Lessons Learned

Image Source: Adopted from Johneric Advento’s revised version of Margaret Carpenter’s original diagram

Our Shifting Our Schools podcast as well as Jeff’s and my blogs along with countless other podcasts and blogs share ways to help educators make the shift from traditional style, teacher-directed classrooms to what we call the Learning or School 2.0 model. This “shift” with all its edublogger advocates is all about the change process which we know is quite difficult to manage and is not happening very quickly.

While I enjoy discussing the big picture and the big ideas, my practice as an instructional technologist is on the practical, in the classroom instruction and assessment strategies that help transform classrooms into 21st century learning communities.

My belief for bringing about this transformation is that schools must develop a curriculum and collaborative systematic model that becomes the mechanism for shifting our classrooms and our schools to the School 2.0 model. Sadly curriculum development carries an uncomfortable connotation for many educators. The reality is that the curriculum should be the driving force that guides so much of what we do to affect the learning for our students. If handled well, curriculum development as a part of an engaged and thriving learning community, can be an exciting process that shifts and transforms our schools. Obvious information but sadly we often put little thought into how we develop or follow through with our curriculum.

We often spoke about this on our SOS podcast with one show centered on the work of the International School Bangkok’s team of technology resource coordinators and literacy specialist. The ISB team constructed a curriculum development model and recently Kim Cofino created a collaboration flow chart that together nicely presents a model for other schools to review and possibly adopt and individualize to meet their needs.

Back to the practical… Kim will be presenting at the Learning 2.008 conference next week about the importance of curriculum and collaboration in bringing about the shift in our schools. After watching Kim’s slide show for her presentation, I remembered a workshop that I started to put together for another conference. It dealt with how a school learning community begins the process of designing their own curriculum and collaboration system. As I am not able to attend the Learning 2.008 conference, it makes sense to get the components for my workshop out there as a practical way to help support Kim’s and others’ efforts. Each school is different and whether one looks at the ISB model or the one we created at HKIS, the process for developing the model needs to start by engaging all the stakeholders in the discussion.

My next several posts will share the questions that teachers and administrators can use to start their discussion as they work to develop their own systematic way to review curriculum that integrates the instructional strategies, content, assessments and 21st century learning skills that will shift their schools to the Learning 2.0 model.