Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

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Year 1--"Learning in the 21st Century: Networks and Communities"
Focus: Understanding the global changes created by online social technologies and the implications for teaching and learning; provoking deep thinking about professional and personal learning practice; understanding practical and pedagogical implications for classrooms; initiating district-wide conversations and planning around long-term change and the scaling of these ideas and technologies.

Year 2--"Teaching in the 21st Century: Project/Problem Based Learning"
Focus: Understanding the powers and potentials of project-based learning using social technologies; provoking conversations and collaborative solutions to assessment issues; re-envisioning classrooms and curriculum; developing cross-curricular projects embedded with 21st Century skills and literacies.

Year 3--"Change in the 21st Century: Expanding the Reach" (Coming for the 2010-11 school year)
Focus: Moving to a reculturation of schools, districts and communities; planning for systemic, ongoing change; creating learning leaders in schools; implementing social technologies for increased participation and communication.

For those looking for shorter or more economical options, we've added a few new delivery methods:

 - "Visioning Boot Camp for Leaders," scheduled for July 2009 in Philadelphia, is an intensive, small-group, three-day workshop for school leaders who want to understand how 21st Century technologies are challenging curriculum and pedagogy and providing economical new ways for learning.

 - "Virtual Institutes" is a customized, economical way to provide ongoing, virtual professional development district-wide. The institutes include "big picture" discussions as well as practical, make-and-take sessions and ongoing conversations in a virtual learning community. Up to 90 educators per session in your school or district can participate in two customized, hour-long, online learning sessions per month. Participants will also engage in an ongoing virtual learning community throughout the year and be granted access to "PLP Live" events, cross-cohort collaborations and regular consults with PLP Partners.

- "PLP Speakers Bureau" will be free and open to the public featuring regularly scheduled Webinars from the PLP team on the uses of social technologies in schools and classrooms. Check our PLP Sessions Calendar for more information.

PLP founders Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson will also offer PLP Consulting services around professional development, initiating change, long-range planning, assessment, budgeting, establishing your own customized learning communities, and more.

Planning for the 2009-2010 school year is underway. For more information, contact us visit our Web site.
 

Finding your footing

Clarence Fisher

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia cohort was supposed to be about finding your footing in times that require change in education. Many of the teachers in this cohort were very new to using technology in classrooms. But instead of slow movements, some classrooms have jumped in with both feet.

Take Jim Meredith and his class. Jim wondered about his comfort zone and how to use technology in his class:

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Sharing, risk taking, and creativity

Karl Fisch

One of the fascinating things about being a "Community Leader" in a PLP cohort is the opportunity to observe the great discussions going on and ideas being generated in schools around the world, and watch as learning communities develop both in individual schools and virtually in the cohort. Recently in the ADVIS PLP cohort, Dennis wrote in a post titled "Sharing, Risk Taking, and Creativity":

Read the full-length version of this article here.

Beyond boundaries

Lani Ritter Hall

As the rhythm of the Illinois/Ohio PLP community ebbs and flows, there is one constant - the shifting and blurring of boundaries once perceived as fixed and unchanging.

Immediately following the initial face-to-face meeting in Avoca, members discovered a shifting of the traditional boundaries of time and place as they tested the waters or immersed themselves in the virtual community.  Participation in a myriad of distributed conversations, second nature in the "lounge" or at a party, became a challenge to some who had not yet experienced asynchronous chats, unbounded by a meeting time or physical room to meet. As this community continues to grow and mature, a reluctance to embrace this shift occasionally resurfaces, at which time the growing numbers of those who have gone beyond step back to support their colleagues.

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Connecting globally

Mary Worrell

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Interview with Chad Evans

Bud Hunt

Chad Evans is an 8th grade social studies teacher in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. I recently had an opportunity to talk with him about his experiences in NJPLP as a team leader and as a participant in building a learning community. 

In our conversation, Chad spoke about the work of his PLP team and his role as a team leader, but what I kept hearing him coming back to in our talk was the experience of building and participating in an online learning community, a new experience for many.  I have felt much of what he described.  

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Sharing ideas, experiences

Karen Richardson

"The videos were a great project. My students were engaged and improved as they watched one another's work," wrote Lucinda, a member of the Independent Schools Consortium. This post, made just after the beginning of the new year, brought us to the end of the journey that we had been following since October thanks to Lucinda's blog posts.  She provided a glimpse into the planning and implementation process as well as into her own reflections on the that process.  It was like getting to hear a teacher think out loud about practice and how digital technologies and social networks are beginning to change her interactions with students.

It was her commtiment to the PLP community that prompted Lucinda to share her ideas and experiences.  

Read the full story here.