So, it’s the new year!  No dearth of new ideas, goals, for myself and/or colleagues!  Therefore, this post is about tools to help achieve our #BloggingBuddies #ETCoaches goals.

In my seemingly never-ending quest for the perfect planner, I have explored many different time-management solutions.  My all-time favorite was the Stephen Covey 7 Habits Planner, until the world went digital and our school went Google.  Since then I’ve experimented with more digital options –the Getting Things Done approach, Pomodoro Technique, Google Keep, Evernote, Trello, and the GTasks Pro app.  I have tweaked and settled on some of the previously mentioned strategies and mainly use the GTasks Pro app for tasks lists, which syncs with my Google Calendar on my phone and other computing devices.  I think it’s worked pretty well, when I am disciplined about checking it every day.  That said, I’m still on the look-out for the killer calendar/planner app! 

Last summer, I happened upon the Best Self Journal.  Not a killer app.  In fact, a throw-back to paper!  Yikes!  However, I will admit it did help me stay focused on the big picture, even though I did not complete it every day when things got crazy-busy. Beginning with Back2School and continuing through January 8, I was working on three big goals.  Besides all things B2S, I wanted to get certified as an Apple Teacher and Google Certified Educator Level 1.  I was also enrolled in a MOOC, Launching Innovation in Schools, with a colleague, which is in the November post below  So, a lot to keep track of! 

The Best Self Journal is a 13-week roadmap/daily planner.  What I like about it is you can plan for both long- and short-term goals.  While it took me longer than 13 weeks – really, 23, including the holidays – I was able to meet my three goals of certifications as Apple Teacher, Google Certified Educator Level 1, and completing studies in the online course.  Between the morning and evening routines, the daily targets, wins, and lessons-learned components, I was able to track my progress, which helped me stay disciplined.  I didn’t do so well with the weekly progress reporting, so that’s an area upon which I’ll need to improve.  However, the gratitude reflections are also foundational in the teachings of Ignatian spirituality, which inspire my life; so that’s another plus for BSJ.

All in all, while not perfect, I liked the BSJ enough that I invested in another one.  I hope to refine my practice and sustain the momentum. If you have any system which has worked well for you, do tell in the comments below.

Good luck on meeting your goals for 2018!  Happy New Year!

I know everyone has been busy with end-of-semester tasks, not to mention the holidays!  Before I head out for the festivities, I offer today’s #ISTE #ETCoaches Blogging Buddies post on cybersecurity.  A couple weeks ago, I attended the Digital Safety & Citizenship workshop, hosted by Google at their fabulous Chicago offices.  Here are some takeaways that could be good enhancements to help bring our digital citizenship programs to the next level, with the inclusion of a cybersecurity strand.  In particular, phishing and password strength.  This is of growing importance since our students use email as a communication tool, and that's the primary method used by "bad actors" to steal private information via bogus messages.

First, targeted for the third- through fifth grade-population, @GoogleForEdu has designed a new curriculum called Be Internet Awesome.  This was launched in June 2017.  If you are not aware, complementing the written curriculum is a browser-based game called Interland.  Topics include:

·  sharing with care

·  don't fall for fake (phishing)

·  designing strong passwords

·  being an upstander

·  asking for help from a trusted adult if you are in doubt about something

The gaming principles create an interactive way to learn about digital safety.  The presenters at our workshop emphasized not calling content digital citizenship but characterizing efforts as "this is what we gotta do in our digital age," to help with the cool factor to all this.  And we know cool is king!   As a high-school, perhaps this could be a prelection activity for our kids to see what they know already and help inform future teaching. I've played with it and learned a few things since I worked through my digital citizenship certificate from Common Sense Media. The curriculum is @ISTE aligned and approved.  Works on iPad!

Also, for teachers not comfortable with all this, Google has a self-paced digital safety teacher certification at Google Education.  https://edutrainingcenter.withgoogle.com/digital_citizenship/preview

The day included other resources, some of which are great for parents.  The presenters emphasized the importance of partnering with parents for best results at getting the messages internalized and scaled.  Oftentimes, parents are even more uncomfortable than teachers in this realm.  Two organizations, besides Common Sense Media, of course, are below:

Family Online Institute:  https://www.fosi.org/

Connect Safely:  https://www.connectsafely.org/

And, specifically for our teen population, a suggestion from the audience was Net Smart Teens, by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.  http://www.nsteens.org/

I know this is lots of info four days before Christmas!  When you get back after the holidays, be sure to brainstorm ways you can raise the bar on your current digital citizenship curriculum to add the cybersecurity pieces.  In today’s climate, it is very important to raise student consciousness on these topics as soon as we can.  

Best wishes for a blessed Christmas and wonderful holidays!  May you return to school in January relaxed, refreshed, and ready to hit the ground running for the second half of the school year!    

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)

Tales from the Dark

I'm a couple months behind on my commitment to the @ISTE #ETCoaches Blogging Buddies project, so my apologies for being such a slacker!  Summer was busy, preparing for the upcoming school year.  I remain the lead on the etext procurement/distribution/training/trouble-shooting process.  I have a terrific helper on the ordering side, but I do need to keep up to speed on any changes to our purchases so that I am aware of how those may affect the other steps in the process.  One example of that is somehow we ordered a flash-based etext that of course does not display on iPads, and we’re a 1:1 iPad learning environment! 

It was a new book for a new course, so we had to do some quick-and-dirty trouble-shooting with the publisher to figure out how to make it work!  We ended up utilizing Puffin Academy as the flash browser from which to launch this etext.  That has raised some interesting possibilities for us to curate and publish content through Puffin’s school portal, and we’re exploring that realm now.  If you have experience with that, any comments are appreciated!

We also launched a new LMS, @Blackbaudk12 onCampus, and moved to a drop-cascade, block bell schedule, which had us occupied on the training and development end of things as well.  A team of two teachers and I were trained by our LMS guru last spring. We held 12, three-hour training sessions for faculty over the summer, which helped introduce people to the new platform.  Thankfully the system was able to keep everyone oriented to date, time, and place for the new, six-day rotating schedule!

I’ve had a few irons in the fire since then, including following my beloved @ChicagoCubs in their #racetorepeat a World Series run!  Though it was a great season, unfortunately we didn’t make it.  Ever hopeful for a better outcome next year so we can #FlyTheW Championship Flag again!  Finally, I'm enrolled in the #LIISMOOC, Launching Innovation in Schools, by Justin Reich, @bjfr, and @PeterSenge.  Great stuff!  Stay tuned for more on that soon!

Thanks for following this blog.

Blogging Buddies Post 1

Back in November 2016, I attended the @EdTechTeacher21 Innovation Summit, in Boston, #ettsummit.   It was a wonderful experience, despite the fact that I missed being in Chicago for games 6 & 7 of the Cubs/Cleveland World Series!  Of course, I watched the games nonetheless and was thrilled with the rest of the lifelong Cubs fans when we won, to #FlytheW finally after 104 years of our World Series drought!

Besides the Cubs, one of the many takeaways from this conference included a day on project-based learning that leveraged the Seesaw iPad app as an active-learning journal for adult learners.  Our instructor, the talented Beth Hollinsworth, @bethhollinsworth, was a wealth of information and really got us thinking and up and moving on the content.   Then she had us creating, processing, synthesizing, and sharing using the Seesaw app.  It was a workshop like none other I’ve attended, and I wanted to see if we could incorporate it into our professional development at our school.

We designed a workshop with new teachers first.  By incorporating cooperative-learning strategies, leveraging iPad as a creation tool, and community building through the Seesaw app, we learned a lot about what stuck and didn't stick with our new teachers throughout this year’s mentor program. Since the experience went so well, we thought we could design a blended workshop for our final Tech Week, this time with the theme of personalized learning through our Lynda.com subscription and Seesaw.

We met face-to-face for a 43-minute period in our regular "Companions" cross-curricular, learning- community groups, which meet weekly during the school day, to introduce the concept, take a deeper dive into Lynda's vast selection of topics, and for a refresher on Seesaw features.   We gave teachers ten days to briefly study a Lynda topic, create an artifact of their choice leveraging iPad and Seesaw to demonstrate their learning, post their artifact and reflection to Seesaw, and reply to another's post. The resulting portfolios were a fun way to share and extend learning, and I’ve posted some examples from our two classes here:

Maroon Tribune

Golden Nuggets

In short, these experiences demonstrated that professional development which incorporates dedicated workday meeting time for cross-discipline groups; learner choice in self-selecting and demonstrating learning; social opportunities for teachers to learn from and with each other; and self-reflection/sharing on the process can go a long way to enriching professional development.  This year's goal?  How can we expand on this to make it an even stronger experience for teachers and to increase student learning?

Excited to join Blogging Buddies, courtesy of the ISTE Ed Tech Coaches PLN!  Blogging Buddies were inspired by Jennifer Hogan's "Compelled Blogger Tribe!"  I've been wanting to step back into blogging since participating in last fall's  #IMMOOC with @georgecouros, et al.  I believe this will be a wonderful opportunity to share experiences with other ed-tech coaches and any other readers we can pick up along the way!   Stay tuned as groups are being formed and more formal endeavors follow.  In the meantime, follow me on Twitter for micro-musings.  And if you're a member of ISTE, feel free to join us if you have responsibilities for professional development and ed-tech integration.

#immooc Week 4 reflection

I work with teachers to  -- hopefully! -- empower them to leverage 1:1 technologies and create innovative learning opportunities for our students.  I was struck by the blog prompt asking what elements of the eight things exist in my professional learning, not only because I am a lifelong learner myself but because I help design learning opportunities for teachers. I would agree on the importance of the eight characteristics in today's educational environment, both for students and adult learners. 

Some of the things I believe we include in our ed-tech development opportunities are voice, choice, and reflection. When we first became a 1:1 iPad learning environment four years ago, we embedded ed-tech PD in weekly "iLeader" PLC meetings. These groups of approx 12-15 teachers were led by teacher facilitators and intentionally included at least one other department/level member for common relevance and collaboration ease. Learning was indeed social, and we all learned from each other.  One thing that people liked was having both department and school-wide collaboration in the same meeting.  It allowed them to get to know people across the disciplines, which is sometimes difficult in schools.

As for choice, we regularly survey folks on what they would like to learn and give them a choice of topics from which to choose for our now three tech weeks/year.  I would like to try an edcamp model soon, though!  

As a Jesuit school, reflection is a plank in our pedagogical paradigm; and as a school, this is a big part of our culture.  I would like to incorporate more free-response-type questions in our post-workshop surveys. I also like the idea of designing learning experiences to include five minutes at the end for capturing folks’ thoughts or a Padlet board to share folks’ thoughts.  

Three down, five more to take a closer look at!

Better Late Than Never! #IMMOOC Reflections, Week 2

For Week 2, chapters two and three had many nuggets to take away.  what resonated with me was the critical questions for the innovative educator.  In particular the question, "Would I want to be a learner in my own classroom?"  Here's my thoughts.

#IMMOOC Week 1 Reflection

#IMMOOC Innovative Mindset - Intro 

After reading the intro to The Innovator's Mindset, I was reminded of a story I read a number of years ago in Chicken Soup for the Soul.  The story was "bilding me a fewchr"  See below for full text.   Innovation is crucial in education because education is about the future.  If we are not relevant today, how can we be providing new and better opportunities to build our students' future?  

Video Reflection

#IMMOOC Innovative Mindset - Intro

#IMMOOC Innovative Mindset - Intro 

After reading the intro to The Innovator's Mindset, I was reminded of a story I read a number of years ago in Chicken Soup for the Soul.  The story was "bilding me a fewchr"  See below for full text.   Innovation is crucial in education because education is about the future.  If we are not relevant today, how can we be providing new and better opportunities to build our students' future?

Take-Off!

Today is the launch of a new page to Bridging the Gap, Macro Reflections on Micro-Coaching.  It is inspired by The Innovator's Mindset book, by George Couros.  While Bridging the Gap has been in existence since 2006, I haven't done much with it because I'm using Twitter much more.  Couros has convinced me to reconsider my use of the "macro" blog and how we can integrate it more into the big-picture of edtech.  This new page is where we will share what we are learning through our sessions:  good, bad, ugly!

Quest 4 - Assignment 5, Final: Celebrate your Learning!

Wow, what a busy summer you've had!  Time to showcase all your hard work!  

• Share a link to your Google Site ePortfolio within this comments area.  
• Within your Google Site ePortfolio, include at least one artifact and one reflection for that artifact.  Note:  Your ePortfolio itself can be your main artifact and the subject of your reflection if you are building an ePortfolio to show professional growth.  Please upload another artifact either way so you can practice the mechanics of that process.
• Elaborate on why your artifact was selected and its meaning and value in your portfolio.  
• What is the artifact's value to Loyola Academy?
• Thinking more broadly, what does your ePortfolio show about your learning and how you have grown professionally from this summer online course?  
• What more can you learn on the topic of ePortfolios?
• What suggestions do you have for improving this learning environment?
• Magis:  Check out the work of one of your colleagues' posted herein, if any.  Comment on one aspect you found valuable and/or interesting and why.

Quest 4 - S'More on Reflection

Assignment 2b:

Reviewing the elements of the portfolio cycle, how do these elements fit into your vision of developing your ePortfolio?

Quest 3

Quest 3 of Summer Camp:  Google Sites as ePortfolio

This was a huge quest, with a lot of information on tech and the ePortfolio development process!  When you have completed Assignment 4, share your story about developing your ePortfolio around the campfire here.

• Tell us about the purpose and type of content you will have for your ePortfolio 
• Tell us your reasons for choosing this purpose
• Tell us whether and/or how you grew in your technology skills and your understanding of ePortfolios as you developed your site
• Include the link to your shared site within your post

Quest 1 - Welcome to summer online PD: Google Sites as ePortfolios!

We will be exploring a number of ways to exchange thoughts during this course.  Our first online discussion will be on a blog.  This will be a way for us to get to know who is participating and for you to think about your goals for this course.  Think about it as sitting around the campfire to tell our stories!

Once you're settled in on your beach chair, click on the "Post a comment" space herein and please tell us the answers to the following questions:

1.  Your first name and what discipline you teach.
2.  How the topics of ePortfolios and the reflection component of the IPP connect with what you already know or do.
3.  What you hope to achieve by completing this course.

If you'd like some music in the background, visit the Pandora link for Internet radio!

Resurrection of the Blog

Now that we have over a semester of 1:1 iPad learning under our belts, several teachers have created class blogs to add to our P21 creativity repertoire.  Welcome to publishing more than 140 characters of your thoughts!  Have fun with this project!

Gratitude and progress!

On March 27, we deployed iPads to 160 faculty.  We had tables of small groups staffed by our current iTeam, who helped their colleagues activate the iPads, configure email accounts, download some basic apps, et cetera.  Many thanks for everyone's efforts and openness!

iPad Pilot 2.0

Our iPad pilot program was expanded to include eight teachers and 240 students, beginning September 17, 2012.  While everyone was a little nervous at the outset, we have spent much time together to learn more about the iPad, its functions, relevant apps, and other uses in the classroom.  We created a Google group for communicating information and reflections. We surveyed the students and the faculty at large to collect data on the program.  We have researched different models of 21st Century integration, such as SAMR and P21.  Finally, we have visited and/or otherwise contacted schools with successful programs.  We feel we have gained confidence in our  abilities to utilize iPads in the classroom and are hopeful for an expansion to a 1:1 environment next year.

Please give us your thoughts on the following questions.

How has the iPad broadened your teaching strategies? Has it supplemented your curriculum?   Have you designed a lesson utilizing the iPad?  Have you discovered any digital textbooks which can be integrated into your curriculum? Do you believe the iPad is a tool that can effectively engage today's learners and enhance their academic success?

Is there anything else you'd like to add about your experience?

Please give your initial reflections on using the iPad for teaching and learning.