Teacher+Practice+Sharing

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 * =What is YouPD.org?=

YouPD.org is a networked learning community built by and for NYC-area educators with the support of New Visions for Public Schools and the Ford Foundation. **Our goal is to advance the professional learning of K-12 educators using great digital tools and what we know works for learners of all ages: relevant, socially-connected, personalized, challenge-based experiences** that result in meaningful recognition for sharing practices and solutions that help others. Joining is free, easy, and **open to all NYC area educators and school support professionals.** Visit http://www.youpd.org or read on to learn more!

YouPD community-members can participate in two primary ways: = =
 * 1) Posting **Hacks** - **not to be confused with criminal hackerism**, the "hack" is a playful reference to the rich tradition of inquiry and solution-sharing pioneered by communities of computer engineers and scientists via an open, collaborative culture that has built most of the core innovations that power the information era we live in. **A YouPD Hack is our innovation on teacher practice sharing: a short screencast or video presenting a solution to a problem of teaching practice a way that someone else could easily replicate or adapt.** The Hack is intended to be a highly versatile content type whose short, rich format and tight focus on presenting problems and solutions, pushes us to re-think how and what is most useful to share. A hack can be anything from a simple classroom procedure to a presentation of an entire unit plan with all attached documents and resources. We invite you to open your practice and share one of your best teacher moves in a YouPD hack! Visit our home page  to browse the most recently featured hacks from across NYC.
 * 2) Taking **Challenges** - **YouPD Challenges seek to create exciting, relevant, and rigorous 21st century learning experiences that immerse educators in new tools and techniques, and that build deep teacher capacity around innovative practices.** For example, one challenge invites you to learn the basics of [| Screencasting], a staple of online content creation, culminating in posting a YouPD Hack as evidence of your newly developed skills. Through a series of action steps, video tutorials, self-assessment tasks and online discussion threads, challenge-takers build relationships with other practitioners, share resources, and help teach one another in pursuit of common learning goals. Upon submission and review of your final product (typically a short screencast sharing back your solution to a problem of teaching practice) you can attain a digital badge to be associated with your user profile that signifies your credibility to others. **Who designs the challenges?** We are working with a variety of partners, including schools, instructional specialists, and partner organizations to build out more challenges in the coming year that are directly relevant to educators. Please browse our current offerings at http://www.youpd.org/challenges If you have ideas for a challenge you or your organization would like to design and facilitate, please contact Andrew Stillman (astillman) at (@) newvisions.org.
 * Earning Cred and Badges**
 * Site actions like posting a hack, commenting a post, or completing a challenge step are all tied to the visible accumulation of "cred" YouPD's currency of competency. **Cred is accumulated in categories (Share, Learn, Collaborate, and Influence) and visualized as a balancing act of virtuous learning. Extra fun for the gamer in us all!** A leaderboard acknowledges top earners in each category. We are intrigued by the possibilites for portable, badge-based measures of learner-competency, both for adults and students, and we hope you'll embrace the experiment with us!
 * Logging Classroom Intervisitations**
 * While YouPD provides an interesting window into educational practice, there's no substitute for spending time carefully observing or getting feedback from a colleague. **YouPD allows educators to earn cred as both the observed and the observer, and adds the visitor's positive feedback as an optional "guestbook" entry to your learner profile!** Constructive criticism is sent via email only and never stored on the site, providing an opportunity for you to continue the conversation in a safe and private space.
 * PD and Professional Networking in a Bar!? EdTech Blenders**


 * **Join forces with other educational technology enthusiasts from across the city in a relaxed ‘open workshop’ format hosted in a social setting with food, refreshments, and WiFi.** Boost your technology chops by taking on professional learning challenges, or bring along your own curriculum planning project, and get the benefit of peer and expert support. **Enjoy a cold beer and inspiring colleagues with your WiFi connection.** Get feedback on your curriculum from other talented teachers and technology experts. See our Blender lineup at http://www.youpd.org/events
 * **Our next Blender starts at 4:30 PM on October 25th, location TBD:** The NYC Connected Foundations program's DIG/IT ( [|http://playdigit.org] ) platform engages students in a digital literacy curriculum in which they "level-up" through a range of interactive, challenge-based activities that guide them to become digitally savvy citizens who can "Live, Learn, Earn and Play" in our connected society. New Visions for Public Schools' YouPD.org ( [|http://www.youpd.org] ) is a networked professional learning community for K-12 educators in NYC where users share short screencasts and videos presenting creative solutions to "problems of practice" and engage in learning challenges. Both platforms are pilots that experiment heavily with the use of points and badges as tied to learning behaviors and competencies. Michael Preston of NYCDOE and Jonathan Finkelstein of Learning Times (the producers of DIG/IT), as well as New Visions' Andrew Stillman and Hsing Wei, Sr. Innovation Officer (co-producers of YouPD) will present their guiding design principles and hypotheses, as well as a tour of the badge infrastructure and framework that guides the user experience in their respective platforms.
 * RSVP @ [] ||

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