Discussions

Your Name and Title: Nicholas Hobar, Team Leader

School or Organization Name: LearningFront

Co-Presenter Name(s): None

Area of the World from Which You Will Present: Baltimore, MD, USA

Language in Which You Will Present: English

Target Audience(s): Teachers, administrators, and professional developers at all levels

Short Session Description (One Line). Discover how to use free integrated social media and professional development tools to change the learning process from one teacher for many learners to thousands of teachers for each learner.

Full Session Description (As long as you would like). Today’s technology makes it possible to engage and channel the collective intelligence of people to match their ideas, proven practices, and knowledge with the needs and problems of teachers in low performing and trailblazing schools worldwide.

Learning. In this session you will extend your current knowledge and acquire new skills to:

1. Connect with colleagues individually and in teams to solve learning challenges
2. Develop standards-based lessons, assessments, data analyses, and action plans
3. Share results by cloning tasks and posting wikitasks for online collaboration
4. Deliver blended face-to-face and online professional development programs

Strategy. The 60-minute session will follow this learning strategy with discussion throughout:

1. 10 minutes: Introduce the vision of “Thousands of Teachers for Each Learner”
2. 20 minutes: Demonstrate integrated social media and PD tools
3. 20 minutes: Practice applying the integrated tools to solve a learning challenge
4. 5 minutes: Create and share resources in a learning community venue
5. 5 minutes: Reflect on session content, process, and results
   

Payoff. Expanding the “Thousands of Teachers for Each Learner” vision will help you to:

Decrease:

• Isolation among teachers
• Barriers to coaching
  
• Conventional teaching strategies
• Low performing students
• Fragmented professional development

Increase:

• Collaboration among colleagues
• Tools and time for coaching
• Engaging learning strategies
• High performing students
• On-demand professional development

Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:

http://www.learningfront.com

http://www.learningfront.com/free_stuff.cfm

http://learningfront.blogspot.com/