The Collaborative Learning System: Telling the Story of Learning by Mike Rutherford
teachernotes announces the first Collaborative Learning System (CLS) that is a purpose-built platform for schools that focuses on the most fundamental elements of student learning – feedback and growth over time. teachernotes CLS is structured around the learning conversation and captures the back and forth dialogue between students, teachers and peers about their learning. The learning conversations structure focuses on the qualitative evidence from the student’s own work and mirrors what happens every day in classrooms around the world.
teachernotes was born in the classroom to meet specific pedagogical needs. The importance and amount of qualitative data available to today’s teachers and students is enormous. Teachers world wide know that the daily conversations about learning, the daily work produced and the feedback provided is where the learning occurs. Both the students and teacher now have one place to share student work, give/receive feedback, make revisions all in the service of supporting and demonstrating the student’s growth over time.
The CLS allows teachers and students to hold the many and varied sources of qualitative data all in one place. Before our CLS, teachers had to design their own systems for managing the daily sources of learning evidence and spent a lot of time searching in student notebooks, online folders, video sharing services, EdTech apps as well as many communication platforms to locate and review the qualitative student learning data. No longer do teachers or students need to search for where the learning evidence or feedback is located because the CLS provides a tool for teachers and students to capture and manage this crucially important learning process.
For Students
The teachernotes CLS provides one place for students to capture and communicate about their learning journey empowering students to influence their own path to mastery. teachernotess unconstrained conversation tool provides students voice and choice regarding how to communicate their learning empowering students as partners in the process.
For Teachers
teachernotes enables teachers to easily monitor student progress, provide direct and targeted feedback and make course corrections as needed. A teacher can get a sense of their class as a whole in order to make broad adjustments or to see the experiences of their individual students to provide personalized feedback. Additionally, teachers can see how their students are doing in other classes to seek patterns of performance in order to more holistically support students and their learning.
For Educational Specialists
Using teachernotes Collaborative Learning System, educational specialists are able to develop their own classes in addition to seeing how the individual students they are supporting are doing across all of their classes. Educational Specialists can easily examine the qualitative feedback and learning evidence from all of the teachers for each student they support.
For School Administrators
A school administrator can easily monitor student progress across their whole school as well as examine and/or participate in learning conversations with any of their students They can also follow individual students that may need a little extra attention when needed.
Professional Conversations
Another key element of teachernotes are the professional conversations. Using the same toolset that is used for students and teachers to communicate – professional conversations captures feedback and learning evidence between the teachers, educational specialists and school administrators. These conversations can be through one on one discussions, small group discussions or even the entire school. Professional conversations are perfect for professional learning networks (PLNs) or Professional Learning Communities (PLCs).
