Connected Leaders: Tools to Grow Collaborative Conversations

Last week I attended NCTE, and couldn't escape the power of social media in growing my professionalism. As soon as I arrived I was happily catching up with colleagues from across the United States that continually push my thinking.  Gone are the days when we have to feel isolated in our classrooms.  While I still learn so much from my colleagues next door, my professional community has grown exponentially as a result of social media networks, blogs, and connected communities.

What do connected leaders need to consider?

As our district's elementary literacy instructional leader, I have come to also appreciate the power of social media and other digital tools to grow collaborative conversations across our fourteen elementary buildings.  While we are still finding our voice as a collaborative community, here are a few tools I find essential in communicating and growing a collaborative conversation.

Three tools I can't live without:

1.  To Share Our Story:  A Blog.  Every group needs a hub.  A digital hub helps us connect our community, curate resources, and build our narrative. Our literacy coaches are working to grow a literacy website.  On our site we share links, professional development opportunities, resources (still growing), as well as a weekly blog post.  (Need a space?  Try Weebly.)

2.  To Connect Our Community:  Twitter (or some social media outlet).  Our district has a growing number of classrooms on Twitter sharing their stories of learning and connecting with others.  We use Twitter to share professional learning opportunities, tweet blog updates, and pass along information helpful to teachers.  Additionally, we use Twitter to tell the story of literacy in our district by retweeting the celebrations of classrooms across the district.  Twitter allows us to learn from one another and step inside each other's classrooms.  (Our account:  @HCSDElemLit)

3. To Curate Links & Information:  S'more.  S'more works in a way that is similar to a newsletter, pamphlet or brochure.  I find S'more to be perfect for sharing resources around topics or for particular groups.  It is easily shared on social media or via email.  Often I create a S'more for a group conversation and then as others contribute ideas and resources we can easily add them to the original S'more.


More Possibilities:

SaveSave

Digital Reading: Authenticity, Intention, & Connectedness (#cyberPD week 2)

"The work of young readers must be based on the things 'real readers' do (p.26)."            ------Sibberson & Bass 

This is our second week for #cyberPD.  I am co-hosting with Laura Komos and Michelle Nero.  Educators from a variety of places are reading and talking virtually about Digital Reading: What's Essential by Franki Sibberson and Bill Bass.  This second week our focus is on chapters 3-5  If you'd like to join us stop by our #cyberPD Google Community.  

To Teach Readers:  Read
It's hard to pull apart authenticity, intention, and connectedness in our workshop.  It seems for one of these characteristics to be present, we really must have the others.  As I've reflected on the chapters of authenticity, intention and connectedness, I've been thinking about the way this event, #cyberPD, allows us to work in many of these ways.  This event has been taking place each July since 2011.  It's difficult to articulate the way my learning is deepened because of the resources we collect, the responding we do to one another, and the way we interact.  Other readers notice things I didn't always notice.  Other readers see things in ways I haven't always considered.  The #cyberPD event challenges us to work much as we would want our readers to work in our classroom:

• authenticity:  Participants chose to join this book talk and to learn with the community.  The depth of our participation is really up to us.  The way we take in information, choose to respond, and interact is also up to us.  We have choice.   
• intention:  Participants have been intentional about their purpose for reading.  Each of us know our role as educators and the way these new ideas will fit into our worlds.  Many of us have added additional resources we have discovered to support the key ideas as we intentionally dig deeper around the topic.  Adding the Google Community has opened up new possibilities for response in a variety of formats.  
• connectedness:  I get more out of #cyberPD book talks than books I read independently.  The connectedness is what makes this experience powerful.  The community conversation deepens my understanding and makes me consider ideas from new perspectives.  As part of a group I feel I know more.  Everyone's expertise shapes my thinking and builds my understanding.  

Moving Toward Digital Workshops

Bill and Franki remind us, "Being readers ourselves is the best tool we have to keep our classroom workshops authentic (p. 30)."  When I think about #cyberPD I always consider what this means for students.  What opportunities do I have as a digital reader that students should also have as they build their reading lives?  Digital tools offer new possibilities to young literacy learners.  I've found in my classroom there is much more interaction with our reading.  I remember the days of really trying to get students to do more with their thinking before, during, and after their reading.  Now it seems that extending our thinking beyond text is more natural with all the of the digital tools available to respond and connect with others.  

The very first year of #cyberPD we read Patrick Allen's, Conferring:  The Keystone of Reader's Workshop.  Patrick's quote still rings in my ears, "If someone walked into our classroom, who would he or she say owned it?"  It seems that student ownership is key to a strong reading workshop where students seamlessly move between print and digital texts.  If students truly own their learning, opportunities will continually grow around digital reading, learning, and connecting.  Would someone walking into our classroom see all students engaged in learning?  Would they see students working on a variety of literacy opportunities?  Would they see different texts out around the room?  Would they see students talking purposefully together?  Would they see readers responding in a variety of ways?  Would they see students experiencing these same opportunities we've had as we've worked together in our #cyberPD group?  

Created by Cathy Mere.   Reflections of Digital Reading:  What's Essential by Bill Bass & Franki Sibberson.
I've really been wanting to learn to use sketch noting as a way to respond.  I had told myself I would do each response in this event in a sketch note.  However, it has been much harder than I imagined.  To get this one to look at all like I had hoped I had to move between three different apps:  Paper 53, Inflow and Phonto.  Anyone have a sketch note app they love?

Franki and Bill remind us, "Authenticity is evident when I look around the room and see kids using various tools that meet their needs at the moment (p. 26)."  Keeping in mind the importance of time, choice, and response in our workshops will support opportunities for students to work with authenticity, intention, and connectedness.  There's an interplay between our routines, structures, resources, use of digital tools in our lessons, and the way students talk in our workshops that create opportunities for new experiences.  As Franki and Bill remind us, digital tools expand our options and open our classrooms to new possibilities for young literacy learners.

Previous Posts That Illustrate Essential Components
Authenticity:

• Curating Our Love of Books
• Am I Crazy?  Blogging with First Graders

Intention:

• Reader's Workshop:  Independent Reading Time
• The Need for Continuous Access

Connectedness:  

• Supporting Readers:  The Global Read Aloud
• Classroom Twitter Accounts
• Our New Class Home  (note my current school hub is at merelyreading.weebly.com)

More #cyberPD Information
Please stop by the Google Community to read reflections of participants and find important links.  If you'd like to join, it's never too late:

• Week of July 6th:  Read Chapter 1 - 2, digital response by 7/9
• Week of July 13th:  Read Chapters 3-5, digital response by 7/16
• Week of July 23rd:  Read Chapters 6 - 7, digital response by 7/23 
• Final Twitter Chat with authors Franki Sibberson and Bill Bass:  Tuesday, July 28th at 8 p.m. EST

***Educators in Hilliard City Schools (please read here) will be discussing the assigned chapters each week on Twitter using the hashtag #cyberPD.  These chats will take place each Thursday at 10 a.m. EST.  If you do not teach in the district, you are still welcome to join these weekly conversations. 

DigiLit Sunday: Why Leaders Should Be Connected

Not too long ago we received an email from our superintendent titled:  Follow Your Passion.  Apparently he sensed the apprehension growing over upcoming mandated testing.  The email was several paragraphs in length and sent to remind us to stay focused on what we do.  Here's a piece of the letter:  

"Don't allow outside forces to compromise your classroom environment, building culture, or faith in yourself.  Good teaching trumps all... teach well and let the tests take care of themselves.  Be true to your passion and true to your students."  Dr. John Marschhausen

This was a timely email, perhaps a result of a growing anxiousness about testing that seemed to be starting to build in buildings and even in social media.  We have been fortunate in the last few years to have leaders working to stay connected using email, blogging platforms, Google, VoiceThread, and social media, among other digital tools.  As a teacher in a large district, I appreciate the time leaders take to stay connected.

It didn't seem uncommon, years ago, to sit in a meeting and hear about a new initiative that seemed to just come from nowhere.  It was hard to process it all.  All of a sudden there would be something new we were doing, and as a teacher you worked to catch up to it.  It didn't seem uncommon to talk to teachers in one building who had different information than we had in another building.  Leaders made a good effort to keep everyone informed, but information shared in meetings and through people will arrive in different ways and at different times.  It feels different now with leaders staying connected; messages are more consistent.

Not only are messages more consistent, but it is easy to see the unfolding of ideas across time.  Many of our technology, curriculum, and administrative leaders have started to share and collaborate using Twitter.  I've found following these accounts and conversations has helped me to stay informed and continued to inspire me across the school year.  As district leaders have thought about developing a growth mindset, blended learning, digital literacy, personalization, grading practice, assessment, and re-visioning school, they've shared interesting articles they've discovered, new steps being considered, and ways to grow the work we do with children.  It is easy to see the collaboration and learning happening across the district.

In addition to supporting a journey of learning, they have helped to tell the story of the work we do.  They've shared the work of committees and the conversations in community meetings.  They've shared the stories of the many things happening throughout our district.  It's much easier to see the connectedness of our learning environments.

Finally, it would be easy in any district to get caught up in our own work and lose sight of envisioning new possibilities.  Connected leaders continue to grow in their own thinking as they have conversations and follow the thinking of colleagues around the globe.  Many have grown their personal learning networks and started to participate in larger conversations that push their thinking.  There's something exciting about being in a community where learning, sharing, and risk-taking are becoming common.  Connected leaders make a difference.