Here is my portfolio Assignment, which was about Developing a graphic for an upcoming training.

(Click for larger image)

 

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The professional learning we are offering is a Book Study of From the Campfire to the Holodeck by David Thornburg. Our district just modernized all classrooms across the district, and now every teacher has modular desks, new carpet and storage with whiteboards and a new 80″ touchscreen monitor in the front of the classroom. The workshop is meant to address ITSE-T standards 2b and 5a. We want teachers to be able to access the great opportunities these new tools offer with their students.  Through the workshop we will talk about the ways students learn and the history of the places where learning is done, and how we can model those learning places within our classrooms.  We think that by doing this as a group, we can build community and grow together as professionals, having someone to bounce ideas off of, and maybe go out on a limb together to do some truly adventurous and innovative classroom transformation.

We want to push them past the substitution and augmentation models in SAMR and really blow learning out of the water at redefinition. By understanding the different learning spaces that Thornburg presents, they can construct the best learning environments for the task at hand. At that redefinition level, the students will own the learning, and we can start them on their way by flipping the physical environment of the classroom on its head.

We are also trying to grow the teacher’s presence in social media, hence Voxer and Twitter inclusion in this workshop. We modelled the meetings after classes like this one, with some face to face meeting to establish comfort, and some online meetings and chats to push their technological comfort. One of the goals is to open their collaboration to wide avenues of untapped resources and great PLC opportunities online. I have had the best collaboration of my professional development through twitter and voxer over the past three years. We want to spread that love to our peeps in our district as well.

Lastly, we hit the Tech Matrix in several spots, the most prominent being collaborative Infusion and Active Transformation on the part of the teacher. By this modelling, we can best show how to use tech meaningfully and in new ways in the classroom. The idea was to get the teachers excited about using tech and show them new and exciting ways of using some seemingly non-educational apps used to revolutionize classroom practices.

 

Reflection

I enjoyed the assignments in this module, because each of them was not just simple make work, but practical and relative information about the job I am currently doing.  Having said that, I would change some of the ways that I do business based off these new learnings.

First I would like to consistently get some pre-PD survey in the works that I can use to assess current understandings and adjust the PD to suit the needs of the learners. With all of the digital tools available, it is a simple thing to get a survey out and get some input. Feedback for after my presentation is something that I am working on with surveys as well. There are some great feedback resources available, but the simplest is google forms. I have become adept at using them over the past few months, and I will never go back to feedback-less presentations again. I publish all feedback, both positive and critical, in order to show it is valued and used to improve my presentation style.

While I try and make my trainings as relevant as possible, using the adult learning theory, I can make sure I am meeting the learning needs of my participants and meet them where they are on their learning path. That individualization or differentiation can prove invaluable in a successful PD delivery, or even in presentations and informational materials. The adult learning theory has wide and far reaching implications.

Lastly, concerning presentations, I am much more mindful now of words on the screen, and the fact that you cannot listen and read at the same time. Outside from this class, I have read Presentation Zen, and it has completely changed my word heavy, lecturer style presentations to something more image driven and interactive. Looking back, I have really been a part of some pretty heavily word-filled PD presentations, and when constructing a new PD I am very conscious of the images displayed and interactive activities I include. The last thing I want to do is let me presentation get in the way of the information.