Rochester+Community+Schools

= = =Best Teaser Ever @ http://blabberize.com/view/id/236947 = =Team Members =

Instructional Technology Consultant; Dale Hopkins
To manage and facilitate our own learning, we developed the following strategies:
 * __Phase 1: Personal Learning __**

 __ Show & Tell for Ning __ The sheer volume of discussion on the Ning was overwhelming in the beginning of this process. As a team, we shared responsibility for monitoring discussions and reporting out. This added another layer to the discussions on the Ning and allowed us to further develop our thinking as a team. Below is a wordle of our thoughts: 

 __Discussion pages__  When the discussion topics were added to the Ning, we created pages to share out our thoughts. Below is a wordle of our thoughts: == ** __Phase 2: Brainstorming--"The Ning of Dreams" __ ** Our original plan involved creating a Ning to facilitate staff development in our school and to scale it up for our entire school district. It was to be the "Ning of Dreams"--We will build it and they will come! With 900+ teachers in our district, this will be a big project certainly not doable in one school year. The more we learned, the more we realized that we needed to build a very strong foundation. Our working philosophy is that we need to be 21st Century LEARNERS ourselves before we can be effective 21st Century TEACHERS. The attached documents outline our process.



__**Phase 3: Project Development--"Shift Happens" **__ The initial rollout to our staff took place on May 7, 2010 and included the following elements:

1. __Conceptual Overview__ Using the prezi embedded below, we introduced our staff to the idea of the "Shift". Our goal here is to define this idea of "Shift" and build a need for personal and professional learning.

media type="youtube" key="jyufAr8jzx0" height="216" width="362"

2. __Survey__ To gather baseline data about our staff's familiarity with Web 2.0 tools, we administered the following survey using the Smart Response System for the Smartboard. As growth is our goal, the results are very encouraging! Fourteen percent of our staff label themselves as very comfortable with technology with 38% reporting they would like guidance. Three percent use Twitter professionally, 14% have heard of Delicious, and less than 10% are familar with RSS Readers. The documents below are the survey and the results. We envision this piece as a pre/post test which will show us growth over time.



3. __Breakout Sessions__ We offered staff the following choices and they were able to self-select the session they wished to attend based on interest and aptitude.

1. Blog 2. Delicious 3. Ning 4. RSS Feeds 5. Smart Response 6. Twitter 7. Wiki

4. __Initial Feedback: Attitudes toward The Shift__ In order to guage reaction to the initial rollout, we used a short survey at the end of the Breakout Sessions. Our initial feedback is quite positive. Over 90% of staff report that they understand the message of the "Shift" and believe we need to learn to use Web 2.0 tools in order to be relevant in the 21st Century classroom. Only 30% of staff rate themselves as comfortable using these tools. Again, with growth as our first goal, the resuts are very encouraging! The actual survey and results are below.

5. __Introduce NING__ Our next step is to introduce our staff to the NING--[|Hart Middle School Ning] that we are building. We plan to do this in September 2010.

__**Phase 4: Project Evaluation **__ In addition to the pre/post test survey above, we will also use the rubric below to assess professional growth.