Skip to main content

CETL Certification

I earned this handy, dandy badge a couple months ago. It's a CETL Certification, which says I'm a Certified Educational Technology Leader. That's a mouthful, and a year ago, I would have said, "No way, I could never pass that test." I had been introduced to the COSN network, casually, on one of those casual BCPS 10 hour summer workdays.  I brushed it off as as "Yeah, right" possibility because my knowledge of the vastness that is technology leadership was not on my radar, at all.  Fast-forward to fall of 2017, and NCDPI announces that there is a partnership with COSN to provide a 2 day course, as well as the testing for CETL Certification. Lucky me, I got signed up, and found myself in Wake county for training in January. What a whirlwind of information; two straight days of information overload! At the conclusion of the training days we'd had about 4 weeks to study, as the test was scheduled for February 28th. I spent lots of time working through all the material, mostly early morning sessions before my kids were awake, and I tested myself in many free moments using Quizlet, and pre-made sets. I knew the vocabulary pretty darn well, all 400ish terms that I studied.  I memorized acronym after acronym, and felt both prepared and scared out of my mind when test day rolled around.

If you have been a part of a proctored exam recently, you know the feeling of stress, dread, nausea, and anticipation.  This test is 115 questions, with only 2 hours to take it. That timer, is menacing! I read, and reread, and read, and marked questions to return to.  I marked 30ish to review, and I bet more than half of them I changed my initial answers.  I submitted with mere seconds, more nervous than when I first walked into the testing session.

I will always remember Marlo standing behind me as I got my test result. She knew I passed before I did.  I was in shock! No doubt, the hardest test I've ever taken.  Every minute of hard work paid off.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

BreakoutEDU, YES!

Plan. Schedule. Print. Prep. Hide clues. Set locks. Test locks. Double-check clues.  Breathe. Engage. Breakout! I won't sugarcoat this, the process of preparing for my first BreakoutEDU session took me a long time!  (I used a pre-made game, Grammar Guru, it was great by-the-way!) However, every bit of time I spent printing, cutting, re-printing, scanning, and building was WORTH IT! Cyndi Childers, a 6th grade teacher at East Burke Middle School, was looking for something to get her students engaged, and I knew Breakout was just the trick. We ran two simultaneous games in two rooms, with Cyndi facilitating one room and myself in the other.  We had groups about about 12-15 students in each room.  The group size worked, it could have been smaller, but it really wasn't bad at all.   This game has a progression of clue finding, one leading to another, so they were all somewhat forced to be working together on 1-2 clues at once, which I liked.  This help...

Upgrade your phone and upgrade a classroom.

The students in Mrs. Moody's third grade class are working in a 1:1 environment, but it's not like other classrooms you may have seen.  The students in her class are using iPhones that have been deactivated from a cellular service provider.  These phones range from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5c, and have been collected over the past three to four years. Mrs. Moody, fellow teachers, and even the BCPS Technology Department have contributed their older model iPhones after upgrades. The students had been using iPhones in the classroom for several years, but now  each student now has their own device to work with in the classroom.  While the iPhone may have its limitations, it also has its benefits. The students can essentially have the world in their pockets, and they are using them to the fullest extent.  Check out just a few things the students have been doing: Taking pictures Accessing Google Drive, Docs, and Classroom Using QR Code Readers for scavenger hunts ...

What's the Purpose of Education?!

What do you see as the purpose of education?   Why might innovation be crucial in education? In my head it's hard to come up with the 'purpose' of education because it seems like such an enormous idea that encompasses so much more than classrooms, books, and tests.   I'll do my best, but forgive the run-on sentences that may follow.  I think the purpose of education is to help students reach their potential.  I think educators are required to challenge students to prepare themselves for both the known and unknown.  Learners must be provided a safe place to take risks, ask questions, search for answers, share opinions, fail, and try again.  The purpose of education is to empower those that feel powerless, to help them see that their circumstances don't define them, and that they can find a better way.  I think education should encourage problem, ideas, and solutions and embrace new ways to do things. Our job as educators is to provide an environ...