Innovation and Personalisation

As educational / digital leaders, how can we ensure technology is being used to allow students to construct knowledge, share experiences, reflect on practice, seek feedback, and contribute to the learning of others? Why is this important?

The answer to this question is the students.  Put the students in charge of their learning and their experience.  As teachers, we want to have control and craft out the learning path for our students.  What if we flip roles?  What if the students were the focus and not the learning objectives?  Okay, I’m not saying that we should throw those almighty learning objectives, we should just shift the focus back to the student experience.  Inquiry-based learning, student-centered coaching, these are the new catchphrases now.  These ideas focus on posing a problem to the students and allowing them to find a solution and the teacher orchestrates a scenario that creates the real experience of the learning objective.  Below I’ve included a graphic called “Personalisation: The Shift.”  It shows what it looks like to put the focus on the students.  The first students are the Who, and then the Why.  If you haven’t had a chance to watch the YouTube video of Simon Sinek’s “Golden Circle” I would highly recommend it.  In this video, he says “People don’t buy what you sell, but Why you sell it.”  As teachers, we need focus on our students and sell our “why”.  Build a classroom of finding celebrations in failure, and celebrating the growth that those failures create.  Teach students the cycle of growth.  Have an Idea, make a plan, design and make, get feedback, repeat.  Teach them without using pass and fail, teach them about growth, even the best ideas can be improved.  Make the classroom a place of collaboration and communication.  Create a safe place to be real about shortcomings and free to help all students build on those weaknesses, everybody can learn.  Make a classroom that is a real-world model, so that students are ready for real-world experiences.  That is what is important, getting them ready to live in a real-world.

http://esheninger.blogspot.com/2015_09_01_archive.html

Simon Senik's Golden Circle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4

TedTalks. (2010). How great leaders inspire action. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4

Sheninger, E. (2017). Schools That Work for Kids. [online] Google Docs. Available at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19VqViLxtN09fNRqwLwIkSgKtHpRZH8FTGrnwjLR4am8/edit [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

PR Plans

Hey guys!

This week’s topic is Develop a communication / public relations plan for your school or school district. Incorporate social media along with more traditional venues for communicating school / district news.  District level communication should be sent out at the start of every year.  Things like the various plans for the school year, the calendar, the comprehensive plan for the year, should be sent out at that time.  These things should be posted to the district website, and sent home in paper versions as well.  The beginning communications for the school should all be sent out as paper versions.  Any school newsletters and calendars, as well as class information, should be sent out as paper versions as well.  After this beginning information is sent out through websites and paper, parents should have the option of opting into a paper version of the school correspondence.  All other correspondence should be sent through the school website, twitter, facebook, and text or voice messages. It’s important to know that all families do not have access to internet, email, or smartphones and computers.  Important information should still reach these families, even though they have difficulty getting digital information.  Information should also be sent out in multiple formats as often as possible.  The first line of communication is not the same for everyone.  It is important to reach as many people as possible, sending information out in a variety of ways helps everyone get the latest information.  There is an awesome chart of pros and cons for communication in Planning for Technology on page 157.  This chart tells us that mass communication is good for getting out information, and spreading news. It’s not great for changing the minds and attitudes of stakeholders.  Interpersonal communication is best for that, those include parent meetings, and home visits and other face-to-face communications.  In other words, prioritize your communication.  Think about what you want to accomplish and send information out accordingly.

Thanks for watching this week!

Resource:
Whitehead, B., Jensen, D., & Boschee, F. (2013). Planning for technology (2nd ed., pp. 157-158). Thousand oaks: Corwin sage.

Teaching With Technology v. Teaching Technology

Hey Guys!  Greetings from Fort Lauderdale!  I'm here at an educational conference, but I want to take time out of my festivities to talk to you about Option 2:

As leaders in educational technology, how can you garner support for the effective use of technology from your staff members? What will this look like in your district, your building, and individual classrooms? How will you plan to offset the “digital divide”? 

As an ITRT or an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher, I am a leader in educational technology in my division and I fight this battle every day of trying to support those using technologies.  While some people by nature are technology savvy, others are not as gifted with technology.  I find that sometimes it is just as hard to introduce a technology to people who are already confident, as it is to introduce technology to the not as technology friendly.  While people who are admittingly not as savvy, realize their shortcomings and rely on the vetted less integrated approaches, the savvy will sometimes not even consider technologies because they feel as though they are already doing well.

In Planning for Technology, Bruce Whitehead says on page 8, “Teachers and students in our schools today perceive working, learning, and activities as being interconnected.  As a result, 21^st century schools must implement curricula where working, learning, and activities converge allowing learning to occur at any time and any place.”

The key is to reteach both sides of that technology spectrum.  Reteaching teachers how to teach.  This happens more easily one teacher at a time.  Teachers want to know how to make life easier, if you give them a solution that works, they will by nature share with their colleagues and the movement grows exponentially.  Especially when talking about a lead teacher who are experienced using technology.  They will set up lessons for using technology and share it with their subject or grade level and their less savvy teachers in their department and scaffold up their colleagues.   So you start with one teacher in this manner, and they make friends and it moves out.  Whether we are talking about a new program, a new way of using technology, a computer game; if it works they will share it.

We are challenged to bridge the gap between what we know, how we learned, how we were taught, and how we need to prepare our students.  Many times we weren't taught using technology, we were taught technology. We need to start making that movement into teaching with technology, versus teaching technology.

Thanks for listening to my thoughts this week. Have an awesome week!

Resource:
Whitehead, B., Jensen, D., & Boschee, F. (2013). Planning for technology (2nd ed., p. 8). Thousand oaks: Corwin sage.

Welcome

Hello Friends,
My name is Leslie Baxter-Pipoly.  I live in Virginia.  I am currently attending Liberty University for a Master’s Degree in Educational Technology and Online Learning.  I’m about 3/4 of the way through my degree, which I expect to complete in the Summer of 2018.  I work as an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher in a small public school division.
A verse fitting for my job:

Colossians 3:12 (NIV) – Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

This is verse speaks many truths about the nature of my job.  First, be mindful of your representation of Christ.  Then act and react with grace and humility.  Children and adults using technology are often frustrated and short, and showing them patience and kindness is very important when teaching them to use the computer.  It is extremely important to have patience with others and calm storms rather than stir them.
In my very few spare minutes, I like to crochet and I sometimes take painting classes.
I am looking forward to this course, I hope to absorb some great ways to continually learn more about technology, as well as, learn ways to spread my current knowledge of technology to others in non-threatening ways.
If my life were a movie, I’d be honored to have Jennifer Lawrence play my role.  She has played some pretty strong female characters with a dash of comedic satire.
Thanks for watching my video, and I look forward to meeting you all and work with you in class and hope to have some great communication.