Digital School Solutions

Blog entry posted February 16th, 2011 by Angela Watson

Saturday, February 5 was a professional development day for all consultants at AUSSIE/Editure. Consultants from every area—literacy, math, science, social studies, and instructional technology—gathered together to learn best practices and strengthen their expertise. Our focus was From Spark to Flame: Igniting a Culture of Innovation.

This particular PD was unique in that the Digital School Solutions (DSS) department headed the workshop in an unconference format. An unconference is participant-driven; everyone in the room is given a platform for sharing ideas through a variety of small group and whole group opportunities. The goal was to collaboratively present and share techniques for effectively integrating technology on both an organizational and instructional level.

The day started with a whole group overview presentation designed to help consultants examine our beliefs and practices about technology consulting. Victor Aluise, President of AUSSIE Digital School Solutions, familiarized the group with the power of Google Docs and facilitated a small group activity in which participants shared ideas about how technology can amplify student learning.

Daniel Storchan, Director of our Ed. Tech Consultancy practice then kicked off the sharing of some case studies from the field. He screened a video and presentation that shows how one school has made the journey into 21st century learning and the implications for other schools, and invited participants to turn and talk about how we can move our school leaders forward as innovation leaders. Rhys Daunic , and AUSSIE/DSS consultant, and Maria (Toni) Mulraney, an AUSSIE Literacy consultant, shared a video about students as tutorial designers, as well as a staff website and consultancy website that inspired participants to develop similar resources for their schools. They then led a turn and talk about how we can support teachers in designing real-world 21st century learning experiences.

Following the whole group session, the unconference began with four breakout room sessions led by DSS Connected Learning consultants. Participants rotated throughout the sessions and presenters repeated.

Sheila Tebbano shared "Digital Storytelling at the Secondary Level: What Works!" and provided some excellent resources for creating engaging projects. Myfanwi Meyrick's session was entitled "From Soup to Nuts: Designing Tech-Infused Project-Based Learning Experiences." Participants in her session got to see VoiceThread in action as Myfanwi showed 6th graders' real-world area and perimeter projects. Pablo Zatz presented a breakout session on "TPACK: A Framework to Support Ed. Tech PD" and shared fantastic resources he has collected and used in his practice. The fourth and final breakout session, "Creating Digital Tutorials to Support Professional Learning" was led by Kwaku Aning. He showed a variety of tutorials he created to help build teacher capacity with unfamiliar computer-based tools.

The whole group gathered together once more at the end of the day to attend Victor Aluise's presentation on text complexity. Victor shared the importance of moving from information text to online multimodal informational experiences, and provided an evaluation rubric to aid in this. Next, he facilitated a small group experience in which participants discussed how interactive web sites can help or impede the comprehension of complex text. We concluded the segment with a 'Web 2.0 Smackdown' in which participants from all areas of expertise shared their favorite online resources to support teachers and learners.

Conversations throughout the day showed that participants were energized about the potential for tech integration in learning. Through both formal, speaker-led presentations and discussions as well as informal chatter about our consulting experiences, participants shared a wide variety of ideas to improve the way we amplify learning and create a culture of innovation in our schools.

Many of us left the PD session eager to create unconference experiences of our own. Conducting an unconference is an effective and highly managable way to provide differentiated professional development. It starts by helping teachers identify their own best practices and inviting them to share those successes with others in their school. The unconference can be held before or after school or on a designed PD Day, with teachers choosing breakout sessions that are relevant to their needs. Providing teachers with a list of sessions topics in advance is a great way to encourage them to gather their own relevant resources to share during the unconference and facilitate greater participation.

This day of learning was a great way for AUSSIE consultants to collaborate and discuss ways we can improve our practice. Imagine the possibilities as we take our new ideas into New York City schools and create a culture of innovation!