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This couldn't come at a better time! Having just finished a pilot project on how to do teacher-led PD in my region (see below), an issue has been to scale the work to other areas of the region, state, and beyond. A consensus has been that we should make the use of technology, including videos, a key aspect of this expansion. The video aspect addresses current logistic limitations and provides for more timely and frequent sharing. Augmenting with face-to-face meetings would certainly be an advantage, but not a "have to have." I am currently testing this model in a partnership with a local university (sharing videos of my PBL physics classroom) and have enjoyed good success. The premise of the original project was that better teacher collaboration will drive more innovative teaching practices throughout our region. Video technology has a real chance to be a primary catalyst for rapid scale-up of this model across a geographically unlimited number of classrooms and schools. What do you think?

Link: https://www.ednc.org/2015/05/12/professional-development-for-teachers-by-teachers/

Schools need to move away from seat time measuring learning model that we have been using for the past 100+ years. Education should focus on learning not how many hours/years a student has been in school. Many students today learn to "play" school instead of focusing on learning. Schools become daycare in this model. Schools should allow students to work at their own growth rate. If they can cover the learning in 6 months they should move on, but they should not be moving on just because the school year has ended. Education should shift to define essential learning skills that students need to master before moving on to the next leave of learning (or course).

Link: http://sweattoinspire.com/2014/12/14/lets-take-learning-off-the-clock/

As a teacher of 21 years in an urban setting I know how crucial collaboration for this profession is. Educators leave after a year or two, experience burn out or just become bitter. This year I discovered Voxer -my game changer! It is a free app which allows individuals to converse via audio. Voxer frees one from the limits of 140 characters. You can freely explain your thoughts while hearing the intonation & personality of the speakers. I first joined #Satchat with 240 educators across the nation. I have created a Specialized Instructors group, Michigan Educators group & am starting a group for staff in my school. The possibilities of using a tool like this for Professional Learning Networks are endless. This allows discussions across the nation, districts, schools & staff at a time of convenience. Educators have shared pictures, links, text messages & audio messages resulting in incredible professional development. Whenever I have questions or need feedback, I ask the "coach in my pocket".

Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18zdaXqMaa5yE8sJiHavp9gG2toMOW53XdFhBzsZX7bs/edit#gid=50015924

This challenge is important because current models of leadership don't allow the best instructional leaders to spread their expertise. Additionally, in many buildings, teachers have never seen their instructional coaches or principals teach; therefore, the title "instructional leader" lacks authenticity and credibility among the very people it is meant to inspire. Instead, we should be redesigning schools with career lattices for highly accomplished teachers to lead without leading. Administrative roles should be refined and require at least some time leading in a classroom even as some administrators will shine with other skills like grant-writing, curriculum mapping, or budgeting. In a truly distributed model, those with the highest skills would be rewarded with the agency to lead from that skill. We need to redesign the outdated, hierarchical leadership structure in our schools.

Our current education system does not have a mechanism for teachers from the same content areas to collaborate across educational setting boundaries (urban, suburban, rural). We need to create ways for teachers from all educational settings to collaborate and develop high quality (valid and reliable) classroom-based formative assessment tools that provide real-time feedback to learners and teachers about what learning targets have been mastered and what students must do/learn in order to master higher learning targets. This type of collaboration would provide all students with better feedback regardless of educational setting and all teachers could provide more opportunities for students to demonstrate mastery of the learning targets. Participating teachers could then allocate more time to individual coaching for their students and would benefit from sharing best instructional activities across educational setting boundaries. We need to take steps to truly bridge the opportunity and achievement gaps.

Time and again the conversation of inadequate teacher prep becomes the elephant in the room during conversations about new teachers--and certainly contributes to the problem of new teacher retention many states and districts face. If classroom teachers really want to reshape teacher education, then they need to be part of the solution. What if schools of education partnered with local schools and districts so their ed courses were taught within the school buildings--and the professors worked with their teacher candidates not in a university classroom, but in a real school with real teachers and real students doing real work? We know the best collaborations are built through relationships, so why can't we find a way to really foster working relationships between universities and the school districts in which their graduates teach?

With our students in the Technology Generation and everything has to move fast to engage them in learning and communicating. I would like to take this strength of our students and harness it with the use of technology in my classroom and with the students so they can have it accessible 24/7 . Next Year all our students will have an email address as well as Microsoft Office 2013 given to them I would like to take this one step more and set them up with One Note and the cloud and then be able to post my lesson plans their assignments videos and projects for them to work on an collaborate on. In addition not only will this help them learn better they will be able to work in groups and collaborate and use our latest technologies which will help them succeed in learning but also prepare them for College and the Work world with tools and skills and knowledge that they can use.

More and more school districts are in the race to close the Achievement Gap, and many are using AP as a main solution. But at what cost? As administrators push guidance counselors to flood AP rosters with students, the rosters of truly capable students appears diluted. Yet should AP classes only be for the top performing students? So now, many AP teachers are faced with teaching a rigorous curriculum to classes full of students who fall all over the spectrum of knowledge and abilities. How do AP teachers close that supposed gap by fulfilling all the educational needs of the diverse students sitting before them?

Teacher evaluation is a really tough subject. Most teachers get a feel for the effectiveness of another teacher by seeing how they interact with their students. But how do you measure that? Is there a measurable and reliable way to determine a teacher's effectiveness besides just standardized tests? Yes! We know they're learning our subject area, but how can we prove it? Let's explore this issue and learn from each other.

Every teacher must get photos and video from their homeland and for their favorite TV series. They have 50 minutes to get and edit their childhood story. This challenge was used with teachwers h¡who has no idea about how begin to use tech in classrooms. They discover how tech has evolved and then they can challenge their students.

I would like to be able to link my classes I teach next year with classes in Eastern Europe or other parts of the world and have the ability to have two teachers from the different countries teach each others classes and have the students get involved in working together from both countries. The students can also work on a special project together from both countries, By being able to do this we will be using our current technology and help our students learn by engaging them with students from another country. The Students will not only have a fun way to learn but they will all gain and understanding of another country and culture they will learn about diversity and the importance of respecting everyone and that we all live in a global society. I feel this could grow into a major teaching tool that could be used by schools all over our country and the world.

As teachers we spend so much time cramming information in to our students so they can pass courses and score well on standardized tests. We teach our students not to plagiarize works, but then we encourage them to search the internet or pinterest for idea sources, not recognizing this contradiction. The challenge we should tackle next is how to foster the generation of NEW ideas. We need to find ways to encourage creativity in our students and also promote their understanding that a failed outcome is only a successful first step in the problem solving process. They need to understand problems aren't all solved in the first try, or the first ten tries, but by perseverance. There are too many students today that don't understand much can be learned from failure and that persistence is the key to success. Let's remake education to focus on developing these skills, because without them, even the most educated person will never live up to their full potential.

Start a world-wide campaign to convince stakeholders that tests are not necessary for instruction and learning.

Teach, using a skills approach. Whenever you introduce vocabulary, ALWAYS, do not just give the only meanings, have students give these, but give synonyms, antonyms, add an 'e' or add an 's' so that the following skills are practiced. I call them Processing Skills: Listening Skills, Visualization Skills, paying Attention to Detail and Making Connections. These skills help answer the question "Can You See What I Mean?" The outcomes, are Widening Horizons, Deepening Perception, Arousing Curiosity and Fostering Creativity. Aren't these the skills displayed by musicians?