That’s one of the things I love about bookstores and libraries as well–wandering to a shelf that seems pertinent and finding all sorts of connections there.

This morning my serendipitous find was this incredible post by Jan Smith, about the interconnectedness of our organizations, and the work of Margaret Wheatley on how change happens through an interconnected network, and not so much through hierarchical organizations.

Wheatley’s book has been sitting on my bookshelf for several years, unread, coincidentally, so now I will add it to my “real” reading list.

Smith quotes Elizabeth Donohoe Steinberger, writing in School Administrator, ironically from an article that is 13 years old!

“…I see the need to create organizations where people can bring their whole selves. Unless we create organizations where all of us feel we can contribute in multiple and unexpected ways, the organization cannot survive into the future. There is no way to be adaptive and resilient without having everyone engaged in the work.”

In this even faster-paced, web 2.0 environment, the idea that we all need to feel free to contribute, organize and create in order to be resilient and move the organization forward is important.  What role does leadership play in this?

Wheatley, it appears, would suggest that the leadership of all of us is important, something I alluded to in a recent post.

So rather than think of this theoretically, how can we take steps to be leaders on our own campuses, whether we are individual classroom teachers, librarians, tech coordinators?  What can we do to invite others in?

What obstacles prevent that from happening?  And how can we make this more concrete?

Even if conditions are not ideal where any of us are, how can we step forward and connect in serendipitous ways with others?

“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. But I knew the woman I wanted to become.” Diane von Furstenberg

Her career was an accident in her life, but as a result of it, she became more confident. “To be confident makes you beautiful, makes you happy, makes you fulfilled.”

When I heard Diane von Furstenberg’s words in this commercial last night, it struck me that this is what we want for our students.

In his keynote this morning at BLC08, John Davitt touched on similar themes.

‘Students get assessed but don’t get noticed.’ Unleash the wonder. ‘Open the bandwidths of talent.’ Can you find three people who seek information in the same way? . . . There are many paths to the same destination.’ — John Davitt (from Liveblog of notes) (Ustream of the presentation)

It isn’t about the tools, but it is about what stories inside of our students that the tools can unleash (just as the film of the commercial unleashes for us a better understanding of von Furstenberg.)

It’s about the happy accidents along the way, about the way that creating a more interactive atmosphere in our schools allows our students to create, explore, and share themselves in a more engaged way. It’s about the way we bring the passion of each person involved into play so that learning becomes a more enriching experience for all of us.

And helping our students explore their vision is a way of giving them an anchor–a thing to tie back to–as their own unexpected pathways unfold. Because ultimately, we want our students to be confident, happy and fulfilled.

It’s not that the tools “magically” do this. But when we bring in any methodology into our practice that makes our classrooms more interactive, more dynamic, more active, less passive–it shakes up the paradigm and does lead us to a place of more student engagement.

And as people, not just educators, isn’t that the place we want to be?

At NECC, I was fortunate enough to meet David Loertscher(guru in library field!), who shared with me his new book, The New Learning Commons:  Where Learners Win, cowritten with Carol Koechlin and Sandi Zwaan, which provides an innovative vision of how to transform a library into a “learning commons.”

The authors suggest a more client-centered space, more “Google” than “Microsoft,” and envision a team of school leaders(librarian, tech coordinator, literacy specialists) working together with students in an ever-changing configuration of services and support.

They describe an “open commons”-a friendly open learning space, where “everyone owns, works, and collaborates in a collegial social environment.”

Another space in the commons is an “experimental learning center” which hosts training and display of exemplary work in the school, supports professional development, and is a “learning lab” for the school.

The website for the Learning Commons is similarly collaborative–supported by the librarian and tech coordinator jointly, but built collaboratively also with the help of students, teachers, etc.

Rather than being supported by one librarian, the center is supported by various staff who make up a leadership team, scaffolding the curriculum.

It reminds me somewhat of the model Kim Cofino has worked on at ISB.

It’s a fascinating model–and in a great web 2.0 model, the authors have established  a wiki for readers to contribute comments or discussion points.

How that trickles down to school libraries is the question? And how do we advocate for the “21st century” library?

Julia Keller had an interesting column in the May issue of American Libraries, “Killed By Kindness,” pointing out that we can’t simply advocate for libraries because of the warm fuzzy memories of the libraries of our past. (Since I misplaced my copy of the magazine at the pool, I’m working from memory, so I hope that attribution is correct!) We need to advocate for the libraries of today–an information commons for students filled with activities, technology use, reading, and connecting with people–a social information network area of sorts.

Fran has shared a great list of resources for library advocacy. But one of the most important things I’ve read regarding advocating for school libraries this year was Debra Kay Logan’s article in American Libraries’ January issue, “Putting Students First.”

Logan points out,

“To become effective advocates, our profession must shift the focus of our messages from speaking out about school libraries to promoting and supporting student learning and achievement. Student success is the business of school. Student learning is at the core of meaningful advocacy messages. To be effective school library advocates, we must advocate for students.”

She points out the importance of our stakeholders understanding the reasons to advocate for our programs–our customers need to see the value that is added.

One strategy she suggests is not just reporting data of achievements, but sharing student feedback and comments in their own words, frequently. When students and teachers know that you are not only interested in what they have to say about learning in the library, but that you are sharing it and honoring their statements, then it can be very powerful.

As Logan points out the benefit is also that: “When students are asked about what they learn and how they are going to use it after instruction, metacognition about learning takes place: students reflect on learning and its importance.”

Students are the point, after all. So, how can we make our library services more 2.0, and then how can we tell that story better?

But something that both Ken Pruitt and Michael Curtin said at NECC Unplugged has stuck with me all week. They spoke about different topics, but both of them talked about the importance of building a sense of community for teachers.

And although I believe that a community is something that grows “naturally” so to speak, I think one of the most important things a leader can do is to put teachers into community with one another.  And students feel it if a building is just a building or if it is a real community that envelops them with care and nurturing.

One sense I picked up on at NECC was this sense of isolation that many of my colleagues, flung across the globe, sometimes feel. I heard a few people comment (and I’ve said myself in the past)–  that people via my learning network often know what I’m doing and what I’m passionate about and value it more than my own community that I work with daily. I think all of us have felt that way at some point in our careers.

Yet we can each be leaders in terms of bringing other teachers into community. Don’t we learn so much by talking to one another? Even if we are just one voice in a building, don’t we have a leadership role in opening a community door to others and inviting them in, and just listening and talking about our passions? Maybe we are good at technology and our neighbor isn’t all that interested–but don’t they have a passion for their subject or for teaching or for some aspect of what they do that we can learn from?

Michael Curtin talked about providing trainings that don’t just rely on one “trainer” but that put the teachers into conversation with one another–so that they learn from one another and help one another along, creating an ensemble of teachers, as I wrote about doing in our classrooms a few weeks ago.

Ken Pruitt spoke about creating a wiki space that was also a community–with roles for students or teachers, like “greeters” and “social committees” and “star of the week” committees, etc., so that not only was the site informational, but that it felt like a social space that people would want to visit.

Individual teachers can create a sense of community and leadership just by their own efforts as in these examples.

I also think school leadership has a tremendous role in building this sense of community. And it isn’t necessarily built by activities or organized events, but by providing time for teachers to work together on common goals, to sit side by side and build things together, and time to talk, read, and share. In our haste to meet AYP or test scores, or get grades done or whatever needs to happen–teachers need that time built in to build a learning community, whether formal or informal, whether departmental or across the school. In fact, I think it’s important that it happen across the school and not just across a grade level team or department, because it’s easy for us to get divided into our own little “fiefdoms” so to speak.

When I was sitting in a session by Chris Lehmann at NECC, his vision for his campus at SLA was clear and it was also very clear that it involved lots of talking and hashing things out as a faculty. Barbara Barreda, another principal who was sitting next to me turned to me and said, ‘Leadership is so important in making this happen.’

She’s so right. My challenge to you today is to recognize the way you are each leaders and bring that to your own campus. Reach out to the person next door. Find a common ground. Open your doors and find a connection and way to bring others in.

And my challenge to leaders is to bring your teachers into a community–a community filled with talk and learning. Provide teachers with the atmosphere, the space, and the time to make that happen. Put them side by side in situations where they can learn from each other, and then stand back a little bit and let that grow.  Bring teachers together into democratic communities and set them free. See what happens.

Even though I was part of the panel, I got to experience the excitement of listening to so many other great professionals share their passion for what they do, and it was a great learning experience just listening to Diane Cordell, Cathy Nelson, Joyce Valenza, Judy O’Connell and Anita Beaman and seeing Kim Cofino’s presentation as well.

You come away from conferences both invigorated and humbled, because no matter what you know, you have so much to learn and from so many unexpected places, too.

Joyce as always challenged us to communicate with vendors what we need–she worries that databases are still too difficult to access, and wants vendors to create web 2.0 types of widgets that we can embed on our library websites or that students can embed on their own iGoogle pages, so that databases are at their fingertips–great point!

Diane’s slides were so beautifully done and she shared much wisdom about seeking through reference interviews to understand your customers/teachers/students and provide gentle scaffolding to support them. Cathy shared her insights about speaking to others outside the echo chamber and the importance of attending/presenting at conferences outside of the library field, like grade specific conferences and subject area conferences and administrative conferences, where we need to partner with the other professionals we work with in our buildings.

My area was how we can better partner with our administrators by seeking out their mission and vision and trying to support that, always keeping in mind that our role is keeping students first, not just the library program itself.

Anita shared some really creative ways that you can use web 2.0 tools to embed the “love of reading” onto your library website, and how to better connect print and the web. And Judy shared the global nature of our work and reminded us that students aren’t even digital natives anymore, they are just digital.

I’m featuring Kim’s video here since we ran out of time in the presentation and I’d like it to be shared. I regret that we didn’t show it first so that we could honor her incredible work and leadership in combining information literacy and library services to form a 21st century team at her school.

Kim Cofino presentation

If you weren’t able to watch the whole presentation live via Ustream but would like to know more about it, you can find the video and the links to all of our slides and resources on our wiki site. (The sound of the Ustream is missing in a little part of it, but comes back, by the way.)

After the session, Susanna Garza of Region 20 in San Antonio remarked to me that she also wished we’d been able to spend time talking about how to build better bridges between the tech departments and libraries. Kim’s presentation speaks to how their school has rethought that. I think that Susanna’s comment is an excellent suggestion, and am thinking it would actually be really exciting to hold some sort of online “discussion” with a panel of librarians and IT/tech staff to talk about how they can understand one another better. Anyone game for that?

Thanks also to Jenny Luca for encouraging us to share our presentation globally, and to Derrall Garrison for ustreaming it. Your help is much appreciated!

April (didn’t get the last name) shared how her school used it to provide a day of staff development for their teachers. They set up 15 sessions for teachers to choose from during an all day workshop. When teachers went to the session, they had a moderator who talked about the video. Then they watched together and then debriefed and discussed the session. They started with a Skype session with all the teachers with Sheryl and Jeff Utecht to show the global nature of it, and this was the first time many teachers had experienced Skype. This way they used the international videos as trainers for their teachers and discussion launchers.

Jeff Utecht shared his Lan Network party. For each week of the conference, he invited teachers to his house for a potluck. He had downloaded all the videos for the week and put them on a flash drive, so when people arrived, they could get all the videos for the week easily. They watched the keynotes together and also did their own podcasts, and he was able to get a local university to give graduate credit to the teachers for participating. I love how both of these ideas make it easy for teachers to access the presentations, model a different way of learning for the teachers, and get them involved with the conference.

Brian Grenier shared that they had teachers add a reflective piece and incorporated into their regular staff development, and then they drew for a prize for people who participated, and paid for their NECC attendance. Great idea!

We did something slightly similar at my campus. We were having weekly workshops with a theme of global connections. The model was already that teachers would come in and work their way through a wiki of self-paced links and use headphones, watching video content or exploring links. So that week I introduced the k12online videos and put links to them on our servers so that teachers could explore ones they were interested in. We also held a keynote viewing party in the library. We had about ten teachers come and watch it together while eating lunch. I think adding the social element just makes it more accessible at the campus level.

How do you create events to promote international learning that are transformative, that invite teachers in, and that change teacher’s perspectives?

Update: (thanks to Doug!) All the links to our slides and resources from our NECC presentation can be found at http://necclibrarians08.wikispaces.com/ including Kim Cofino’s video presentation!

Chris’s slides are excellently designed–appealing visually, clear and crisp, to the point–great example for good presentations.

Chris–(directly quoting here!)

• We work best and learn best when it matters to us. Some kids don’t know what matters to them though, yet.

• We always need to remember we teach kids first and our subjects second.

• Student Centered. It’s not about us. It’s about the kids. “It’s about the work they do. Not the work we do.”

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance–story about mechanic who honks the horn to test it has done a more authentic science experiment versus teacher doing an experiment in science that already knows the end result. Authentic learning is important.

• It has to be passionate and it has to matter. (He is sharing story of a group of his students who worked with their teacher and found a brand new way to process biodiesel. The students have filed two patents on it this year. Two communities overseas are going to build it. ) He asks do you think these students get to class on time everyday?

• It should be metacognitive. We need to think about thinking.

• It should be technology infused. The technology should be “ubiquitous, necessary and invisible.”

• Understanding driven and project based.

• Purpose of projects is not the project, it is deep understanding.

We now have the tools to bring Dewey’s dream into existence. But how do we prevent technology overload?

“What’s good is a better question than what is new.”

Best collaborative technology tool is the one we all agree to use together. It doesn’t matter which one it is.

His fear is segmentation.

He thinks tech should do five things in classroom:

research, collaborate, create, present, network

Tools don’t teach but they can change how we teach. Need a good pedagogical framework to harness the tools.

So you ask teachers: “What are your goals and what tools get you there?” not, I want to do a wiki project.

Their school is centered around their campus goals and core values. So lessons are planned around that(Understanding by Design method). All teacher professional development rotates around that method as well.

Projects are used as the ultimate assessment, and they use the same assessment terms for all projects. They haggled out as a faculty what their five evaluation categories would be.

So they have common core values, common evaluation rubric–so instead of students spending 20-30% of time trying to figure out the adults and how they are being assessed, they can use that time more productively.

Their UBD process

Link to his “understanding by design” templates and tools for designing lessons that ask the big questions.

Example–Hamlet

Step One: What are the big ideas–

identity matters–finding what makes us human is important. How do I find out who I am separate from my family.

Then think of the skills and content needed to digest that–need to analyze metaphorical language, Danish family structure, etc. etc. skills are put in context.

Step Two:

How do we authentically assess? the authentic assessment isn’t a test–it’s something kids put their hands and hearts into, if you are doing project based learning.

Chris turns the pyramid of assessment with tests on top and projects counting less upside down. The test is at the basic level of understanding– is a dipstick that you use to see where they are–but the project is the ultimate test of understanding.

Authentic assessment isn’t just the “end game” but an ongoing process.

Sample projects and units from SLA and specific unit plan examples here. They do an end of year reflection as a faculty and it is summarized and shared. Example of students creating a public service announcement on some chemicals identified as dangerous by the CDC. great example making chemistry real.

Sharing project called “9 weeks to change the world” that their English teacher did. Kids had to gather info online, use RSS feeds, had to find a change agent, and develop their own elevator pitch on that issue and then actually make the elevator pitch to the person. Or if the person was remote, they made podcasts, used email or Skype to communicate. Used the tools they needed, not certain tools.

The clarity of this approach for their school is clear. Teachers have a pedogically sound way to approach their curriculum design, students know what’s expected, and everyone is focused on the larger meanings, not the “facts” but on what’s important behind these facts. And when we visited SLA for edublogger, it was clear that this gave students a real investment in their school and their learning. The teachers asked critical questions–students felt free to debate and discuss things with their teachers–because they were all focused on the deeper understanding. Chris talks about how important our role as providing scaffolding is. And we guide students as they come up with their own ideas.

I think this is why it’s hard to replicate what is going on at SLA. It is a new school and everyone began with this foundation and buy in to it. When you have an existing school climate, there’s a training/learning curve and also a resistance level to looking at ways of designing curriculum or lessons, even if it makes great sense.

I’m wondering about stories of existing schools that have adopted UBD and how that has worked and what were the obstacles? How was it brought into the school? How did leadership help?

Barbara Barreda (a principal) is sitting next to me and is talking to me about the importance of leadership in bringing this to teachers. She suggests starting small with one unit. Then adding expectations over time.

Does anyone have examples to share from their own districts of how bringing UBD into the school has played out?

I’m listening to Trudy Sweeney talking about emerging technologies and how they are being used in global learning. She points out how important it is for teachers to be able to understand what is possible.

Middle years blog:

Pam Thompson –year 6/7 class in Australia working with school in Scotland–using voicethread embedded in blog to share photos, built a “wee wiki”.

Podcasts–Andrew Douch Biology Podcast at Wanganui Park Secondary College

Moodle — online eTeach project–23 innovative educators building learning experiences –open to all students across South Australia

33 educators from Australia here–on a study tour and using a Ning to document their tour and reflections.

Recommend collaboration site on Takingitglobal.org where you can find collaboration partners for global projects–that’s how some of theirs got started, by posting a request there.

As projects become more successful, then it’s easier to have things unfiltered because the projects are so visible worldwide, and it has a positive impact on the school. Getting the foot in the door allows other teachers to see projects and want to become part of them.

“Start small–dream big.” Advise people to start small on global projects and then dream big as they grow.