The Power of a Professional Learning Network

This week I attended the TEC21 Facilitator's Academy at Concordia University, Nebraska. The mission of TEC21 is to coach teachers to facilitate technology-enriched classrooms for 21st century learners. This group of connected educators share a passion for connecting teachers in Lutheran schools as we integrate technology in creative ways. We form a Professional Learning Network of support, encouragement, assistance, and accountability.

A professional learning network is "a vibrant, ever-changing group of connections to which teachers go to both share and learn. These groups reflect our values, passions, and areas of expertise" (Education Week Teacher, December 31, 2014). Our TEC21 PLN is truly a vibrant and ever-changing group. We welcomed six new facilitators for the coming year so we are now a Professional Learning Network of fourteen. This year we will serve over 100 teachers, in 21 centers throughout 10 states from California to Michigan. One facilitator will be leaving to teach in Shanghai soon, yet he still joined us via Google Hangout to participate, share resources, and lead sessions. We share our expertise with each other knowing that collaboratively we can accomplish more than is possible individually. We both shared and learned during an Edcamp format allowing each facilitator to select areas of interest to lead or attend.

This PLN meets monthly online via WebEx to connect, share new ideas, plan workshop agendas, and reflect. We experience in our PLN the dynamic we then create in our teacher groups. We build relationships, establish trust, present new ideas, and provide support and encouragment to help each other grow. During the school year we present ideas then coach teachers to apply them to curriculum. Teachers are energized, classrooms are innovative, and students learn in engaged ways!

My PLN expands even further to include Tech EDGE partners, UNL and Concordia colleagues, classroom teachers with whom I work, preservice teachers, and hundreds of professionals from around the world online via Twitter and Google+. Each of these persons shares ideas and insights with me to help me continue to grow professionally and personally, and I in turn share resources with them to help them learn. My PLN: "a vibrant, ever-changing group of connections to which teachers go to both share and learn. These groups reflect our values, passions, and areas of expertise" (Education Week Teacher, December 31, 2014). I would love to add you to my PLN. Join me on Twitter @FriedrichLaurie!

21st Century Skills are as Important as Content

Teachers today need to provide learning opportunities for students to learn 21st-century skills including leadership, digital literacy, problem solving and communication in addition to traditional skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic. Driving the Skills Agenda: Preparing Students for the Future maintains that the skills a student gains through learning are at least as important as the content. To help students develop these necessary 21st century skills teachers must create learning opportunities for students that require them to collaborate, take leadership roles, solve problems, research, and create content using information technologies. Brian Schreuder  further asserts that 21st century skills must be modelled by teachers in order for students to begin to use them on a regular basis. Just as technology must be meaningfully integrated into content, so 21st century skills must be a part of everything we do. Only then will students be prepared to participate in today's global society.

As Guy and I worked with teachers last week in our iPads in the Classroom course we again saw how working with technology can create teacher leaders. It was encouraging to hear a supervisor encourage these teachers that they would be in the top 1% of teachers in ability to integrate technology after taking this course. With encouragement to try new things, support as they implemented them into projects they will actually use in their classroom this fall, ongoing feedback

from peers and instructors, and accountability to accomplish their goals during the course these teachers created amazing projects. All created a professional blog and blogged daily. Everyone created a Twitter account, began following each other and experts in their respective fields, and tweeted out many new insights. Some created e-portfolios to house e-books, screencasts, movies and more. Some created websites while others collaborated to integrate technology into units they will teach. Engagement was high and results demonstrated much professional growth. Not only did these amazing teachers learn how to use technology, they also grew as leaders as they collaboratively solved problems through communication and research. These teachers will join other teachers we have worked with who grew not only in their technology ability but also in their 21st century skills. These teachers model these skills for their students as they teach, lead in their schools and districts, and empower students to implement 21st century skills in meaningful learning projects.

I believe that these 21st century skills are as important as content so I find value in lessons that teach content but add digital literacy skills of searching, evaluating, synthesizing, and communicating multimodally. Ideally these lessons become transformative in the SAMR model, but even if they augment the learning by teaching students affordances of the technology it meets a great need. Our students will need 21st century skills in school, career, and society. As teachers we need to intentionally model and teach these skills as we integrate them into our lessons. It's all about the students' needs!