Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about the Advanced Strand for Schools
Which Joined the 21 st Century Project in 2005-06

What is the 21st Century Learning Project?

The Alabama Best Practices Center has designed a two-year professional development program that engages educators from participating schools in powerful conversations about 21st Century Learning . Last year, with support from Microsoft Partners in Learning, ABPC recruited small teams from 20 forward thinking schools across the state and established a virtual learning community built around an online curriculum called, “Keeping Up with the Net Generation.” Feedback from our first group of schools was very positive.

These 20 schools will deepen their understanding of 21st Century Teaching and Learning this year by participating in an Advanced curriculum strand which will begin during first semester, when the scheduling is less likely to conflict with state testing and end-of-year school activities.

Our professional development experience will kick off with a day-long "21st Century OctoberFest," planned for early October. This face-to-face conference will feature a combination of keynote presentations, small group discussions, and hands-on activities for members of both our 2005-06 and 2006-07 school teams. We'll include an Advanced strand of breakout sessions for our team members who participated in last year's program.

How will the Advanced strand be different from last year's project?

Last year, our school teams participated in the basic curriculum developed for our project. This year, the members of last year's teams will push deeper into 21st Century teaching and learning by working on special projects they select.

How will this work? Participants in the Advanced strand—which we're calling Learning 2.0 – will form Special Interest Groups (SIGs) around a project of common interest. Your entire school team may choose to work on a single project together. Or, some members of your team may decide to to pursue a different project with one or more members of other school teams.

Need an example? Suppose most of the members on your school team want to use Web 2.0 tools to develop an online curriculum about Internet safety – but you're interested in using podcasts as a way to engage your students more deeply in course content. You put out the call (using our Tapped In community) and find several teachers at other 21st Century Schools who also want to embed podcasting into their instruction. Voila! You have a cross-school project.

This advanced project work will be supported by the ABPC Fellows, staff and consultants during two live Elluminate sessions and through ongoing discussions in Tapped In. Your work will culminate in a statewide face-to-face conference in Spring 2007, where some teams and individuals will present their Learning 2.0 projects to an audience of state leaders.

Why change the curriculum format for schools in the Advanced strand?

The outcomes for the Advanced strand are different from last year. They're designed to provide a deepening of understanding around the changes that the Read/Write Web is bringing to business, politics, journalism, and ultimately education. The Learning 2.0 curriculum has been designed to engage teachers in reflective discussions about how these changes affect their own professional practice, their classrooms, and their schools.

By developing a Learning 2.0 team project, participants in the Advanced strand will demonstrate a pedagogical understanding of how technologies such as weblogs, wikis, podcasts, social bookmarking sites, RSS feeds and others can enhance learning in the classroom.

Advanced strand teams will build upon the knowledge of web tools they acquired in Year One by infusing these tools into professional practice and ultimately engaging students in web-based learning.

Because the Advanced strand will focus on knowledge development, teams will use blogs to document, share and reflect upon the learning process occurring during the project work. The blogs will be accessible to all participants in our 21st Century Schools (Beginning and Advanced) as one way to create and sustain a supportive, reflective professional community.

What curriculum will be covered and what activities will take place in the Advanced strand of the 21 st Century Learning Project?

The curriculum will be learner centered and emphasize collaboration, with special speakers, sharing, and brainstorming.

The two Elluminate sessions for the Advanced strand will be delivered with a Learning 2.0 theme. The content of those sessions will include an overview of how to define a project idea (competency model), how to develop a Learning 2.0 project plan (learning contract), and an exploration of tools for sharing each team's chosen Learning 2.0 project.

As part of the Advanced strand, participants will work in teams (school-based or interest-based) and be led by a Fellow or other team leader to define a project idea, develop a plan, and deliver the plan as a podcast, wiki, vblog, slide set, social networking tool or any combination of Web-based tools.

How are teams selected for the Advanced strand?

Team make-up will be learner driven based on interests and learning goals of the team members. Special Interest Groups (SIGs) will be developed either among the existing school teams or by individual participants forming new teams based on their learning priorities.

 Will the Advanced strand participants still use Tapped In?

This year there will be one Tapped In online learning community ( www.tappedin.org ) for all 40 school-based teams. Teachers from last year's schools will have much to offer our new 21st Century school teams in deepening their understanding of how to use web-based technologies. Discussions in Tapped In will also serve as a refresher for last year's team members who didn't get to participate as much as they would have liked.

What do I do if I have more questions?

If you'd like more basic information about the 21st Century Schools project, see the FAQ document we shared with Beginning schools during our recent application process.