Today’s educators have a unique challenge of preparing students for a workforce that is always changing and therefore they must change how they teach. The students of today need to be able to communicate, learn independently, think critically, collaborate with others, apply digital skills, and manage knowledge (Bates, 2015). For teachers to learn how to teach these skills, professional development must change also. Educators need to experience blended learning in order to bet

In my grad school journey, I learned many new things and a few of those I get to revisit regularly. One of those topics was the growth mindset. I was first introduced to Carol Dweck's (2006) book on the growth mindset back in January when we were asked to develop a plan for how we would share the growth mindset with others. Here is my website on Growth Mindset that I created to help others learn about it. I've made some changes to this site since it originally held the slide

Designing Professional Learning using Backwards Design As I continue to develop my innovation plan on blended learning to create personalized professional development, I had an opportunity to explore the Backwards Design in Wiggins and McTighe's book, Understanding by Design to design a unit within my plan. I had already used Fink's 3 column table to design the course, therefore, I knew my goals for the course. UbD has you start with your standards and the ISTE Standards for

Planning with the End in Mind For my innovation project, I developed a course design using Fink's (n.d.) guide in order to create significant learning to be used for my blended learning of professional development of technology integration. At first, I was intimidated to write a whole course guide but then I fell back on my curriculum writing experience. The two are not so different, both start with you thinking of your end goal and then you work backward to determine the ski

Here's my reflection on A New Culture of Learning by Thomas and Brown. The three principals from A New Culture of Learning: * The internet has the most up-to-date information for learners. * * Peer-to-peer learning is most natural for learners. * * Collaboration happens in a collective of learners. * Application within my Innovation Plan: - Online resources for teachers to reference. - Working within the collective to build understanding. Resources ChangSchool. (2015, Dec 14)