Project



**//Westtown School Team Project: Breaking Down Walls, Making Connections, Collaborating//** Lisa Cromley, Middle School History Teacher Anny Ewing, Lower School K-5 Spanish Teacher Karen Gallagher, Director of Studies/English Teacher Margaret Haviland, Curriculum Coordinator/History Teacher Megan Rose, Middle School History Teacher Nichole Sacco, Lower School Computer Teacher Oscar Sosa, Upper School Spanish Teacher
 * TEAM MEMBERS **

1. ** The problem: How do we break down barriers to communication and collaboration? ** **Our team has concentrated on Collaboration as the 21st Century skill in need of greatest attention in our classrooms and among our colleagues.**

Some of the challenges we hope to address are:
 * Schedules that keep us from meeting in the same time and place
 * Teachers limited to the resources inside the classroom walls,.
 * Students limited to learning within their own classroom
 * Students narrowly engaged in in research activities individually with no shared outcome
 * Teachers working in isolation in developing curriulum
 * Teachers unable to build a **//shared sense//** of student progress or need for support

**Among colleagues**: we are eager to explore ways to work together by design.


 * Within our classrooms**: we are eager to model collaborative learning practice with the support of WEB 2.0 tools.

The common thread will be a paradigm shift toward collaboration, away from individual (isolated) problem-solving. We hope to change the ability to collaborate, both within our classrooms (among students) and in a variety of collective teacher-led forums. (among teachers); In so doing, we hope to build a sense of team-building that is critically important to creating a dynamic learning environment.

PLP team will model for colleagues** a process for identifying a need or problem, working through a process to narrow and fine tune goals and outcomes and then selecting the appropriate tool or method for realizing the desired end. Our colleagues will be exposed to the process for moving from an idea through to 21st century tool selection.
 * 2. Objectives and Assessment **
 * Faculty:
 * Upper School History has attempted to collaborate with a teacher outside the school
 * **Middle School members of the team** have developed **a collaborative team approach** to managing **Middle School** grade level communication, selecting two WEB 2.0 tools to pilot in a curricular project in 2010-11 program.
 * **Lower School members** are exploring ways to **enhance communication** among **Lower School** colleagues around professional development interests as well as discussing student issues and need. The focus has been on establishing protocols to support sharing information on the web.

Students** will learn how to identify a problem, select a research approach, and use a tool to create an effective way to share/publish their learning.
 * Students:
 * **Upper School language students** have been introduced to expanding the community of practice through broadening their network of communication beyond the school using a WEB 2.0 tool.
 * **New** **11th/12th grade English** **elective this spring revolving around** collaborative research, and collaborative presentation models, with a goal of each group publishing outside the traditional paper format
 * **Upper School 11th and 12th grade History classes** participate in a NING which generates Discussion Forums on Current Events Issues.

//Success will be measured in the following manner. How well did we accomplish each of our individual goals. Did the forums we chose for communicating with colleagues provide for an authentic sharing of different kinds of collaboration. Were our projects realizable and actionable by other busy folks? We will measure what __we__ do, not what our colleagues do.// **
 * Assessment:


 * 3. Networked Design **
 * Share within our relevant groups to extend the reach of new approaches**
 * **Grade level team leaders (Lisa and Megan--Middle School; Anny and Nichole--Lower School) **
 * **Departmental colleagues (Karen--English, Margaret--History, Oscar and Anny--World Languages) **
 * **Student Support Teams coordinators (Karen--Upper School) **
 * **Technology Committee (Nichole) **
 * **Global Citizenship Committee (Margaret and Megan) **
 * **Curriculum Committee (Karen and Margaret) **


 * Wikispace for PLP cohort**
 * **Use wikispace to keep each other abreast of our individual work **
 * **Use wikispace to record our collective conversations and actions. **


 * Seek critical friends and partners: Each PLP team member seek out one critical friend outside the cohort**


 * Faculty updates--report out to broader faculty community**
 * March 22, In-Service Day**-- share with the faculty an update on our work and solicit input.**
 * June faculty meetings--**bring our faculty up to date with where we are, seek input on improvements to our project and invite others to join us in our projects**


 * Reach out to decision makers and active school-wide committees**
 * **Meet with Principals Group** (share Learning Showcase, Discuss proposal for Y2 cohort and new Y1 cohort)
 * **Meet with School-wide Technology Committee** (share Learning Showcase, Discuss hopes for future implementation)
 * **Meet with Global Initiatives Committee** (share Learning Showcase, Discuss hopes for new learning approaches)

5. Proposal **
 * 4. Set the Context: team members research and try out possible new approaches**
 * **//Margaret://** **Cross-school collaboration**
 * **//Margaret//: Ning** **for US History students (expand into a core 10th grade class)**
 * **//Karen:// Google Docs (English 11/12 elective) for collaborative writing and presentations**
 * **//Nichole:// Examine the results of the Faculty Technology Survey**
 * **//Megan and Lisa//: Moodle page for Middle School Faculty communication**
 * **//Anny:// Wiki page for Private LS Faculty communication, Ning page for Faculty Discussion forums**
 * 
 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">//**Faculty:** Use <span style="color: #000000; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">collaborative tools <span style="color: #000000; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; line-height: 20px;"> to invite sharing of ideas, between face to face meetings //
 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">//<span style="color: #000000; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">**Students and Faculty** <span style="color: #000000; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; line-height: 20px;">: Collaborative projects will re-shape the expectation that effective learning and growth happens among us, collectively, and not in isolation //


 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">6. Evaluation **
 * By the end of spring 2011 our real success will be measurable by the number of additional teachers and students participating in our Westtown Ning and with the spread of this practice into the other divisions.**

The full implementation will take place in the 2010/2011 school year. We will know we are successful if the Middle School Teams find communication easier using the model developed by Lisa and Megan and then if this model is replicated in the other divisions. Anny's work on faculty communication dovetails nicely here and will help to move this work across divisions. Margaret, Oscar and Karen's success will be measured more incrementally both within the divisions and beyond the school. Most specifically, will the humanities teachers in the upper school embrace collaborative tools such as google docs and Ning to foster student work and will this work begin to connect Westtown students with others outside the school in real projects related to the school's mission and curricula. While Nichole's project is most specific to her own work, the process for technology evaluation she is developing will help to shape our technology adoption process into something workable for faculty (and make it faculty driven rather than technology office driven!) Successful implementation will empower faculty AND help the tech office.

Meeting with Technology Committee--review progress, look ahead Meeting with Global Initiatives Committee--review progress, look ahead
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">7. Timeline **
 * March 6:** Everyone will have defined their piece of the project and identified resources to pursue during the two week spring break
 * March 22:** This is a work day set aside for us. We will work to implement the collective pieces of our project and make plans for reaching out to our faculty in order to begin the scaling process
 * May:** Meeting with Principals--review progress, look ahead


 * June 11-14:** End of the year faculty meetings will be an opportunity for providing professional development based on what we have learned this year. By this time we should each be able to document aspects of our own own learning and work that will shift the way we approach our teaching and administrating in the 2010/2011 school year

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**8. Documentation Timeline created in dipity.com** (Our PLP timeline) <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">I ndividual wiki pages within our Wiki Project "Breaking Down Walls" record individual progress,keep each other informed about steps taken, lessons learned, tools explored and reflections on them. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Oscar —have students use language learning to participate in larger communities of practice. (Any 2.0 tool - as long as it works) <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Margaret's breached wall —classroom walls. Find a teacher to collaborate with outside of Westtown. Lisa & Megan —break down time and place walls to enhance Grade Level team communication (On <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**[|Ning]** ) Nichole —researching tools for specific projects I will explore various Web 2.0 tools and create a wiki that explains and has links to examples of use. Anny —researching tools for enhancing communication about LS… students? issues? Karen —Upper School English elective--team research projects, collaborative presentations, publish
 * Timeline created as a word document.**
 * Breaking Down Walls:**


 * Resources** (Tony Wagner 's 7 Survival Skills, Bloom's Taxonomy , 21st Century Engauge Skills, Global Ed Team charge, E-3 Curriculum, [|ISTEs Nets])
 * Back to Westtown School**

Middle School Moodle English Moodle History Ning [|PLP Prezi]