is meaningful to the student. It’s the fusion of the in person and in public First Screen, with the at home in private Second Screen, and the virtual space of the Third Screen. The Open Model of Education and the Fourth Screen are the future and it’s going to change everything.

The Fourth Screen is the future of what Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives can be as well. As video becomes a more pervasive and accepted part of our lives and the technology of video instant messaging and live streaming video continues to grow more powerful and more portable, the future is using cell phones to conduct Professional Networked Learning Collaborative meeting while simultaneously networking in useful outsiders via cell phone video. Most importantly the PNLC allows collaboration with members and virtual useful outsiders, thus expanding the membership and making the team less privatized. The ability to connect via portable technology allows the collaboration to take place anywhere that is meaningful and convenient for team members. Further, that virtual members connected via video can be literally carried into meetings, carried back into the actual community.

Education is changing, the evolution of education from the First Screen to the Fourth Screen and the Open Model of Education and the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative. Coming is the fusion of all 3 previous screens into the coming Fourth Screen model of teaching, learning, and collaboration…the 4th dimension.

The 4th way, that is most definitely 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.

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?