Technology Workshop and Standards for Professional Learning
I am still unsure of the focus for my one-hour technology workshop. I am also relieved because I need to account for all seven (7) of the Learning Forward Standards for Professional Learning.
Learning Communities: Clayton County Public Schools promotes and supports learning communities system-wide. Each week teachers meet with their grade level teams during their planning time plus one additional hour after school. I meet with the third-grade team most Wednesdays. Additionally, I am a part of the Department of Exceptional Students (DES) team and we usually meet once a month (and as needed). My goal is to present to either or both teams.
Leadership: In my building, we have grade level leaders, content leaders, committee/ project leaders, coaches, and department chairs to name a few in addition to the administrative team. I have noticed that each building’s administrative team comprise people from different rolls, but almost often than not, any person with an office is considered part of the school’s leadership team in general including grade level and department chairpersons.
Presenting to the Third Grade Team or to the DES team will include adequate leadership representation because several teachers from both teams serve in a leadership capacity.
Resources: I am leaning heavily towards teaching the DES team how to create a DES Google Drive. I could demonstrate how to create it from start to finish including uploading shared document like Parent Rights for example in both English and in Spanish. We need these at the start of every Individual Education Plan (IEP) meeting, and sometimes, it is a challenge to remember where to find it. I can include other IEP meeting documents like the DES Tracking Sheet, Parent Consent form, and the Parent Notification form. I would also create the following folders for our convenience: Interpreter Request, FTE, Schedule Verification, Master Schedules, and Behavior Intervention Plans (BIP). We can discuss as a team, what we want to include and I will allow each participant an opportunity to upload at least one document during the training.
Data: IEPs are driven by data so it would stand to reason that we would include a space for data in the DES Drive. Instead of placing student information here, we can upload some common and teacher created data forms especially individualized behavior sheets for students we share.
Learning Designs: Using the Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation (ADDIE) instructional design makes perfect sense. As part of this module, I can go through the steps and gain a better understanding of the framework in a relevant timely way.
Implementation: Once this training is implemented, the DES teachers will use the team drive for more efficient collaboration among DES teachers, students, and parents. When DES teachers rely on the drive for information rather than interrupting the DES chair throughout the day, the teachers will become empowered and do our job more efficiently.
Outcomes: The desired outcome of this one-hour training is for the DES teachers to improve our skills, and rely less on the DES chairperson for mundane or routine tasks. When we work smarter not harder, we can devote more time teaching and students’ time on task will increase, and ideally so will student engagement and student achievement.