Professional Learning Practice Leaders Meeting at Kean University

The leaders meeting of this pilot was absolutely awesome and I believe will be a great success for all those involved. The main goal of the group is to change the mode of instruction and learning to be dynamic and student-focused by using technology. The main outcomes are connections, sustainability, capacity. knowledge, pedagogy. Even though technology will be used in this pilot, it is not the main focus. The concept of changing the instructional process is not going to be an easy situation but it has become a necessity unless all our students "are left behind" in the coming economy and globalization of our world. Instruction has not changed much from the 1950s and this does not only affect teachers in a K-12 environment but it also affects the post-secondary institutions. The participants for this project includes NJ Dept of Ed, Kean University, NJASA, NJPSA, and different school districts in the state covering K thru 12th grade.

• The meeting was hosted by the Center of Innovative Education at Kean University and was moderated by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson. After the introductions, Sheryl presented the objectives and overview of the project.

Learning through emersion.

The craft of education community.

Implement change and be involved in our student’s lives.

It's becoming self-directed and no longer linear.

Emergent design models.

Members of the community owns the community.

Leaders become members of the community.

Needs to evolve over time.

Co-created and building champions.

PLP objectives:
1. understanding of the shifts that occur
2. provide fundamental and practical understanding of how online networks are challenging traditional notions
3. teach participants how to use many of these tools
4. oppotunities for classroom teachers, administrators and other personnel to learn
5. facilitate meaningful collaboration among individual school teams
6. build capacity for individual to grow their own personal learning networks
7. foster an understanding of the shifting pedagogies required to teach Read/Write tools and the literacies that go along with it.


In the afternoon Will and Sheryl presented and demonstrated the online tools that would be used for communication and collaboration during the project including Elluminate, Blogging, creating Ning environments, Delicious bookmarks, Twitter, etc.. At the end of the meeting new connections were formed and the excitment of this project could be felt in the air. The possibilities are endless and will affect the students of New Jersey directly.