Google+ Communities Enriching PLC's...

credit: Flickr @niellkennedy

Our district uses the term "PLC" for common planning times that have official tasks and trainings. It's great that schools have realized the importance of teachers organizing and collaborating their plans together, but dedicating just 1-2 hours of time each week in physical space and time is far from a PLC or a PLN.  A 21st Century teacher should be a CONNECTED teacher.  Connected with a global community with access to pedagogy, content knowledge, tools, and more.

I've set a goal this year to connect our teachers in their "PLCs" with real 21st Century PLNs using Google+ Communities.  Here is the plan...

1. Sell the curriculum team on the importance of online communities. Online communities provide teams with a unique medium for sharing resources and ideas. Online communities will allow teachers to ask questions with a wider audience and higher quality answers. The communities we will start with are:
1. New hire teachers in the New Teacher Mentor Program
2. Teachers in 1:1 classroom environments.
3. AP Teachers (This is our first year offering AP courses).
2. Train the leadership teams in each program how to use Google+ communities.
3. Discuss and practice facilitating engaging online discussions and activities

The thought is that with an online community, teachers will form deeper bonds with their team and hold meaningful conversation that will extend the physical limitations of the current PLC format. Additionally, campus administrators can observe and join in the conversations more easily. They can keep their finger on the pulse of their instructional teams without monopolizing all of the PLC meeting time.

For a district like ours, an online community also gives our teachers and administrators the opportunity to further develop and change the struggling culture of our district. Online communities, can lift the level of professionalism because the community is online and facilitates a more transparent environment.

Enhancing the Flipped Classroom

Love it or dismiss it, the Flipped classroom is a viable and relevant (or perhaps revelant for all those flipped classroom fan-boys and girls)  teaching style for the 21st Century Classroom. But I would argue that as we evolve in our understanding of teaching and learning styles we recognize that what is known as the Flipped Classroom is merely one piece of a larger instructional strategy.

Traditional Flipped Model
The traditional Flipped classroom model looks something like this. Students watch lecture videos at home and return to the classroom prepared for participating in activities, projects, and guided practice. At this point the student's learning is assessed and we repeat the cycle. The Flipped model, as it has been discussed over the past several years, talks a great deal about the video portion of this model. Many teachers get hung up on the technology, the videos, or even the internet connectivity to make this all work.

Revised Flipped Model
The revised model follows many of the same underlying strategies in the Flipped model, but focuses less on the video or the technology and more on the principles behind each stage of the learning/teaching process. Additionally, this model follows the TPACK model (Technology, Pedagogy, and Content) more closely than the traditional Flipped model.

While I'm still wrapping my own head around what good, 21st Century teaching looks like, I think a shift in the dialogue around the flipped classroom with instructional strategies as the focus is a healthy evolution of instructional technology and the Flipped Classroom specifically.

What about you? Do you agree with this revised model? How would you change or revise the Flipped classroom model?