ILC+research

This is from the WISN (Wisconsin Innovative Schools Network): ILCs are one of the recognized charter types. I think this would be a good basis for our PowerPoint (from Tresca): []

and

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7 elements of ILC
 * 1) highly integrated curric
 * 2) commitment to team teaching, time set aside for collaborative planning
 * 3) flexible scheduling
 * 4) Interdisciplinary learning designs of seminars, workshops, modules, symposiums, internships and foundation courses that are responsive and responsible to the student as individual learner in a collaborative context with ongoing community engagement realities.
 * 5) IM team where staff stay with a student for 4 years
 * 6) Collaborative Community Business/Industry/Recreation/Non-Profit/Natural Resource Partners as places to learn and learn from.
 * 7) Development of a collaborative small school culture — respectful and responsive to the voices and choices inherent in a generative learning community — founded on the above design elements of the interdisciplinary learning collaborative.

Elements of PBL 1. instructional approach built upon authentic learning activities that engage student interest and motivation 2. systematic teaching method that engages students in learning essential knowledge and life-enhancing skills through an extended, student-influenced inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks.

Schools that use ILC: Appleton Career Academy Wausau Engineering and Global Leadership Academy KM Perform

[] www.wausauegl.org www.kmperform.com

The Interdisciplinary Learning Collaborative Customized Learning in a Generative Community Context James Lewicki M.S., M.E.P.D., B.S., A.A. Lewicki Education Consulting LLC All acts of learning are individual experiences situated in a group context. What happens for an individual at the ‘aha’ now I get it moment, at the cognitive or emotive expansion of neurons, is ultimately an individually driven set of actions called learning. These last several years, I have observed a fundamental shift in high school teaching and learning working with the Interdisciplinary Learning Collaborative design. When the faculty is free to design a new school, they will frequently collaborate – intensely -- creating an interdisciplinary curriculum that is dynamic and where the learning is customized. Remember curriculum comes from the Old French corant meaning "running, lively, eager, swift," and originates from the Latin currere "to run, move quickly”. Words that we associate with dynamic, which is from the Greek dynamis meaning "power, might, strength”. Language matters, and this language noted above is always connected to powerful learning. My work is about learning, and I am privileged to learn from so many outstanding schools. Over this time I have grown a seasoned conviction that individual growth/learning is a systemic value. It has a relational underpinning. Although we can distinguish parts in any school design, the nature of the school design itself is always different from the mere sum of its design parts. In effect, systems require a new way of seeing the world and a new way of thinking. Therefore, for the ILC design – a systemic collaborative – this means thinking in terms of relationships, connectedness, and context. What is the end result? Customized learning. A short aside; for two words that easily get interchanged are customized and personalized. Each supports each other but they are different. Personalized is from the Latin meaning personalis "pertaining to a person”, as in personal computer. It is a descriptor that for our uses in education means that the math will be delivered in a manner that is cognizant of the student’s skill and abilities hence personalized math program, personalized curriculum, etc. Whereas, customized is different. Customized is a recent American English term from 1934 meaning, "to make (something) to a customer's specifications. In effect, personalized becomes the approach…you don’t have a personalized cabinet you have a customized cabinet…customized is the result, the outcome. A student wants a customized education with a personalized approach – the heart of the Interdisciplinary Learning Collaborative. The origin of interdisciplinary design always starts with the knowing of the students as a whole, and as individuals. The academic standards are then grafted onto that essential tree. This is why -- when the ACA teachers meet two or three times a week -- the talk always comes around to the student’s experience, the student’s capacity, and the student’s emerging ability. Critical to the ILC design, the ACA teachers activate the notion that seminars and workshops, to be worthy of being defined as a generative curriculum, must be anchored in the individual. When asked, “What is a school?” John Dewey replied, “A group of adults coming together to set conditions for learning.” This is the essential condition that the ACA faculty, KM Perform faculty, and Wausua EGL faculty have built with much effort. The following link will take you to over 60 pages of seminars, workshops, lit circles, immersions, foundation courses, and capstone projects that are the ongoing result of this Interdisciplinary learning collaborative that energetically ‘turns capacity into ability”.