The Hillcrest High School faculty initiated a professional development blog to assist at-risk students and foster a collaborative learning environment. The project utilizes Web 2.0 tools to modernize teaching methods and facilitate online staff development, allowing for collaboration beyond local resources. Despite initial challenges with the blog's functionality, the faculty has successfully integrated new technologies into the classroom, demonstrating a commitment to continuous improvement and educational excellence.

1. Hillcrest High School Advanced Team Project 2006-2007 Professional Development: When and Wherever You Want Hillcrest High School Tuscaloosa, Alabama

2. The Project During the first year of our designation as a 21st Century School, we began the Hillcrest Faculty blog at http://www.patriotsfaculty.edublogs.org . We began working with our blog late in the spring and we added new material this year. Our project is intended to aid us in reaching at-risk students. Faculty members will be participating in staff development on the blog and in development from other sources intended to help us achieve our goal.

3. Project Goals and Objectives Develop a professional development blog. Create a non-threatening climate for learning the use of 21st century tools. Create a learning community to study successful strategies for teaching at-risk students. Create a body of work that can be used as part of our school improvement plan.

4. Resources and Strategies Create a blog for use by faculty for professional development. Creating and utilizing the blog in as a group enables our faculty to experiment with blogging before actually implementing the use of a blog in their own classrooms.

5. Resources and Strategies Utilize materials gathered by teachers and administrators that illustrate successful strategies and read and reflect on how they could be implemented at Hillcrest High School. Utilize materials and strategies gathered by teachers and administrators from various locations on the web and in print that improve student performance on standardized tests.

6. The Faculty Blog was created in the first year of our 21 st Century School project. http://www.patriotsfaculty.edublogs.org

7. Our first posts were about “getting to know 21 st Century tools.”

8. As we began to work on our learning community projects, we posted events and discussion questions on the blog along with links to articles collected from the Internet and educational journals.

9. Benefits of the Professional Development Blog Online staff development allows teachers to determine the time and place of their staff development, making it much more convenient and efficient. Blogging allows collaboration within the learning community between teachers and administrators. Online staff development has the potential to include experts from many locations, not just local ones. Working with a professional development blog encourages experimentation among faculty members with blogging and other 21 st Century tools in their classrooms.

10. The Patriot Faculty Wiki http://www.patriotfaculty.wikispaces.com The wiki served as a project log for the project.

11. The wiki served as a diary of events

12. Problems…Opportunities?? There were problems early in the year with our blog which made us unable to launch the new page on the blog as planned. Server/security issues caused Edublogs to briefly block our use of our site. These were corrected and we conducted our Faculty introduction to the blog in January.

13. Problems…Opportunities?? In January our system installed a new server which has intermittently been offline as the “bugs” have been worked out of the system. The result: The project has been slow to get off the ground. Our expectations for next year: Continued use of the blog with a re-introduction of 21 st Century tools to the faculty and renewed emphasis on their use, both for staff development and in the classroom.

14. What Have We Accomplished? Our exposure to the 21 st Century School project has been invaluable. We have changed our methods to incorporate web 2.0 tools into our teaching. Several of our classrooms have been using blogs and in at least one classroom we actively use www.tappedin.org and wikis for classroom projects. We have students and teachers using www.Flickr.com and www.thinkfree.com to complete projects. The days of the poster board project are over. The seeds of change have been sown and as more teachers experiment with the new tools both the faculty and students will benefit. Samples of this classroom work follow…

15. Tapped In was employed in the AP and Advanced Government/Economics classes and the AP Psychology class. It provided unexpected benefits to both the teacher and the students. http://www.tappedin.org

16. Tapped In includes a discussion board that allowed us to discuss items related to our curriculum. Students responded enthusiastically to the addition of our Tapped In pages.

17. The online chat section allowed students to work collaboratively and to receive help from the instructor during “after-class” hours

18. The Advanced Placement Psychology Tapped In Room http://www.tappedin.org

19. Tapped In allowed students to collaborate on group projects and upload their work for further collaboration with the class. Also present in the files section were student constructed reviews for the Advanced Placement test.

20. Benefits of Tapped In Created an online presence for the class. Tapped In contains a discussion board that encouraged extended discussion of classroom curriculum. The real-time chat feature allowed students to work together collaboratively and to get help from the instructor when she was “in the room” also. Students are better prepared for online work required in college courses they will take in the future. Tapped In allowed students to experiment in a safe environment controlled by the instructor.

21. Government classes elections campaign sites wiki – each political party constructed a campaign site

22. Each class created several political parties and elected a “president” as part of their elections project. http://hchscampaignsites-2007.wikispaces.com

23. Samples of Student Products The OPP – Opportunity Party- Powerpoint platform presentation - http://hchscampaignsites-2007.wikispaces.com/OPP+Party The Common Ground Party – Powerpoint platform presentation - http://hchscampaignsites-2007.wikispaces.com/The+Common+Ground++Party

24. Student Campaign Site Sample Campaign Commercial

25. The CARROP Party Political Platform

26. Goals for Continued Progress Planned for next year: Use the blog as a means continuing work on the solution to poor performance of at-risk students. Continued collection of other staff development topics for use on the blog. In-school workshops on the use of various 21 st century tools in the classroom. Further expansion of Web 2.0 tools into the classroom.

27. Many Thanks To: All the wonderful folks at the Alabama Best Practices Center who have contributed so much time and effort to making the 21 st Century Schools Project a success. Microsoft Corporation for the generous grant that made the project possible. The Tuscaloosa County School System which allowed team members and the 21 st Century Fellow professional leave time to expand their horizons and grow as professional educators.