I am one of three conveners for this now annual even. K12 Online is a global professional development opportunity for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools for instruction and professional practice! This yearís conference 2006 was held over two weeks, Oct. 23-27 and Oct. 30- Nov. 3 and included a preconference keynote. The conference theme was "Unleashing the Potential." If you would like to know more check out the press release.
I collaborated with another educational consultant, John Norton, and Cathy Gassenheimer of the Alabama Best Practices Center to designed a two-year professional development program that engages educators from participating schools in powerful conversations about 21st Century Learning. In 2005-06 , with support from Microsoft Partners in Learning, ABPC recruited small teams from 20 forward thinking schools across the state and established a virtual learning community built around an online curriculum I wrote called, "Keeping Up with the Net Generation." Feedback from our first group of schools was very positive.
Twenty more schools have been selected to begin their participation in 2006-07 and will experience the "Keeping Up with the Net Generation" curriculum during this school year.
For the schools that began our program in 2005-06, we are offering additional professional development opportunities through an Advanced curriculum strand.
The project is supported by 10 Alabama educators who have been selected and trained to be ABPC's "21st Century Teacher Fellows." The project's leadership includes staff from the Alabama Best Practices Center and two consultants who are experts in 21st Century Learning and virtual professional communities.
Electronically Networking to Develop Professional Teachers
The ENDAPT project began as a pilot in the fall of 2005 as an offshoot of a preservice group- mentoring initiative that I was using in my education courses. Dr. Judi Harris became interested in launching a one-to-one component similar to what she developed in Texas and the project was born.Through a grant from the state department of education and at the request of the newly formed ENDAPT committee, I recruited several of my colleagues (National Board Certified and other highly accomplished K-12 teachers from around the country) who had prior e-mentoring experience in my preservice courses to serve as online mentors to first year novice teachers who had recently graduated from W&M's teacher preparation program.We are in year two of the program and are replicating our research model from year one.
The virtual mentorship project takes place in a customized group mentoring environment constructed in a virtual learning community called Tapped In (www.tappedin.org). Inside the virtual "room" core discussions take place in a common arena, among all mentors and novice teachers, usually in an asynchronous manner. I facilitate and also serve as the virtual community organizer.
As part of the preservice courses I teach at the College of William and Mary I require an electronic mentorship component to the course that puts globally diverse, highly accomplished tech savvy teachers together in a virtual learning community with preservice secondary and elementary teachers.
The mentors for this year's preservice mentorship are as follows:
Secondary
Barbara Besal- Virginia
Chris Craft- SC
Vicki Davis- Georgia
Randy Fullington- Alabama
Joseph Papaleo- Australia
Bud Hunt- Colorado
Vinnie Vrotny- Illinois
Marsha Ratzel- Kansas
Crystal Wright- Alabama
Mark Clemente- Virginia
Art Lader- South Carolina
Darren Kuropatwa- Manitoba, CanadaElementary
Connie Stigler- Alabama
Jon Hanbury- Virginia
Paul Harrington- Wales
Lynn Holland- Alabama
Allanah King- New Zealand
John Holland- Virginia
Jeff Utech- ChinaPast Teacher - Or Edc Specialist
April Chamberlain-Alabama
Jonathan Messer-Virginia
Emily Kornblut-NY
Mark Wagner-California
Anne Davis- Georgia
Karen Janowski- Massachusetts
Aimee Smith- Alabama
Neil Rochelle - Superintendent in NYSpecial Guest Preservice Teacher
Christine Papaleo- Australia
I serve as a technology consultant for the Center for Teaching Quality and in that role have been a part of the Teacher Leaders Network (TLN) from its inception. TLN is a virtual network connecting and supporting accomplished educators who share a desire to apply what they know and can do to spread teaching expertise, advance school reform and influence teaching policies and programs. Currently, I am working with the CTQ team to envision, design and implement a robust virtual learning environment that will support the collaborative project needs of the TLN members.
TeacherSolutions is another CTQ initiative designed to amplify the voices of expert teachers in national education policy debates. Its inaugural work focused on professional compensation and the teacher "pay for performance" proposals now being heavily debated in states and school districts across the United States. The TeacherSolutions model brings together a diverse cross-section of accomplished American teachers who work in teams to carefully examine critical issues facing public education and offer solutions based on their deep understanding of teaching and learning and how schools really work. I serve as both a teacher voice and an online facilitator in this ongoing work.
CTQ has built a collaborative relationship with the National Education Association (NEA) and various other state partners to launch statewide summits of National Board Certified Teachers. The summits have been designed to find real solutions for recruiting and retaining accomplished teachers for high-needs schools and closing the achievement gaps in North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington, and Ohio.
My role in this project has been to design the breakout process at each state summit, to facilitate the online training of the NBCT facilitators in using the breakout process, and then to over see the facilitators onsite at each Summit.
