Issaquah Teacher Project 2.0

Nestled in the majestic Cascade Mountains in Central Washington is the Sleeping Lady Conference Center where I'm participating in the newly revamped Issaquah Teacher Project: ITP 2.0. ITP is without question one of the most innovative professional development initiatives in which I've ever had the pleasure to participate.

Chief among the objectives of ITP is building technology and curriculum integration capacity among the entire teaching staff in the Issaquah school district. Promethean's Activclassrooms are Issaquah's District Standard, and this year ITP 2.0 has been modified to integrate the Activclassroom into the content and context of this extraordinary program.

The Issaquah learning community is quite fortunate to have the leadership team of Colleen Dixon, Eric Ensey, Leslie Lederman, Rich Butler and Josh Moore. These outstanding educators were themselves involved in the Washington State Teacher Leadership Project (TLP) funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation nearly ten years ago. This project was so successful that the team decided to replicate the initiative in-house - which, incidentally, was the original intent of TLP, though few districts in Washington took on this charge.

I've known Colleen, Eric and Leslie for a number of years as I was part of the team that developed and supported both the Gates Foundation-funded Teacher Leadership Project and the Smart Tools Academy for Washington Principals and Superintendents.

Rather than learning technology tools in a "just-in-case" mode, ITP teachers are learning about the theoretical underpinnings of constructivism in general and the work of the Russian Psychologist Lev Vygotksy and his conceptual Zone of Proximal Development in particular. It is within this new cognitive framework that teachers are honing their curriculum and instructional design skills by collaboratively building digital learning scaffolds to help organize, support and extend student thinking, creativity, conceptual understanding and knowledge construction.

When teachers build digital learning scaffolds they judge the potential benefits by using the following guiding questions:

*Is any NEW, DEEPER or CREATIVE LEARNING taking place?
*Is it developing a Core Thinking Skill?
*Would it be better suited for paper and pencil?
*What value did technology add to the lesson?"
Core Thinking Skills

The Core Thinking are skills are deemed essential to using information in the learning process and include:

*Improving communication
* Locating and harvesting information
*Organizing information into new formats
*Analyzing information
*Producing reports and new products
*Evaluating throughout the learning process

The overarching understanding for ITP is, "Throughout life, our students will understand and apply current and emerging technologies to extend their personal abilities and productivity. Based on this key assumption, how can digital immigrants best teach so that digital natives can best learn?" This imperative came from the Issaquah School Boards' Learning Ends for Students: http://www.issaquah.wednet.edu/board/new_ends.asp.

This is an essential question that faces all of today's educators and will continue to challenge new and emerging generations of educators to come. The teachers enrolled in the ITP project are boldly facing this challenge head on. Now equipped with 21st Century learning environments, Issaquah teachers are more prepared than ever to meet the learning needs of the digital natives they'll see in September.

For more information about ITP, please contact Issaquah Director of Educational Technology Collen Dixon, or Instructional Technology Specialists Eric Ensey or Leslie Lederman.