Since my retirement from public schools, I have had the honor of working for working with Advanced Learning Partnerships. Over the past 8 1/2 years, I have worked with over 60 districts across the US in everything from instructional strategies and teaching and learning to spreadsheets and customer service. Each professional development session has been created and customized to meet the needs of the audience it was developed for. Please see examples in the professional development tab.
Much of my work is based on the work I did in Henrico County Public Schools, currently in its twenty-fourth year of a one-to-one laptop initiative. I believe that for all students to live, learn, and work successfully in an increasingly complex 21st century, information-rich society, they must excel in:
- Research and Information Fluency
- Communication and Collaboration
- Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
- Creativity and Innovation
In order to create a common vision and a common vocabulary, Instructional Technology (formerly Staff Development) developed a rubric to help define what these skills would look like in the classroom. This rubric, the Technology Integration Progression Chart (TIPC), forms the basis for the work of our department and the ITRTs. TIPC is based on the NETs*T and Partnership for 21st Century Skills. It was created in 2007 and has been updated yearly since its inception.
In addition to TIPC, much of our work is based on TPACK.* We believe that for good 21st century instruction to be evident, there must be three essential components:
- Content Expertise
- 21st Century, student-centered, engaging instruction
- A technology component
In addition to TIPC, two other important initiatives have been developed that have pushed our 21st century instructional initiative forward:
- Reflective Friends– A process by which outside observers collected baseline instructional data (based on TIPC), interviewed groups of teachers and students, and triangulated that data to give each school a picture of where they stood as related to TIPC. Additional observations were over a four-year period and significant growth was seen in most schools.
- Henrico 21– A collection of over 1000 21st century, student- centered lessons and projects that can be used by teachers for instruction. In addition, an awards ceremony is held each year that recognizes teachers who submit the best lessons and projects to the site.
- Student 21- A site for students to submit their 21st century products. Awards are given to students with the highest quality products each year in conjunction with Henrico 21. A student fair is also held that showcases the best student work from each school.
* “Reproduced by permission of the publisher, © 2012 by tpack.org”
