Digital School Solutions

Blog entry posted March 19th, 2010 by Victor Aluise

their On 3/17, DSS consultants and Alan November facilitated a lively hands-on workshop at the NYC United Federation of Teachers head office. The guiding question was “Who owns the learning?” The goal was to help participants rethink the role of school leaders, librarians/media specialists, classroom teachers, and students as they begin to build (or evolve) their innovation plans.

Alan November facilitated the morning session. Sparks were flying as he challenged participants to “go global” with their schools/classrooms.  Alan gave three reasons why: 

1. To ensure global survival – students will need to enter professions where they do business around the world, and without global communication tools and skills, they don’t stand a chance

2. To ensure global empathy – students need to see issues and events from others’ perspectives; it’s among the top qualities employers seek when hiring and grooming managers

3. To deepen their understanding of events

To go global, according to Alan, every classroom teacher should be fluent in these tools: RSS Readers, Skype, Jing , and Diigo.

In the afternoon, DSS consultants facilitated hands-on small group work with participants. DSS set up an online learning community for the session where participants could take online surveys and create group action plans using Google Docs. The goal was to help education leaders foster a culture of innovation across their network and school community. Video case studies were shared as a springboard for critical thinking, dialog, and leadership work. 

Guiding Questions / Topics of Investigation:

• What is our vision for establishing a culture of innovation?
• Who should own the learning?
• What new responsibilities can we give to students that will build capacity for learning?
• What are our next steps toward supporting a collaborative culture of learning?
• How might we redefine the role of teacher and role of student to support our vision?
• What are the implications for my own work as an education leader?

Overall, participants felt that students should own the learning; here are some ideas of how to make that shift:

1. Have students provide input on how best to use Web 2.0 tools (RSS Readers, Skype, Social Networking Sites, etc.) in their own classroom projects and assignments
2. Give students jobs to help in class (students as tutorial designers, scribes, researchers, domain experts using blogs and wikis, collaboration facilitators using Skype)
3. Provide teacher professional development and in-class support to help teachers make the shift from “sage” to “learning facilitator.”

Let’s keep the dialog going… Chime in and give your opinion! Who should own the learning in your learning community and why?

Contact us and make an appointment with a DSS consultant to discuss how we can support your learning community “go global” and make the shift to true student-centered work.