The document proposes developing an online professional development incubator for the North Kansas City School District. It would pursue a multifaceted approach to adult learning through immersing educators in digital culture, sharing instructional practices, making professional learning teams more transparent, extending learning from consultants, collaborating on curriculum, and providing opportunities for coaching. The incubator would be hosted on a Ning platform to foster collaboration and help educators work beyond physical constraints of time and place.

1. “DEVELOPING A
DISTRICT INCUBATOR
FOR ONLINE PD”
NFUSSD, October 13, 2014

2. hello
@nashworld
nashworld.me
sean.nash@nkcschools.org

3. CULTURE
OF
COLLABORATION

4. CULTURE TRUMPS
STRATEGY

5. REMOVING
BARRIERS

6. 24 HOUR DAYS

7. FUNDING FOR
PD

8. LOGISTICS FOR
F2F

9. ASYNCHRONOUS
HONORS TIME

11. 3 questions

12. 1
WHAT IS ONE?
1

13. WHAT GOOD
IS IT?
2
2

14. HOW DO I MAKE
THIS HAPPEN?
3
3

15. ORIGINS

16. stjoeh2o.ning.com

19. 71,382 unique visitors from 2008-2013

20. This network
highlighted
here:

21. “Connections on
social networking
sites can provide
students with
experiences and
knowledge they
would otherwise
lack.”
from pages #152-153

22. “Students ask
and answer
questions, share
photos or videos...
and in doing so,
they’ve created a
real sense of
community.”
from pages #142-143

23. 1
WHAT IS ONE?
1

25. WHAT GOOD
IS IT?
2
2

26. Just because you can...
...doesn’t mean you should.

27. N K C S C H O O L S
Professional Learning
Incubator
A place where ideas and innovations find growth, development, and
A multifaceted approach to adult learning... ...that incubates and reinforces best practices
Immersion in Digital
Culture
The social web is
currently a part of the
lives of all children...
and most adults. This
approach will
purposefully immerse
adult learners in
modern, online 2-way
tools explicitly shifted
toward learning.
Sharing Instructional
Practices
Shining light on bright
spots across our
organization. Providing
opportunities to
troubleshoot.
A Culture of
Collaboration
Providing opportunities to “soften” the walls of our
classrooms as we continue to grow into the 21st Century
The North Kansas City School District is vast with
respect to both geographical area and total number
of faculty. In order to turn challenges into assets,
some form of collaborative sandbox for instructional
alignment & innovation is needed. The Ning
platform is rich with opportunity for the sort of
local customization we need to assist staff in
building relationships with colleagues and coming
together around instructional issues and challenges.
These actions directly impact professional growth,
and ultimately, student performance and
empowerment.
Removing Barriers
Teaching today is an increasingly sophisticated
endeavor. More and more is expected from our staff
as we seek to provide the best for our children. The
ceiling we increasingly push against is time. The
instructional alignment.
Making PLT Work
Transparent
Grade-level teams
across the district.
Content level teams.
Cross functional teams.
Multidisciplinary
approaches. Support for
Encore programs.
Empowering
collaboration &
accountability
Thursday to Thursday.
Extending Professional
Learning
Capturing the rich
work of and with our
paid consultants.
Extending these
relationships forward.
Face to face sharing is the best form of
synchronous collaboration. Yet,
asynchronous learning can easily
evolve beyond the physical constraints
of time and place.
simple fact remains that our days will never number
in excess of 24 hours. In light of this, we must seek
to maximize our time in planning, highlighting and
sharing our bright spots and next practices.
Leaders at all levels know we can never afford to
schedule enough face to face time for professional
learning. The logistics aren’t there, and funds are
limited. Given this fact, we are led toward making
Curriculum
Collaboration
Helping our
curriculum come to life
and find alignment
with both solid
instructional practice
and common, targeted
assessment
districtwide.
Curriculum becomes a
living, breathing entity.
Opportunities to Coach
With teachers reflecting
throughout a common
network, our many
support teams gain
another venue for just-in-
time coaching.
the most effective use of the time we have. The
question becomes... how do we give teachers more
feedback from peers, Administrators, Instructional
Coordinators, Teaching & Learning Coaches, SALTs,
etc.? How do we do this in a way that honors the
time of all of the professionals involved, and yet do
so in a way that credits the ways in which we
increasingly interact in a digital world?
We feel that an online incubator for professional
learning will allow us to better connect research to
planning and planning to practice. Ultimately, this
culture of collaboration will help to spread the best
of our work beyond the walls of our individual
classrooms and in a way that allows us to interact
when and where we work best.
Getting There
Startup for this is simple. The roadmap to
implementation is easily articulated. Soon we can
share practices, troubleshoot for alignment, coach
one another, document the powerful work of our
PLTs, and continue the engagement with our
consultants.
Together we can all become more effective in
meeting the needs of our children for today and into
the future.
NKCS Professional Learning Incubator
1
bit.ly/nkcsdincubator

28. N K C S C H O O L S
Professional Learning
Incubator
A place where ideas and innovations find growth, development, and
A multifaceted approach to adult learning... ...that incubates and reinforces best practices
A Culture of
the most effective use of the time we have. The
instructional alignment.
Immersion in Digital
Culture
The social web is
currently a part of the
lives of all children...
and most adults. This
approach will
purposefully immerse
adult learners in
modern, online 2-way
tools explicitly shifted
toward learning.
Sharing Instructional
Practices
Shining light on bright
spots across our
organization. Providing
opportunities to
troubleshoot.
Making PLT Work
Transparent
Grade-level teams
across the district.
Content level teams.
Cross functional teams.
Multidisciplinary
approaches. Support for
Encore programs.
Empowering
collaboration &
accountability
Thursday to Thursday.
Extending Professional
Learning
Capturing the rich
work of and with our
paid consultants.
Extending these
relationships forward.
Curriculum
Collaboration
Helping our
curriculum come to life
and find alignment
with both solid
instructional practice
and common, targeted
assessment
districtwide.
Curriculum becomes a
living, breathing entity.
Opportunities to Coach
With teachers reflecting
throughout a common
network, our many
support teams gain
another venue for just-in-
time coaching.

29. 1. Immersion in digital culture
The social web is currently a part
of the lives of all children... and
most adults. This approach will
purposefully immerse adult
learners in modern, online 2-way
tools explicitly shifted toward
learning.

30. “The more skilled a person is on a
dimension, like academia, art,
music, the more important they
consider that activity to be.”
-Pelham, 1991

31. NCTE’s 21st Century Literacies Framework:
Create, critique, analyze, and
evaluate multimedia texts
Design and share
information for global
communities to meet a
variety of purposes
Develop proficiency with
the tools of technology
Attend to the ethical
responsibilities required by
these complex
environments
Build relationships with
others to pose and solve
problems collaboratively and
cross-culturally
Manage, analyze, and
synthesize multiple streams
of simultaneous information
~NCTE 21st Century Skills Framework

32. “Is it OK to be a
technologically
illiterate
teacher?”

33. 2. sharing instructional
practices
Shining light on bright spots
across our organization.
Providing opportunities to
troubleshoot.

34. “Showing someone a picture of a
slow animal causes them to walk
more slowly. The presentation of
fast animals has the opposite
effect.”
-Aarts and Dijksterhuis, 2000

35. 3. making plt work transparent
Grade-level teams across the
district. Content level teams. Cross
functional teams. Multidisciplinary
approaches. Support for Encore
programs. Empowering
collaboration & accountability
Thursday to Thursday.

36. “Connecting people to people. Over
and over again, that’s what lasts
online. Folks thought it was about
technology, and it’s not.”
-Seth Godin

37. 4. extending professional
learning
Capturing the rich work of and
with our paid consultants.
Extending these relationships
forward.

38. 5. curriculum collaboration
Helping our curriculum come to
life and find alignment with both
solid instructional practice and
common, targeted assessment
districtwide. Curriculum becomes a
living, breathing entity.

39. “The value in media is no longer
in sources but in flows; when we
pool our cognitive surplus, it
creates value that doesn’t exist
when we operate in isolation.”
-Clay Shirky

40. 6. OPPORTUNITIES TO COACH
With teachers reflecting
throughout a common network,
our many support teams gain
another venue for just-in-time
coaching.

41. + OPPORTUNITIES TO LEAD
Leaders promote and model
effective communication and
collaboration among all
stakeholders using digital age
tools.

45. HOW DO I MAKE
THIS HAPPEN?
3
3

46. “The old, hardwired ‘plan & push’
mentality is rapidly giving way to
a new dynamic ‘engage &
cocreate’ economy.”
-Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams in Wikinomics

48. PARTICIPATION
Getting members to read is easy;
getting them to participate is hard.

51. -Allison Leahy, Ning

54. The details:
NING
PLATFORM

56. $588/year

57. “What the web has done is it
has just kicked the ever-loving
crap out of the cost of organizing
people.”
-Cory Doctorow

60. To post:

62. To comment:

63. “GROUND TRUTH”
Jennifer Gates
Barbara Madden
Kyle Anderson

64. LIVE TOUR

65. nkcsedu.ning.com

66. “The true value of a network is less
about information and more about
community. The information
superhighway is more than a
shortcut to every book in the Library
of Congress. It is creating a new,
global social fabric.”
-Being Digital, by Nicholas Negroponte, 1995

67. Thank you.

68. @nashworld
nashworld.me
nashworld@gmail.com

69. ARTWORK THANKS
“Tweaking Rock Junkie” by Caillum Smith on Flickr via CC
!
“Indoor Rock Climbing” by Steven Depolo on Flickr via CC
!
“A Soldier’s Still” by Lyle58 on Flickr via CC
!
“30 Days of Gratitude- Day 8” by ausiegall on Flickr via CC
!
“the pilot p-500 by Matthew C. Wright” on Flickr via CC
!
“867-5309” by Mike Blitzenhofer on Flickr via CC
!

70. 4-1-1
dial
Information:
4 new ideas
1 thing i knew
1 call to action