Lifelong Learning

As one who makes a career in learning, it is important that I practice what I preach.  This month's  #ETCoaches Blogging Buddies post is a summary of three learning opportunities in which I have taken part this fall. 

Since the end of September, I was enrolled in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) entitled Launching Innovation in Schools, #LIISMOOC.  It was facilitated by Peter Senge, organization development guru, and Justin Reich, of MIT Teaching Systems Lab. I partnered with a colleague, who audited the course and did lots of brainstorming with me.  The course ended on Nov. 16, and future dates will be announced on edX:  https://www.edx.org/course/launching-innovation-schools-mitx-microsoft-education-11-154x-0.  In addition, I attended two workshops during November.  Needless to say, I’ve been stretching my own comfort zone!

Some of the learning goals from the #LIISMOOC included the following:

• ·         Bringing people together around ideas they care about
• ·         Refining a vision and creating coherence
• ·         Getting started with a new instructional improvement initiative
• ·         Working together through challenges and successes
• ·         Measuring progress and adjusting along the way

This course was a great experience, and I highly recommend it if you get the chance in the future, especially if you can take it with a colleague or two.  Not only will you build relationships within your building, but you will also connect in the forums with educators from around the globe.  You can even earn a Microsoft certificate for successfully completing the work!  Woo-hoo!  Badges!

Our school has been a 1:1 iPad learning environment since 2013-14 and has been honored as an Apple Distinguished School (ADS) twice.  Besides publishing an iBook to demonstrate how we have earned this distinction, and the accolades, we are also periodically offered opportunities to meet with other ADS to see what everyone is up to.  We were given a chance to present at a workshop at Apple's new Chicago headquarters in early November.  My takeaway from this confirms that being an ADS is a wonderful chance for a school to reflect on its efforts to continuously innovate.  To prepare, we did a number of classroom visits.  Some of our latest endeavors are posted on a New Google Site called Innovation Celebration.  The reasoning behind posting to this site is two-fold:  First, to indeed celebrate people’s efforts to grow with educational technology.  Second, since teachers learn best from other teachers, to showcase what others are doing and hopefully inspire ideas to scale the growth.

Finally, I had the opportunity to travel to Dallas, TX, for a cohort gathering of other ed-tech-type people from the Central & Southern Province of Jesuit schools.  This was another powerful event that allowed us to study how to further the mission of Jesuit schools in the context of our role and to do some visioning around the future of educational technology in our schools.

My hope is that I can indeed take what I've learned this fall to help continue bridging the gap from where we are now to where we need to be in support of an ever-changing, innovative, digital-age education for our students.  (ISTE Standards for Coaches)