As a learner, I have taken many classes but this is the first time I've had the opportunity to create a class of my own. There is a lot of behind the scenes work to be done! Many questions have to be answered, resources to be found or created, and assessments to be developed. The very first thing I had to do was to identify the outcomes of the course. What did I want my learners to know and how could they prove their learning. I used my previously created 3 Column Table and U

What is Action Research? It's pretty much an inquiry system of research conducted by people in the educational field that want to learn more about the learning process and how they can improve upon it (Mertler, 2017). Teachers perform an informal form of action research on a daily basis when they reflect on how their lessons went and what they could do to improve them. Formal action research is made of 4 stages that contain 9 steps. I am currently in the gathering information

Jifunzeni is a Swahili word inviting all to learn. Here is my personal Jifunzeni to all of you! Join me in personalized professional learning! References: Boston Consulting Group. (2014). Teachers Know Best: Teacher's Views on Professional Development. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.teachersknowbest.org/reports Darling-Hammond, L., Hyler, M. E., Gardner, M. (2017). Effective Teacher Professional Development (research brief). Palo Alto, CA: Learning

When I first took the position as a technology integration specialist, I knew I would have to facilitate learning sessions with educators; but as a teacher, my only role was to attend and learn. Now, I am helping to plan and run them, a big change of perspective! This past summer I helped with the expo portion of our Know Your Impact conference organized by my district and runs for 3 days in early June. That was my first look into the behind the scenes aspect of professional

It's time to switch from old-school, sit-and-get professional development to the ongoing, interactive professional learning. Gulamhussein (2013) states that Professional Learning should have 5 key principals: Extended throughout the year. Ongoing support through all stages of implementation. Active learning and hands-on application Modeling and coaching included Specific and authentic to the learner. I agree with these principals and I intend to use these as I facilitate prof

Leading organizational change is not an easy thing to do especially at the beginning of the school year. It is a time when teachers are bombarded with new policies and programs to incorporate into the new school year. That's why it's important to choose a few vital behaviors that will give you the most bang for your buck to avoid over-promising and under-performing. Have you ever written a New Year's Revolution resolution only to abandon it come February? It’s possible you di

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)