The Digital Literacy Center project was geared to increasing digital literacy skills for a primarily adult audience of traditionally under-served community members, including senior citizens, homeless, and low income residents. Here are some highlights and findings from this work:

• We conducted 24 classes, as well as 37 individualized “drop in” tech help sessions, four school sessions, and seven train-the-trainer classes.
• The program was enthusiastically received with 98.9% of participants reporting learning something by participating in the program. 94.3% said they were more likely to participate in a similar library activity in the future.
• The audience served was very diverse, ranging from those with very basic technology skills to those with more advanced proficiencies. The most popular classes were those related to smart phones and small business marketing.
• The audience for the help sessions varied, but tended toward those with lower levels of technology proficiency. The most requested help topics were in using smartphones and recovering and managing passwords.
• There is a big demand for both formal tech classes and informal tech help. The range of skill levels and types of questions along with the high degree of variability in individual device configurations requires flexible and experienced staff to meet these needs.
• Through professional development that was offered (both formally and informally), the library staff not only gained new skills, but began to see themselves in a role to provide technical support and other non-traditional services. This was a huge move forward for the library and its patrons.
• The curriculum developed for this program will be used in other parts of the county in 2019-20.

The expansion of the Creativity in a Box work allowed us to put these boxes in more locations around the county, to conduct 15 creativity-oriented workshops (primarily but not exclusively for youth), and to create new “Workshop in a Box” kits.

As we increased the reach of the program, implementation fidelity varied. Not surprisingly, the closer we were to the implementation (e.g. facilitating events vs. supplying resources and materials to others to implement), the more successful the results were. (This is a reminder that “train the trainers” type models are challenging.) At times, it was difficult to get information back from larger libraries that were not under county management. Staff changes were also a challenge. In addition, larger libraries seemed to struggle more with non-traditional resources like these. More professional development and support could help with this.

One of the most successful kits was the “Photo Challenge” kit, which includes 10 digital cameras, instructions, and photo challenges for kids to complete. This workshop is super-easy to conduct and is one of the most popular with participants, who have ranged from ages 2 to teenagers and even parents. Another very popular workshop is tie dyeing.

Overall, the project was a success with over 600 people participating, and 84.5% reporting that they learned something by participating. Importantly, there are a large number of resources (including 24 “Creativity in a Box” kits, four “Workshop in a Box” kits, and refills of consumables for all of this) that will be available to the nine participating libraries for years to come.

Sustainability is always a big consideration in the grants we administer. It is important to us that the work that is put into a grant be able to continue on after the grant funding concludes. (For example, our Free Book Box project is still going strong a couple years after the initial funding cycle.)

For 2019-20, we have on tap a Mobile Technology Lab project that will make a mobile lab of laptops available to smaller rural branches and will also expand our offering of tech literacy classes and individual help sessions. We are also going to be doing another oral history project. The first work we did in this area was in Portal. This new work will be more extensive and involves another local community.

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As many of you know, I’ve spent much of this year working on a project to explore the adoption and implementation of K-12 core instructional materials and to explore business models for the successful and sustainable publishing of such open educational resource (OER) materials.

I’ve written about some of this work as it’s progressed, and now the final report on this is available.

The report covers state and district adoption processes for K-12 core curriculum, considerations that are important to districts doing adoptions (particularly as it relates to OER publishers), attitudes toward OER, publishers’ perspectives on product and OER, information on business models for OER publishers, and recommendations to those in this market.

I learned a lot in the conversations and research that comprised this work. I am grateful to the Hewlett Foundation and everyone who participated.

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CLMOOC takes place June 18–August 2, 2015 and includes six week-long iterative make cycles. You can sign up to get updates here. It is designed to be a collaboration rather than a course to which educators are invited to come in and participate during any or all cycles — the best way to engage is to sign up to receive the newsletter and jump in whenever you have time and interest.

You can see some of what happened in CLMOOC last year and what’s happening now in our G+ community or on Twitter.

I’ve also been brainstorming what might go into a great “maker box” for classrooms here. Add your thoughts!

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I am very excited to be convening the Passion-Driven Learning strand of the K12 Online Conference this year. This is an approach I believe deeply in.

We have an all-star line up covering vital topics such as genius hour, connected learning, and more. Several of these projects are ones I’ve been proud to be associated with this year.

Here is the schedule for the week. (Links will be added as the sessions air.)

Keynote Passion-Based Learning
Joy Kirr

Connected Learning Through Google Apps
Jennifer Bloomingdale

A Key to Interest-Based Learning
Paul Allison

Grab the MIC (Musical Integration Concept)
Kevin Cornell

Genius Hour Passion Projects
JoAnn Delaney

Connected Learners Need Connect Leaders
Donna Fry and Mark Carbone

Finding Your People
Cheryl Steighner

Trust and Transparency
Bart Miller

Moving From “Some Study I Used to Know” to Inquisitive Learning with Genius Hour & Passion Projects
Michele Haiken

Passion-Driven Learning in #clmooc–Supporting Teacher Agency in Making and Learning
Mallory McNeal and Anna Smith

An Introduction to Webmaker for Educators
Brendan Murphy

Web 2.0 Tools that will increase Creativity and Passion in Your Online Courses
Courtney Kofeldt

As always, all of these K12 Online sessions are open licensed and shareable and will be available indefinitely for you to view, use, remix, and share.

Thank you to everyone who contributed a session to K12 Online this year and for the good work you do all year!

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Well, this year’s strands and keynoters have been announced, and the Call for Proposals is now up. Proposals are due August 15.

I know that most of you reading this have a lot to contribute to a conference like this, so please consider proposing a session. We’ll all benefit!

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Mark your calendars, and think about incorporating this into your professional learning plans.

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Next week is the Virtual 4T Conference put on by the University of Michigan School of Education. This is a free, virtual conference (but registration is required).

On Monday, May 20 at 7pm Eastern, I’ll be a part of a panel talking about “The Potential of Open Resources for Your Classroom.” Hope you can join this and other V4T sessions and expand your professional learning!

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First, we had two computers running, one that “owned” the G+ hangout and was projected for the group (computer A) and one that was for a panel participant/moderator (computer B).

The hangout was started on G+ on computer A. Everyone who was on the panel (including one person who was actually in the room) was invited to hangout.

Computer A was connected to large room speakers. The mic was kept muted.

The person on Computer B used headphones and a mic. When she wasn’t talking, she muted her mic. When she was talking, we muted the big room speakers connected to computer A. (This mostly eliminated the annoyance of her hearing herself echo back through the big speakers a second or so after she spoke.)

We initially had some feedback issues, but doing the above and turning down the speaker volume seemed to resolve it.

We also had another session in a different room watching the hangout and that worked fine as well. (In fact, when we got knocked off the wireless and couldn’t get back on, they were able to continue on without us.)

Below is the end result. (One thing I learned was that when a hangout ends on the initiator’s computer, it will go on with others, but the broadcast cuts off.) Thanks to everyone on our panel and in the audience that made this possible.

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I did a session with Mike Agostinelli at NCCE 2013 this week about peer learning. I thought I’d try to model peer learning in the session, and the results were quite unexpected and very powerful.

The initial plan for the hour-long session was to ask people to start by sharing their experiences with peer learning, to share a bit of my thoughts about it, to show a few online tools that can facilitate peer learning (Twitter, P2PU), and then to spend the last 30 minutes on a live #connectedpd tweet chat about peer learning.

Here is the slide deck I planned to use.

I decided to sit out in the room instead of standing behind the presenter’s table, again to try to model a peer driven approach.

I started with my plan for the session and then asked everyone to share why they’d come and what they hoped to get out of it. (I also invited people to leave if the session wasn’t what they were expecting or if they didn’t think it would be useful to them. A couple did.)

When people shared their expectations and previous experiences with peer learning, they were predictably diverse. We talked a bit about PLCs and experiences with district-provided PD, and then a woman in the group said that she was starting a “teacher-led school” soon and wondered if we might talk about that.

My reactions were (a) how fascinating and (b) what a great way launching into this would be to model peer learning. There followed a spirited discussion of what a teacher-led school might look like, administrator roles, what systemic challenges schools have that may limit well-intended administrators, etc.

At some point, the woman expressed a concern that maybe we didn’t want to spend the whole session on this. There were indeed other things I’d planned to cover, but thought it was well worth diverging to experience this kind of peer learning firsthand.

As the scheduled time for the #connectedpd tweet chat approached, I suggested that we continue the conversation but move it to Twitter. I asked who had experience with Twitter and who didn’t and asked people to form small clusters to teach each other the basics of Twitter.

We jumped into the tweet chat with an unstructured format of small groups helping each other and me periodically giving some overall suggestions about how Twitter and tweet chats work.

It was a bit chaotic, but many meaningful conversations were going on. Much of that conversation continued to be verbal in the room, and we were trying to learn Twitter at the same time. At one point I said, “If we say these things on the tweet chat, we’ll also get the benefit of a whole lot more people talking with us.”

Did I mention that the wireless at this conference was a little shaky? And in the middle of the tweet chat, Howard Rheingold joined it? And that it was chaotic? (Here’s the Storify version.)

And man, was it fun! Afterward, I asked the participants – particularly those who had no previous experience with Twitter – if the format had worked for them. Most everyone said it was a valuable experience. Many of us connected on Twitter and agreed to stay in touch. Learning Twitter in the context of talking about peer learning seemed to bring a new level of meaning and authenticity. I suspect that more people than usual will come back to it after the conference.

At the end, I thought “this was kind of like an un-session!” And I would definitely do this again. I think that every time would be completely different.

I greatly appreciate everyone who took part and took the risk to participate in this experiment, including Claudia at #connectedpd. I hope you enjoyed it was much as I did.

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