Reflections in Tech

For the past four years the North Carolina Digital Leaders Coaching Network (NCDLCN) has been a driving force in my growth as a coach.  I have been able to grow my professional network, stretch my thinking, grow through reflection, and put new ideas into practice.  The most recent NCDLCN session I participated in was an alumni session focussed on the concept of design thinking.  I didn't exactly know what I was getting into, but I knew that I would learn something new, be with my people, and have a blast. That I did. As part of the design thinking process each participant was paired with another to work through the process.  The best part of this partnership, was two-fold; my partner was Delaine, one of my mentees from the 2016-2017 cohort, and the purpose of the design thinking process we were to work through was to solve our partner's problem!  This was so powerful!  I love helping people solve their problems, mine, not-so-much.   At the end...

Summer time means summer reading!  I love seeing what other people are reading, sharing what I've read, and getting book recommendations from friends.  This morning I put together a very simple Google Site to display my summer reading, and thought I'd share a quick walk-through on how to do it! Here's my site:  https://sites.google.com/burke.k12.nc.us/wolfhopesummerreading/home

This adventure in learning began when one of my 6th grade science teachers approached me prior to spring break wanting to plan a BreakoutEDU game. She wanted a game based on the unit her students were wrapping up, Plants and Ecosystems.  I searched the BreakoutEDU webpage  without luck, and decided we'd have to create something to fit the needs of her and her students.  We met together and she was able to walk me through a good bit of the material, and we were able to bounce some puzzle ideas off one another.  She wanted to cover the cycles that take place in an ecosystem; water cycle, carbon cycle, photosynthesis, and pollination to name a few.  She also wanted to include different types of biomes, as well as a variety of flowering plants. Identifying the parts of a plant and symbiotic relationships rounded out our discussion that day. After our meeting I tried to get to work on designing puzzles to match our chosen topics, but my wheels were spinning, and ...

Recently, my family was gifted the movie, "Robots" and we watched it a handful of times, and the line, "See a need, fill a need" is one that resonated with me.  I believe that as educators we see lots of needs on a daily basis, but the filling of needs may be an area where we need some improvement. I got the opportunity to really live out the "See a need, fill a need" idea in our final meeting with our Burke County Global Educators Cohort (BCGEC). We kicked off our session with a Gripe Jam activity.   Jennie Magiera had shared this activity at NCTIES during her PD is not a 4 Letter Word session.  The Gripe Jam activity is a great way to think about challenges that we face as individuals, and then collectively brainstorm ways to address the challenges. One of the collaborative conversations that took place as a result of our Gripe Jam was a need for a collection of technology resources that could be categorized and searched in order find an appropriate...

I have the great opportunity to work with a team of fabulous people that I love to help, anyway I can.  This group of people was integral in helping me learn a very important lesson about asking for help.  Together, we participated in an escape room session in which we failed, because we didn't ask for a hint when we needed it.   I was adamant during the session that we could do it, without help, and yet in the end I left feeling like a failure.  In my mind, asking for help was an indication of weakness, and weakness is not good.  However, in the 'debrief' on the way home, I realized that had we asked for help we probably would have been successful, and would have felt pretty darn good about ourselves.   That was an eye opening lesson for me.   In the past I have rarely asked for help.  It was a personality flaw of mine, that goes along with my stubbornness, perfectionism, and procrastination... While these traits have helped me to stri...

In an effort to get more and more of our teachers engaged in Twitter, our district has created many resources for teachers to utilize to get started.  These resources include a Twitter #pdchallenge , an ideas list , a 20 day challenge , and a Twitter drive .  We have also shared a resource created by  +Alice Keeler  which you can find here  which enables students to tweet from a teacher account with supervision. This sheet is awesome, and I've taken it a step further to be more manageable for students on mobile devices by attaching a simple Google form to the sheet and using the CopyDown Add-on.  See below for some instructions if you want to try it out! First, make a copy of this Google Form.   Click here , and then click "Copy" Rename the form if you'd like and then click on the 'Responses' tab and the spreadsheet icon to 'create a new spreadsheet' and click 'Create' Your spreadsheet is going to need just a few modificatio...

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...