Professional learning for K-12 teachers is an exciting space with great demand and high payoff for successful models. However, much of the professional development currently done [...]]]> “How P2PU is Reshaping Professional Learning for K-12 Teachers” by Karen Fasimpaur was originally published on Getting Smart on 7 May 2012.

Professional learning for K-12 teachers is an exciting space with great demand and high payoff for successful models. However, much of the professional development currently done for in-service teachers reflects old, industrial-era models of learning: rows of desks, teachers standing front and center, seat time, and lecture. Current models of granting credit to teachers are similarly antiquated and are rarely designed to prompt innovation in the classroom.

The School of Ed on Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) was started to foster new models of professional learning for K-12 teachers. It is focused on open, community-based peer learning. It’s about hands-on experiences driven by each educator’s particular needs and classroom situations. It’s about connecting, collaborating, and creating, not just reading or studying.

All courses and groups in the School of Ed are free, open-licensed (CC BY), and online. The content in them can be used by anyone for any purpose.

P2PU’s School of Ed is very much a “lab” environment where participants are encouraged to try different models to see what works. This has included groups that are online and hybrid, synchronous and asynchronous, leader-driven and participant-driven, highly facilitated and self-guided, domestic and international. Activities in courses can include asynchronous conversations, collaborative projects, readings and videos, web meetings, face-to-face gatherings, making things together, and more. The range of possibilities is limited only by the imagination of the participants.

Work To Date

This project was begun in the summer of 2011 with the launch of seven courses:

• Teaching in Online and Blended Classrooms
• Student Engagement
• OER in the K-12 Classroom
• Differentiating Instruction
• Using Web 2.0 and Social Media to Encourage Deeper Learning
• Writing & the Common Core: Deeper Learning for All, and
• Multimedia and Graphics to Facilitate Deeper Learning.

Several key findings came out of this pilot. High quality facilitation is a key to success. Time for teachers is limited, and discussion among the groups was the favored method of participation. Some course topics lend themself better than others to peer learning, and overall teacher preparedness to engage in peer learning was lower than expected. The issuance of formal credit was explored, but it was not clear if the benefits would outweigh the associated challenges. Informal credit is of interest to some participants.

Building on this experience, the next round of seven courses was launched in March, 2012.

Institutional partnerships has helped to expand interest, participation, and quality for the School of Ed. In the pilot phase, partnerships with K12 Handhelds, the Education Development Center, and the National Writing Project have been a key to success.

Next Steps

Another round of groups will be launched in the summer of 2012. These will build on the experiences and lessons learned to date and will include more lab-type experiments to encourage groups to play with what learning experiences are most effective.

Additional partnerships are being forged. In particular, there is a good fit with educational groups that have a mandate to provide professional development and are looking for a way to do so more effectively and with greater reach. Several new partnerships are in the works, and existing ones are being expanded.

As the School of Ed grows, the issues related to incentives and credit for teachers will continue to be explored, doing things that will benefit teachers while not compromising the best parts of the program. Informal credit options such as badges and partnerships with credit-providers who are willing to be innovative are likely to be a part of this.

The School of Ed will also explore sustainability options. To date, the program has been small and funded by small donors and volunteer efforts. While the great interest we have attracted begs the question of scale, we are committed to maintaining an innovative lab environment and high quality offerings. In the shorter term, a small amount of funding is needed, which is likely to come through grants and partnerships. In the longer term, sustainability options such as income from customized services and pay for formal credit will be explored.

More Information

The School of Ed is located at www.p2pu.org/school-of-ed. We can also be reached at schoolofed@p2pu.org.

Our Director, Philipp Schmidt joins Hack Education’s Audrey Watters on the latest episode of Higher Ed Live to discuss the growing popularity of MOOC’s, some alternatives and the future [...]]]> Here’s a round-up of the latest ideas and experiments from P2PU community members as they hack their way through education.

Our Director, Philipp Schmidt joins Hack Education’s Audrey Watters on the latest episode of Higher Ed Live to discuss the growing popularity of MOOC’s, some alternatives and the future of education.

Mozzadrella (aka long time contributor Vanessa Gennarelli) talks about terms.

What we call ourselves matters. And the collection of terms we use has sparked a lively discussion about who we are. Are our learning experiences Challenges? Are they all Courses? Are we always learners? When are we mentors?

The community is exploring how we use language when we describe “this peer learning thing” that we’re doing. Join our community call this Thursday to hear Vanessa and everyone else weigh in on the right terms to use for the future of P2PU.

Community members Anne Witton and Doug Belshaw blog their way through the School of Webcraft Webmaking 101 challenges.

Anne has always been interested in web development, picking up bits of HTML along the way, ” but I’ve got to the point where I want to learn HTML and CSS properly. I enrolled at Peer 2 Peer University and set up this blog to track my progress and point people in the direction of helpful resources.”

Doug, who is using the challenge to brush up on the basics, “really values four things involved in the process.

1. The social element (you don’t seem to get this at, for example, Codecademy)
2. Filling in gaps in my knowledge (I didn’t learn any of this sequentially; sometimes I’m missing some building blocks)
3. Reviewing other people’s work (some people obviously do the bare minimum, others are super-dedicated)
4. The opportunity to become a mentor (once you’ve learned something, there’s the opportunity to then teach it)”

The New York Times discusses P2PU in it’s article discussing current trends to Building Schools out of Clicks, Not Bricks.

Rebecca Kahn from Peer2Peer University , which “organizes learning outside of institutional walls,” said her organization was “never going to have a school of medicine. We’re never going to have a school of engineering. But we can do some things better than a traditional university. We can adapt faster.”

We discuss current news, the latest research, and the experiences of our community members and learners every Thursday in our open Community Call. We welcome newcomers and the just-plain-curious. Join us!

P2PU is excited to announce a treasure chest of new courses and challenges that cover our widest range of topics yet.

In addition to new offerings, we’ve been putting in the hours to make courses more social, scalable and easier to find. We’ve [...]]]>  

P2PU is excited to announce a treasure chest of new courses and challenges that cover our widest range of topics yet.

In addition to new offerings, we’ve been putting in the hours to make courses more social, scalable and easier to find. We’ve jazzed up learner profiles where you can add your P2PU badges to your Mozilla Backpack. You can visit P2PU.org in English, Spanish and help out with Swedish, Dutch, and Chinese translations. A P2PU ambassador program is under way. The School of Data and School of Open are soon to pilot their first courses..

Here’s highlights of some of the great courses you can expect to find from your peers at P2PU:

Entrepreneurial Marketing
In this challenge, you will craft a mission and vision statement for  your enterprise. This will be the foundation for all the marketing for your enterprise, be it a business, a non-profit, an event, a  hobby, a special project, or any pursuit that needs marketing.

Design Your First Big Game
Are you ready to get out on the streets and re-imagine your cityscape?  Use a bench as your headquarters, play with projections on the walls, plan maps using chalk, jump over imaginary obstacles, defend a  fountain, dance in front of changing traffic lights and hide a treasure under a bus stop!

Writing for the Web
Writing for the web requires a new set of skills. Wondering how to make the  shift? Interested in writing for a digital audience? Not sure about  expressing your ideas and opinions in a public forum? This challenge is  for you. In this challenge, you’ll discover how to write for the web,  engage others in a dialogue, get up to speed on netiquette, and share  your ideas.  You’ll acquire instincts about web writing that will guide you as mediums and formats change.

Curating Content
How  many times have you tried to check a quick fact online and then lost   an hour following links and checking unhelpful websites? The   proliferation of paid search results and content mills makes it   difficult to find what you want. Like traditional museum and gallery   curators, digital curators acquire useful works and artifacts that fit   into their collections. Get started organizing online content and  explore curation tools in Curating Content.

Become a Citizen Scientist with BOINC
This challenge will show you how to download, install and run the  software you need to enable you to join citizen science projects.

The Indie Researchers Homestead
Join the ranks of the curious – from Newton to Darwin. In this set of Open Science challenges you assert your right and intention to document and hone your curiosity by starting a research notebook for your ideas, curating a reading list and exploring research literature.

Hack the P2PU Code
This challenge will show you how to install and modify Lernanta, the software responsible for everything you see at http://p2pu.org.

Open Badges 101
Perhaps you’ve heard about Open Badges, but you’re not sure where to turn to find out more. The Open Badges 101 Challenge gives you a basic introduction to the topic and advice on how to get connected to the open badges community.

And here’s some of the offerings from your peers at School of Ed and School of Webcraft:

Global Classrooms Collaborations for Elementary & Secondary Schools
In these challenges, elementary & secondary teachers from around the world will discuss, design, and establish collaborations between their  classrooms.

Certified Networked Teacher
The use of web tools in networked learning has become an important 21st century skills for teachers.  The challenge ‘Certified Networked Teacher’ will give you the ability to envision a new future based on the use of web tools in a networked learning scenario.  You will then be ready to take on syndicated education in distributed learning environments as an ‘Advanced Networked Teacher’.  On expert level you will be a central node in networked learning and change how we understand education in the future.

Collaborative Lesson Planning
In this remix of two 2010/2011 P2PU courses teachers walk through the first steps of publishing their lesson plans online and collaborating  with others on them! Its broken down into 4 easy tasks and by the end, teachers will have published a lesson plan online and collaborated on a peer’s plan.

Webmaking 101 Series
Embark on a set of Challenges that will help you understand how basic  HTML elements work, and guide you through using the tools to create your  first webpage from scratch.

Hackasaurus!
Mozilla is developing curriculum, badges, and software to help people learn webmaking skills through making. At the core of this initiative is  a commitment towards supporting and encouraging others to reuse our learning offering to teach web literacy within their communities. These Hackasaurus Challenges are designed to support you in running events for  an initial set of our learning content and tools.

Programming with the Twitter API
This challenge will guide you through tasks that involve searching  for and reading documentation online, executing an API call to a dynamic data source, processing the results in a language of your  choice, and printing them out to a terminal.

Head over to P2PU.org to see the full list of offerings from your peers. And while you’re at it, invite a friend! Here’s some information for you to share with friends and family about P2PU:

P2PU is a lab for the future of learning. Our community members design free courses, use open learning materials and collaboratively build our open platform. You can find a P2PU community member on every non-polar continent, and visit the site in 5 languages. Our community is open and volunteer driven. Involvement starts with participating in courses and moves deeper into designing courses, working on site development and framing governance choices for the organization.

About Courses & Challenges

There are no limitations to the subjects that can be learned at P2PU. You’ll find schools focused on the future of web development, mathematics, social innovation, and education. You’ll find a multitude of courses and challenges for subjects you didn’t even know you could master – like city-wide game design, creative activism, open mapping and poetic thinking. For learners, the P2PU experience is not like any other. Though self-direction is needed, collaboration is key. Work is peer assessed and credit is given in the form of badges – emblems of accomplishment that you can carry across the web.  Badges are designed by the community and given by peers. Courses are improved by the peers who take them, and can be remixed and remastered by anyone.

Why Join

At P2PU we believe everyone has something to offer. Come learn from our amazing community, and in turn let us learn from you! We are not just a platform, we are a community driven to redefine and expand how we learn and who we learn with.

Check out our newest offerings at p2pu.org.

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P2PU: Dirk, we’re so excited to have a new staffer. What are you going to be doing for P2PU?

This is a post from the personal blog of Audrey Watters, a P2PU participant and mentor for a new P2PU challenge: Writing for the Web. Take this excellent challenge with Audrey and other writers of all levels and polish up your writing, blogging and internet influence.