Lessons Learned

The spread of the H1N1 virus reminded me of our running a virtual school in Hong Kong during the outbreak of SARS in 2003 when all the schools were closed. Our elementary team of teachers came together to create a program focusing on what we called the “3 C’s of Communication, Community and Content (Interactive & Collaborative)”. We quickly realized that continuing the learning became secondary to the creation of a network that provided our students and their families the social and emotional connections that they so needed during their very isolated days.

I wrote an article entitled “Surviving Crisis Mode” in Learning & Leading with Technology that documented our many weeks of virtual school while outlining the follow up efforts to prepare for the future possibility of school closure. It hopefully can provide some insights to readers thinking about creating and implementing a virtual school plan.

One important positive from the experience was that our school leaders, teachers and parents were much more open to the shift in instructional an assessment practices that our small team of early adopters had previously been pushing for.

For other ideas on how to prepare for the possibility of school closure, check out Britt Watwood and Stephanie Sandifer’s recent posts.

Image Source ISTE

Mark Hofer, Steve Whitaker and Michael Kelly will join us on tonight’s SOS Podcast where we will be discussing this question of teacher preparation. It should be an excellent discussion as all three taught pre-service teachers at the University of Virginia. Mark now teaches at the College of William and Mary.

To answer this question I think of what we do with our colleagues in our schools to help them shift their teaching practices to more Classroom 2.0 practices. We have covered many topics in the podcast that support shifting individuals and schools but two in particular jump out at me when working with new teachers.

Risk Taking- I wrote about this in my previous post. We ended up needing to postpone that podcast discussion with John Mikton. It is now scheduled for April 30th. When working with university students, I am thinking one can start with the practices they already use in their lives for communication and learning. In most cases this will involve tapping into their everyday life experience of using cell phones, social networking tools, information literacy, etc. while guiding them to see that that already have learning networks in their lives.

Professional Learning Networks- So much to being a shifted teacher is about being a lifelong learner connected to one’s physical and digital learning networks. We again draw on the pre-service teachers’ natural proclivity to use technology to help them set up their RSS reader and to start connecting to the blogs, wikis, etc. that support shifted practices and new learning while offering examples of risk taking activities by educators from around the world.

Panda Smith shared an online educational tool with me today called Jog the Web. It provides a slide show, step by step approach of taking viewers through Web sites allowing the author to annotate and ask guiding questions for each Web page. The viewers can reply posting their comments and/or ask questions. As a WebQuest designer, I find myself wishing for the opportunity to “be with” my students to ask questions and guide them as they read linked sites from my WebQuests. While I provide scaffolding via questions to be answered they are not so specific to each Web site or its individual pages. Jog the Web provides the further scaffolding opportunity that I am looking for.

The students with stronger research skills and more adept at answering complex questions can skip the steps thus supporting the differentiated nature of my WebQuests. Now by using the Jog the Web designed tracks within my WebQuests, I have a much more precise way to differentiate the multiple pathways students can take in doing their research.

Outside of WebQuests, Jog the Web provides a nice way to create short learning tasks along the lines of Web scavenger hunts. To get a feel for the potential of this tool around a topic we all know so well, check out the 21st Century Skills track created by Elizabeth Holmes.

And if you are familiar with Jog the Web, what are some ways you are using it?

We really have three essential questions for this show:

• How to infuse information literacy skills across the curriculum?
• Where does the use of technology fit into the information literacy picture?
• How does a modern library media specialist fit into the shifting process?

The possible answers to these questions start with the library media specialist trained in using digital information tools as well as generative technologies for student sharing of their research. This individual is a leader in his/her school working with the instructional technologist as designers and collaborators in the curriculum review process to embed the various information & communication literacy (ICL) skills throughout the curriculum.

I wrote a short piece for our school yearbook describing how being a 1:1 laptop school affects our learning community. I cover just a few of the ways these wonderful learning tools affect the way we communicate, organize ourselves and learn.

The 1:1 Apple laptop program drives much of the learning at HIS giving students and teachers access to numerous software programs, online tools and the Internet. From early morning through the evening, our community of learners uses their laptops to communicate, gather information, organize their day, generate learning projects, and expand the learning community.

Students start their days by checking their Google email accounts for any messages from fellow students and teachers. The next step is to log in to our classroom management Web resource named Moodle. Moodle is a virtual learning place where teachers post homework assignments and use several tools like forums, wikis and Web site link directories to manage their courses. Moodle also brings our community together by listing important dates, links to our student-created videos and online photo slideshows.

Accessing information is central to the learning expeditions our students and teachers take together. Whether venturing forth in teacher created WebQuests or pursuing one’s own questions, the laptops make inquiry learning a significant part of our curriculum. Online textbooks, simulations and Web site resources add to the information rich environment.

The student MacBooks come with the iLife suite of multimedia software programs that provide the instruments to:

-edit and manage photo collections
-shoot and edit video
-create multimedia presentations
-generate original musical scores for multimedia projects
-record and edit podcasts

Moving into the evening, students check Moodle for assignments and updated information from their teachers. They might log into their Google Documents account to revise an essay they are sharing online with their teacher. Or maybe they are just starting an essay or video project so they go to their Mindmeister concept mapping Web site to brainstorm their ideas which can then be reviewed by their teachers. Finally, it is time for reflection and seeing what is happening in the world. This is when students check their favorite news sites, think about their learning and go to their blogs to record their thoughts.

We spend some of our time on the Shifting Our School podcast chatting about examples of “shift” that usually applies to instructional and assessment strategies. Let’s take a closer look at what a shifted school might look like and what drives it.

An Example: Our Episode 8 podcast with Brent Loken about Hsinchu International School offered several examples of how a shifted school is structured and organized to help meet its goals. So what are those goals and how are they shifted from the way many schools do business?

Comparing Non-Shifted to Shifted: Let’s start with the chart that many people refer to when they compare the “normal” 20th century practices compared to what many of us are calling 21st century learning. You can find the chart that does direct comparisons in how schools and classrooms can shift at the 21st Century Schools site.

Focus on Thinking Skills and Being Independent Learners: When we talk about 21st Century Skills we are referring to the skill set needed for our students as future workers and citizens who will in many cases make several geographical moves as well as multiple career changes in their lifetimes. We also understand that there are entire fields of study and occupation that will be totally new as we advance scientifically and technologically. Thus, our focus in schools must be to teach skills that help our students become adaptable and flexible self-learners ready for continual learning.

To learn more about these skills, check out the 21st Century Skills site. A shifted school also works with Habits of Mind life skills to move our students from the 20th century dependent learner waiting on teachers for direction and information to the shifted version of an independent learner using critical thinking, analysis, synthesis, problem solving, and creativity skills to make meaning, collaborate and share one’s own constructed ideas (as opposed to those of the teacher).

Focus on 21st Century Literacies: As we talk about the 21st Century Skills, we also include various literacies (i.e., information, cultural, visual, & media). To get more information on the literacies, see the 21st Century Literacies site. I would add that this list can be expanded as our learning communities talk more about understanding of the different ways we interact with and interpret information. I can say that we use musical literacy in making of video projects working to match the music to the message of the visuals, text and spoken words. The National Educational Technology Standards for Students NETS also contain various thinking and communication skills as well as literacies including choosing the right technology tool for the task and the product to be created.

Other Opinions: The blogosphere is rich with comments about what our schools should be doing. The use of the term “shift” has gained traction as it refers to the movement from an educational system in the U.S. focused on 20th century employment and citizenship needs to one now focused on our ever changing, information-rich 21st century world.  We use the term “Learning 2.0″ to cover what the learning should look like in our shifted schools. Another term providing the same function is “School 2.0″. In both cases the “2.0″ denotes the second or next generation as you might have heard described in Web 2.0 for our current read/write version of the Web. One discussion area where you can read and add to the discussion is a wiki entitled School 2.0 started by blogger Steve Hargadon. Take a look and add your thoughts about what you think a shifted school looks like.

We will be tackling the big “How to shift?” essential question this week in the Shifting Our School podcast. Our previous shows with other EQs delved into discussions that also connected to this overriding theme to our podcast. So now it is time to put some thoughts together from practical experience.

Brent Loken, the Director of Curriculum and Innovation, at Hsinchu International School (HIS) will be our guest for the show. He will offer details about one approach to helping schools make the shift to focusing on the learning of 21st century skills, constructivist learning instructional strategies and the variety of interpretations of what School 2.0 can look like. Brent and the leadership team of Grant Ruskovich, Ken Willis, and Catherine Chen were able to take a top down, leadership driven approach working with the school board, parents, students and faculty to define what they wanted their school to be about. This “about” just happens to be a very shifted school.

As a instructional technologist working under more “normal” conditions where their are pockets of shifted teachers and often non-committed leadership towards shifting to School 2.0, I will share some of the practices that I found helpful to move a school I previously worked at to being more shifted. While I list these practices as helpful towards guiding a school to Learning 2.0 outcomes, they obviously are accepted strategies that are not new to our schools and can be used as common practice in how we generally manage organizations.

Administrative Leadership: I have to say it even though there are numerous reasons why administrators can find it difficult to make a commitment to all the change and transition that goes with shifting a school. We must have the administrators at the helm if we are to shift our schools. Our last SOS podcast for the school year in June will look into what barriers administrators face in bringing about change in their schools. As this is a huge topic on its own, I won’t comment further and ask that if anyone is reading this post to tune into our podcast with Brent Loken to hear one leader provide the vision and action steps that administrators can take to shift their schools.

Conversation-Listening-Designing-Action-ASSESSMENT: The process of deciding where a school community wants to go should start with conversations around the question “What is learning?”.  Additional questions are: What does it look like? What skills will our graduating students have? What will they need to be able to do to be global citizens in an unpredictable world? What is teaching? We can then use the UbD backwards process to develop our program plan, action steps and accountability protocols. This gets down to a very personal discussion with educators about their teaching philosophy.

Time is needed along with care and attentive listening as we grow our learning community and validate one another. 

Most of us as educators have been involved in strategic or other program building plans. We worked with parents, teachers, administrators and sometimes students to decide what our mission should be as well as what outcomes we want our students to attain from our schools. These development processes have documented procedures so one can easily find the “how to” steps. I would add that I cannot value enough the importance of listening, real attentive listening, which can lead to true understanding and help move the process along.

Planning comes into play along with action steps to put all the hard work into action in our classrooms. The part of the process that I find left out for numerous reasons is accountability. This is another huge topic that deserves a great deal of attention. I will just say here that  if a school is to shift to whatever goals it sets, one needs to take all that energy at the start of the development process through to the action and assessment stages as well. We must answer the question “Are we reaching our goals?” and then adapt accordingly.

Defining, Discussing and Understanding of School/Learning 2.0: This practice clearly ties into the planning process of where a school community wants to go with their programs. There are plenty of charts, posts and articles that contrast what and how we teach with a 20th century approach to the potential 21st century version. The Framework for 21st Century Skills Web site lists the skills and now with the Route 21 education section provide a terrific place to start the education and understanding effort with one’s school community. The next step is to begin the process of defining what Web 2.0 tools with their strange names do for the learning community without any expectations for learning or using them. Simply work to take away the lack of understanding. As an instructional technology program is developed around individual and team (i.e., elementary grade level teams, middle school teams & high school departments) needs, you can then design a differentiated learning program based on those individual and group adult learning needs in your school’s learning network.

Time: This is usually a top of the list issue at any organization. We often don’t build in the time or the procedures to follow through on our plans making the work that goes with shifting our schools an additional task added to overloaded teachers’ workloads.  Time must be structured for the activities that go into the shifting process taking away other items from teachers’ plates and giving them time during the school day to focus on the shifting. And it goes without saying that the shifting process needs a great deal of time as in years to go from the conversation to the designing to the implementation to the assessment phase.

Focus: I wrote about this in a recent post. We put in a lot of time writing our strategic plans, missions statements, etc. but then stray from them leaving less time and energy to do what we say we will. My experience with international schools is that they sometimes lose their way and their focus on how they should be using their time. Check out the post as this also connects to administrative leadership.

Less is More Especially with Depth:  If we stay focused on what we say we want to do, there will be less on everyones’ plates thus we will have a better chance of reaching our goals. Common sense. Don’t try to be everything to everyone as a school. Shifted schools are guided by the mantra “how does any new program or initiative connect to our strategic plan and mission?” This gets back to administrative leadership. “No” is not a four letter word! Our leaders connected to our community learning networks gather lots of information, dialogue and then can make decisions that keep our plates less full and our lives more balanced. We will talk in a future SOS podcast about why such a common sense idea gets dropped by many schools.

Trained Change Agents & Designers: Todays library media specialists and instructional technologists receive very specific course work in designing new programs and implementing them. They also gain skill sets from their graduate programs that support their being able to be 21st century learners just like we want our students to be. By their staying on top of the latest research and by continually learning from their PLNs, they have the knowledge and skills to be the on the ground leaders who help guide our schools through the change and transition process. Support and empower them to do what they are trained to do.

It might be uncomfortable for some schools to face but old style technology coordinators with their focus on hardware and networks have been replaced with today’s instructional/educational technologists who are teachers first, grounded in instructional theory working to bridge the technology to the teachers and students in the classrooms. We have technicians and network engineers to take care of the hardware and repair issues.

The library media specialists with their training and skill sets guide our teachers and students in the multiple literacies that our 21st century learners (students, teachers and administrators) must work with and master to be adaptable and flexible learners. They cannot be the 20th century librarian focused just on reading literacy and the building of book collections. They must be leaders and partners in designing and implementing curriculum.

By working as partners with teachers and administrators in the curriculum development process, these two instructional leaders work to support the designing of curriculum to reach the learning goals for our 21st century focused schools. To see how the teachers of the HKIS Upper Primary school designed their curriculum review process, select the following hyperlink to download a copy of an article reviewing their work. HKIS Upper Primary Curriculum Review Model

Education, Communication, Ownership and Celebration Procedures: Schools need to use all of their communication channels to the community to share progress, build ownership and  celebrate everyone’s efforts as the school works towards its goals. Once schools start making the move to School 2.0, they need to use ongoing parent workshops, community coffees, student forums, newsletters, blogs, etc. to build out the community learning network with the focus on the shifting process. The school needs to be flexible and adaptable with two-way communication from the community. Along the way, celebrate the successes and shine the light on your risk takers! So often those willing to stick their necks out to try new things, offer differing opinions, and make the shift are isolated and made to feel devalued. Put these leaders’ efforts on your school Web sites, write about them in newsletters, get their ideas published in journals. These leaders will really “own” the process and share their passion for it. Ownership means accountability and follow through. Celebrate your early adopters and they will stick around instead of looking for more shifted pastures.

Get the Right Crew Onboard:  This is a biggie that can be one of the biggest storms to work your voyage through. Going back to the conversations that start the process, everyone will need to decide if they can make the commitment to the shift once they fully understand what it is all about. Administrators will need to work with their Human Resource staff to plan over a few years to give folks the opportunity to seek employment at other schools. As uncomfortable as this can be, we must face that organizations change and that it is better for everyone to move on if we cannot support the mission of our school.

The Curriculum Development Process: Being systematic is central for bringing about change. We must build in protocols that support a system that scaffolds our efforts to move towards our goals. Sadly, for so many schools, the curriculum review process can be a struggle and an unsupported effort that gets a bad name. A dynamic, well-managed system becomes a natural professional learning community that can drive how we do business in our schools. See the previous link to the HKIS Upper Primary model for more information.

Work with Your Successes: Students are already learning in our classrooms whether we are School 1.0 or 2.0. We as teachers use well thought out instructional and assessment strategies. Back to the conversations that start the shifting process, we need to assess what we are already doing well by asking questions like:

Which strategies are working really well? Which ones guide our students to our school-wide learning goals? Which ones can easily be enhanced using 2.0 strategies?

We need to remind ourselves as Rick Pierce points out that change leads to the much longer transition period that then takes us to our goals. This transition is a continuum that we all move along at different rates of speed and comfort levels. So create a collaborative team including your instructional technologist, library media specialist, administrators, curriculum coordinator and other interested parties to design an ongoing adult learning program centered on personal learning networks that start within each individual’s comfort zone and experience. Then take small steps along the continuum towards using shifted classroom instructional strategies and assessments that support your school’s shifted goals.

A quick example is that concept maps along with other graphic organizers are being used in classrooms around the world. Teachers are comfortable with them. Students learn making connections using HOTS as they map out their learning. The next step for some might be a desktop digital tool like Inspiration or Cmap while others might be ready to jump to 2.0 and the collaborative power of Mindmeister or Bubbl with 24/7 access to their work. As time moves on the next step is telecollaborative work where students and teachers make connections outside the school still using concept maps but sharing them with learners in projects like The Flat Classroom. Just remember to start with your current successes and honor the innovative work that is already getting results as you design each teacher’s shifting experience.

Also, another obvious point, make your professional development program connect to your shifting school outcomes in an ongoing, structured learning community that periodically gives learning and connection time during the school day while avoiding the end of quarter one shot, one size fits all PD days. Adult learners deserve and need differentiated instruction, time to make meaning from their experiences as well as the opportunity to apply their new learning to really give them half a chance for success. And look to work with the professionals within your school who have attended conferences, read leading educational books, and are on top of the edublogosphere who will be with you everyday as opposed to the weekend visit of a consultant.

Yet, you might go the extra step adding the depth of an experienced consultant to partner with your on site shifted teachers by having him/her stay for weeks or months at a time. Both Hong Kong International School and Hsinchu International School are using this model.

Stick To Your Guns:  So much of what I am writing here is accepted, practical knowledge. If a school community does all of these listed strategies and more, they can feel confident in that they are inclusive, transparent, systematic and clearly focused in their shift. There will still be difficulties and uncomfortable feelings at times but that is what LEARNING is all about.

Everyone from the administrator at the helm to the crew and passengers must work together to stay the course showing the courage to stand by their planning and initial goals. It is this courage that sometimes fails especially when the dreaded “Well, the parents say …” and we as educators forget we are the professionals hired to do the job of teaching the students and running the school.

Final Note:  As stated at the start, my experience is from working at a non-shifted school without a school-wide initiative or committed leadership to make the shift. We dug in and did out best as a group of educators working within the system. Brent Loken and Grant Ruskovich took a very different tack with their work at the helm of HIS. Download the SOS podcast later in the week to hear of their efforts.

We talk about how technology can enhance learning. It can be a big part of the shift in moving how we focus on learning as opposed to teaching. While some teachers for various reasons can be uncomfortable trying new technologies, I would like to share some examples of how going digital makes our lives easier, more productive and frees up time to do the planning to design lessons that helps us make the real shift to discovery learning by our students. Here are just a few ways to be more efficient by going digital:

Video Lab Report: Brent Loken, our Director of Curriculum & Innovation and teacher at Hsinchu International School shared a couple student e-porfolios with me the other day. While we promote writing across the curriculum, Brent decided to offer his students a multimedia way to report their laboratory results. As we are an Apple 1 to 1 school, the students just used the internal video camera on their laptops and recorded into iMovie.  They could “show and tell” exactly what happened in their respective lab experiences. This is a nice alternative for our ESL students who are moving along with spoken language and sometimes need an outlet other than writing.

The Writing Process: My students recently spent several weeks going through the writing process to produce personal narratives.

The students did their writing in Google Documents and shared their work with me and classmates who helped them as peer editors. It was so easy for me to go through each draft adding comments and questions into each student’s document. I enjoyed seeing the comments by their classmates as we formed our learning teams to help one another with the writing.

What I also liked was that we were not in the documents to edit the words, grammar, etc. as so many Language Arts teachers do. We were partners using the language of the 6 Traits offering guidance but not taking over the writing. Once the students completed their final draft, they went in and deleted all the comments. I could then go into the history of the revisions and see the progress and thinking of the students as they worked through the writing process.

I also enjoyed saving time! We saved so much time not dealing with paper. Access is instantaneous and no papers are lost on the way to school.

Mind Mapping 2.0: My wife Margaret and I have been big proponents of using mind/concept maps for a long time. Our tool of choice in our last school in an elementary environment was Inspiration.

We really enjoyed the power of using visuals with our elementary and ESL students. Now that I am working with MS and HS students looking to help them collaborate, I am moving on to 2.0 mind mapping tools. There are many choices but at the moment, I am using Mindmeister. It doesn’t offer the graphics but I am guessing that they would not use them much if offered. The students create their mind maps for various research, writing or just reflective purposes and then they share them with me. I can monitor their thinking and add comments. My 7th graders are starting a WebQuest on Africa where each student with a partner shares a common Mindmeister mind map. They are diagramming their questions and using the note tool to record their research and potential answers to their questions.

MacBook Camera:  While I am pushing my students to make sure they have a camera that can take still and video recordings, we are finding that their MacBooks can be pretty versatile photography tools. As Brent Loken’s science students use their cameras and iMovie software to record their science lab reports, we are finding numerous other ways to enhance learning via the MacBook camera.

A part of the Hsinchu International School culture is that students should be sharing and presenting their learning to the school community as much as possible. As they complete their work in the second year of their “Institutes” (Institute I is grades 7-8, Institute 2 is grades 9-10, Institute 3 is grades 11-12), the students are required to present their efforts to reach the five student learning outcomes that are central to the school.  The advisors for the institutes work with the students to document their learning and to then prepare their presentations. As we get closer to the end of the year, each student will practice his/her presentation in front of the other institute students. We will have them bring their MacBooks to the podium to record their efforts. They will then have the videos to review at home using the provided presentation rubric. We won’t be dealing with the hassle of using a camcorder and having to transfer footage to each student in some form or other. The footage will already by on their hard drives. Going digital leaving out the normal in this case digital tool for the more flexible laptop will save lots of time and energy.

Kim Cofino will be our featured guest during this week’s Shifting Our Schools podcast. Kim has found a spot in the blogosphere as a leader for helping our students make the learning connections outside of the classroom. To learn more about networking for learning, definitely spend some time on her Always Learning blog. 

My wife Margaret reminds me of our previous SOS discussions where we spoke about making connections around concepts. With many of our schools using the Understanding by Design approach to curriculum design, our focus is on concepts in the form of essential understandings. Margaret points out that real critical thinking comes into play as students learn about the hierarchical nature of concepts and their connections to other ideas. From a teaching perspective, we can look at how to facilitate the process of students taking the steps to and gaining understanding of concepts. One big tool teachers have used for a long time is concept mapping. Inspiration and Cmap digitally provide the means to create and save mind maps on our computers while newer Web 2.0 tools like Bubbl and Mindmeister (among several) offer the additional benefit of collaboration.   

Another way to look at how to connect is with hardware and the Web. As a handheld user for many years, I became a reader of gadget blogs like Engadget and Brighthand hoping to one day find an article describing a tech company that was going to create a learning tool for the education market. This hybrid wifi-enabled computer, phone, camera, GPS, tablet device would come with a software package focused on the needs of students and educators. The reason for asking for such a Swiss knife handheld is that if students are to really be at the center of the learning process, they must have ubiquitous access to the Web as well as the means to gather data on spot, process and then publish it.

Are we there, yet? The business market has some very expensive connection tools that one wouldn’t probably feel comfortable giving to students to keep. We are getting closer with some of the products coming from HTC as well as Apple and even Asus with the EEE PC. The EEE is helping to drive the costs down. Battery life continues to be a problem for many handhelds while the Microsoft mobile operating system doesn’t come close to offering the smooth functionality of the Apple iPhone and iTouch platforms. 

Yet, the signs look very positive. I look forward to my sons having such a device when they ask a science, historical, etc. research question wherever we might be and they want to take a photo/video of something interesting and they simply want to know where we are and where we are going.

Technology has a huge role in supporting the inclusion of parents in our school learning communities. The first step is to simply build on what we already have in place to include parents in the school connecting to their talents and interests. How are parents already involved in our schools? They participate as coaches, tutors, classroom supporters, school board members, etc. By using Web 2.0 tools, we enhance their experiences while improving communication and increasing opportunities for learning for everyone. When parents feel a part of the school where their ideas are being heard and responded to, they are more apt to be supportive and protective of the school in the wider community.

A well-designed school portal/virtual learning environment using wikis, blogs, shared calendars, vodcasts, etc. leads to two-way communication especially in the very busy lives of parents who sometimes have trouble making it to campus. Just think of the little league baseball coach or scout leader wanting to share information about his/her team. Give him/her a Web page in the school portal, a blog, an image gallery, etc. and you will have a parent feeling connected to the school while modeling how to make connections for other activity leaders.

With our telecollaborative efforts to extend the learning beyond the school walls, we shouldn’t forget that many of our parents are subject-matter experts. E-mail, Skype and/or simple telephone calls to interview and gather information really brings parents into our learning circles. Students producing news shows can record interviews over Skype for upcoming telecasts. Parents can watch or listen to media files of teachers sharing online some of their recent lessons. And how about using Ustream for live webcasts sharing panel discussions, parent education presentations, etc. The videos can then be posted on the school Web site for parents not able to attend in person or via cyberspace.

Looking at supporting 21st century learning initiatives, it makes sense to engage parents in discussions from both the parental and employer viewpoints. If we want to shift our schools, get the corporate parents in to discuss the skills they want from their employees. This real world information can only support efforts to change how we teach. From there, get parents involved in big picture curriculum discussions. Use the school portal to educate and also to engage parents in discussing what our learning environments and instructional strategies should be to develop creative, collaborative and adaptable thinkers.