University of Chicago 6to16: College Success for More Urban Students
April 22, 2009
My friend is a Consultant, and is currently working on a project called 6:16 College Success for More Urban Students at the Urban Education Institute at University of Chicago.
Here is a YouTube video of the program:
From everything that my friend described to me, this appears to be one of the most technologically advanced and innovative school programs that I have ever heard. I may not be getting the details of this program correct, but let me recap some of the ideas from our conversation.
Apparently, the goal of this program is to prepare Urban students for college. It is currently being piloted as a school based initiative, but the program is being designed to serve in a variety of situations including during after school programs, through community based organizations, or in the home.
There are many components to the program, including: Virtual Worlds; community mentorship; eLearning; Social Networking; and an advisory-based curriculum.
One activity is that students participate in a Virtual Game in which their objective is to best prepare your character for college. The purpose of the game is to teach students about the importance of college and socialize them to soft skills necessary to “win” in the game of life. Students can see how College acceptance and readiness leads to life and career success.
The premise of this game and the rest of the program is that Urban students have simply not associated the idea that getting into college is the path to success. Therefore, the game allows students to create and reinforce this connection. Once the connection is made, the students are better focused and perform better in their classes.
The results of the student’s game (and other activities) are also posted on a social network where everyone can evaluate each other’s results. In addition, the social network connects students with community mentors who provide real-life examples of people creating successful lives for themselves by getting into college and getting a quality education.
The program sounds fascinating, and I have never heard of something this innovative happening in any schools today.
21st Century Professional Learning – Powerful Learning Practice
April 6, 2009
The following guest post was written by Lani Ritter Hall, an instructional designer for online professional development, and former teacher for 35 years.
We hope you can join Sheryl and Will for an informational webinar session on April 14, 2009 at 10 AM, or, April 23, 2009 at 2 PM.
Contact Lani Ritter Hall, lanihall [at] windstream [dot] net or Abby Kelton, akelton [at] smartsolutionsonline [dot] com, at Smart Solutions for additional information.
Please also check out this Webinar!
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21st century learners: connected, social, engaged, collaborating outside of school. Schools: isolated, competitive, irrelevant to many of those learners. This chasm grows wider daily, requiring leaps and “shifts” in our beliefs about learning to embrace tenets of networked learning that facilitates students reaching their full potential. For many educators, those shifts and leaps are intimidating and foreign as previous professional and personal learning experiences were disjointed and unrelated to the real world.
“Many teachers receive professional development that is episodic and disconnected from real problems and practice, said Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommon Professor of Teaching and Teacher Education at Stanford University. But research tells us that teachers need to learn the way other professionals do: continually, collaboratively and on the job.”
“Research shows that professional learning can have a powerful effect on teacher skills and knowledge and on student learning. To be effective, however, it must be sustained, focused on important content, and embedded in the work of collaborative professional learning teams that support ongoing improvements in teachers’ practice and student achievement.” National Staff Development Council
Aligned with Ohio Professional Development Standards and current research, Powerful Learning Practice (PLP), co founded by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson, offers a unique opportunity for educators to participate in a long-term, job-embedded professional development program through immersion in learning environments that allow them to learn and own the literacies of 21st Century learning and teaching.
During the initial 8 month cycle PLP participants learn together as part of a cohort composed of 20 school or district teams with 5 educators on each team and 10 “21st Century Fellows” selected from participating districts. Educators experience:
* Two full-day face to face workshops for cohort participants held at a regional site
* Five, two hour synchronous online 21st Century curriculum modules:
1. Setting the Stage: Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century – What is 21st Century learning? Why is it important? This session introduces the context, research and trends shaping the current shifts.
2. Network Literacy: Sharing, Cooperation and Collective Action – This session moves team members from talking about 21st century learning to examining some specific tools and how they are used to promote the building of Personal Learning Networks for sharing, cooperation, and collective action.
3. Network Driven Inquiry: Technological Pedagogy in Action – This session takes a closer look at the pedagogy involved in using web- based strategies to support passion-based and inquiry-driven approaches to learning.
4. Project Workshop – School teams have an opportunity to get feedback on their emerging team projects as well as showcase, reflect, and celebrate the success and outcomes of their learning
5. Long Range Planning and Implementation Workshop – Working with school teams to develop a collective vision and implementation plan to build momentum for change in their schools and districts.
* Immersion in an asynchronous Virtual Learning Community
* Ongoing capacity building with 21st Century Fellows
As educators build these communities of learning that exist outside of traditional time and place, vastly different from schools they attended as children, they find the connections and opportunities they can build with the new emerging medias are key to powerful learning. Powerful Learning Practice understands these connections and understands that the tools are easy; it’s the connections that are hard.
Over 1000 educators worldwide have found PLP energizing, and transformative. Lisa, from the ADVIS cohort reflects upon her experience:
Boy, they weren’t kidding when they said this would be powerful! From the very first, I’ve done nothing but learn. I would admit, though, that a lot of what I’ve learned I had not expected to . . .
What I’ve come to realize is that, through PLP, we are gaining exposure to the world that our kids already inhabit easily – and learning in that environment is not neat and tidy. I wrote my first Ning post about ambiguity and how learning to live – and learn – in an ambiguous world is not easy. It requires openness to new experiences and letting-go of my tradition-based ideas of what schooling is. Learning is not linear, and while I’ve espoused that for years, it wasn’t until this experience of PLP that I was able to live the non-linear, sometimes frustrating, always interesting world of a 21st century learner . . .
Learn more about the current cohort activities from this newsletter and from the PLP website.
Then consider the chasm, consider the challenge, consider PLP! Can you afford not to? Participate in the upcoming 2009-10 Ohio cohort.
We hope you can join Sheryl and Will for an informational webinar session on April 14, 2009 at 10 AM, or, April 23, 2009 at 2 PM.
Contact Lani Ritter Hall, lanihall [at] windstream [dot] net or Abby Kelton, akelton [at] smartsolutionsonline [dot] com, at Smart Solutions for additional information.
Short Book Reviews
April 4, 2009
I wanted to post short reviews on some of the books that I have read in the last few weeks.
Ready for Anything by David Allen
This book is an easy read! It is a great book to read in a few hours to refresh your personal productivity strategy. Even if you do not follow Getting Things Done to a t, Ready for Anything will have insights for you. There are also a bunch of great quotes along the margins throughout the entire book.
Outliers by Malcom Gladwell
One of the weird things about this book is that along the back cover, it states that Gladwell is the author of two of the most influential books of our time, Blink and Tipping Point. I read Tipping Point, and read book reviews about Blink. I found it a bit pretentious to claim that your own book was one of the most influential books of our time.
Outliers was a creative idea taken too far. The original nugget of an idea is that an individual’s success is somewhat a function of his or her unique ability, but mostly a function of the unique time, place, and context of where this individual was born. Gladwell gives a lot of interesting examples of this phenomenon.
The problem with this book is that it was boring. Once you read the first few chapters, there was really no benefit to reading the entire book. In fact, once you have read my summary, there is probably no need to read anything else.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
My top 3 business books of all time are:
- Feiner Points of Leadership by Michael Feiner
- Getting to Yes by
- and Getting Things Done by David Allen
7 Habits has now claimed the top position above all 3 of these books. It is difficult to describe how transformative an experience it is to read this book. Covey does it all. He is able to tie together fundamental negotiations, leadership, values, principles, and day-to-day tactics and personal productivity.
The funniest part of the book is that it is very human and imperfect. Covey readily admits that he is unable to follow the 7 Habits, particularly the “seek first to be understand, and then be understood.” He admits his inability to listen. He gives the reader insights into some of the bizarre arguments that he has with his wife.
But this superb book about leadership in the voice of an imperfect man makes it an even better read. I highly recommend this book to all individuals.
Jump the Curve by Jack Uldrich
I did not like this book. I thought Uldrich is not technical enough to have any interesting techncial insights. But he is not too business/strategy minded either. I do not have much more to say about this one.