Building Communication for Teachers and Learners

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Building Communication for Teachers and Learners

• Jeanne Ann Davidson
• Board of Regents
• University System of Georgia
• Harold G. Powers
• Georgia State University
• Zoë Salloom
• Georgia State University

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Board of Regents of the University System of
Georgia

• Oversees 35 Public
• Colleges Universities
• of Georgia and the
• Public Libraries of the
• 159 counties

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Board of Regents of the University System of
Georgia

• The Board oversees 35 institutions4 research
  universities, 2 regional universities, 13 state
  universities, 7 state colleges, and 9 two-year
  colleges.
• These institutions enroll more than 250,000
  students and employ more than 9,500 faculty and
  35,000 employees

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Integrated Learning Environment

• The Digital Unified Campus

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Vista Usage Statistics
Initial Data Point taken 2 weeks into term
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Creating the Community

• Faculty moving from being the sole source of
  information to becoming facilitators, mentors,
  and guides
• Students are moving from being passive knowledge
  absorbers to active knowledge generators

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Creating the Community

• Must provide support
• Ability to dialogue
• Critically reflect on the material
• Critically reflect on the self

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Building Learning Communities

• Interaction
• Collaboration
• Cooperation

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Interaction

• Interaction
• Communication between two or more learners
• Used to engage learners in either content or
  processes
• To give and receive feedback

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Collaboration

• The act of learners working together in small
  groups during a finite time frame
• Purpose is usually to analyze a situation, solve
  a problem, or brainstorm ideas

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Cooperation

• Different than collaboration
• Complexity
• Duration
• Work together with minimal guidance from faculty
  to achieve an outcome or goal that can only be
  achieved collectively

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The Keys to Success

• Honesty
• Responsiveness
• Relevance
• Respect
• Openness
• Empowerment

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Reading and Writing for Learning

• Southern Regional Education Board (SREB)
• Interstate compact - 16 member states
• Collect, compile and analyze data
• Conduct broad studies
• Initiate discussions

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Reading and Writing for Learning

• Web-based professional development course
• Middle grades, high school teachers,
  administrators
• Designed for team participation
• Participation both onsite at school and online

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Reading and Writing for Learning

• Purpose
• Provide teachers with practical strategies
• Implemented easily
• Academic and career/technical classrooms

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Reading and Writing for Learning

• Purpose (cont)
• Help students read advanced-level material
• Help students communicate effectively through
  writing
• Improve in-depth learning
• Guide schools to develop school action plans

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RW4L Long Term Goal

• Increase number of students throughout SREB
  network reading at a proficient level

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Critical component

• Interaction of the school team
• At least five people
• Teachers and administrators

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Three team activities

• Participate in a common professional development
  experience
• Develop a school action plan
• Serve as Staff Developers to demonstrate those
  techniques to others

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Opportunities for teamwork

• Face-to-face meetings
• Online communication with course facilitators
• Opportunities for practice
• Individual and group assignments

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Goals for Participating Schools

• Strengthen school-improvement team concept
• Improve teaching and learning by implementing a
  school improvement action plan
• Utilize the strategies presented in this
  professional development experience

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Goals for Course Participants

• To be a contributing member of an improvement
  team
• To design and execute an action plan for sharing
  strategies
• To be provided student and teacher/student survey
  data
• To analyze local school data

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Goals for Students of Participants

• To be instructed using strategies designed to
  improve reading and writing
• To be required to practice reading and writing
  inside and outside the classroom
• To demonstrate improved performance on reading
  and writing assignments and on achievement tests

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RW4L Workshop format

• WebCT Vista
• Discussion tool
• E-mail
• Problem-based
• Activity-focused
• Individual and group assignments

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Something to Think About

• Setting the stage for a common reading writing
  challenge
• Participants
• see examples of the challenge
• see examples from other schools that are working
  on solutions to the challenge
• Facilitator
• Provides information about technical support

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Selecting a Route

• Strategy to overcome the challenge
• Participants
• share examples of how others have used the
  strategy
• evaluate the strategy and brainstorm how to apply
  it
• one member posts a message for the team
• different member posts at each meeting
• Facilitator
• responds to the postings

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Taking the Trip

• Step-by-step for using the strategy
• Participants
• create and share a lesson plan incorporating
  strategy
• review one anothers plans
• Facilitator
• establishes deadline for posting plan
• encourages peer review, e-mail message to each
  member
• provides feedback to lesson plans

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Evaluating the Trip

• Reflection and revision
• Participants
• reflect on what worked and what didnt work as
  they taught the lesson using the strategy
• Facilitator
• responds to bulletin board postings on
  reflections
• reminds participants of deadlines
• encourages team to save plans to repository

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Other Things to Consider

• Additional resources
• Participants
• collect ideas on how to share the strategy with
  others
• include the strategy in the school-improvement
  plan
• Facilitator
• collects and posts additional resources
• reacts to teams thoughts on bulletin board
  postings

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• Teacher Support Specialist (TSS) is a program
  designed to train classroom teachers who are
  interested in becoming mentors for new teachers.
• The goal of the program is to increase retention
  of teachers who have been in the classroom less
  than 5 years.

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• New teachers sink or swim. This is how educators
  have long characterized entry into the
  profession. But today the odds of sinking have
  increased exponentially. In New York City, 40
  percent of teachers leave after three years, and
  48 percent will be gone after five years,
  according to the United Federation of Teachers.
  (Nationally, the figures are 30 percent and 50
  percent respectively.)
• Keeping New Teachers From Dropping OutEllen
  MeyersFebruary 20, 2006

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• TSS course uses reflective journals to build
  communities among the participants
• Reflective journals range from personal
  experience (teaching or social), to reflection on
  readings, or a hybrid of both

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• At the end of the course access is left open for
  discussion to continue
• Because of access and database issues, group
  e-mail was used to keep in touch

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Building Communication for Teachers and Learners

• Jeanne Ann Davidson
• Board of Regents
• University System of Georgia
• Harold G. Powers
• Georgia State University
• Zoë Salloom
• Georgia State University