My Workplace Professional Development Plan
In my 15 years as an educator, I have served a variety of roles that include classroom teacher, program coordinator, and most recently as a specialist for technology integration. As the District Technology Integration Specialist I have the responsibility of working with elementary, middle school, and high school teachers to encourage, model, and coach teachers as they integrate technology tools into their curriculum and instruction and adopt student-centered practices for engaging students and cultivating student learning.
Le Sueur-Henderson Public Schools (LSH) have approximately 1,200 students in grades Kindergarten-12 and are located in the rural Minnesota River valley approximately 60 miles south of Minneapolis and 25 miles north of Mankato, Minnesota. For a small school district, LSH is rich in the technology options that are available for teachers and students. LSH teachers have personal laptop computers, which enables them to be effective, connected, and more mobile while on and off the LSH campus. Every classroom and conference room in the LSH district is equipped with a SMART Board and media station, and WiFi is available district wide. LSH uses the Infinite Campus student information system and Viewpoint data-mining application for data-driven decision-making at both the administrative and teacher levels.
As a district, LSH has not met AYP in the categories of Free & Reduced Lunch for Math and Reading and LEP for Math for the past 3 years and a district AYP Improvement Plan is in place. The AYP Improvement Plan involves Professional Learning Communities (PLC), but does not contain any specific technology integration strategies connected to content strategies or professional development strategies. The only technology included in the district's AYP plan involves data-mining using the Infinite Campus SIS and Viewpoint data-mining tool. As the new District Technology Integration Specialist, it is my goal to have any future AYP improvement plans contain strategies that involve using specific technology for engaging students and cultivating their learning. To achieve this, I will start to meet this goal by working with the PLCs so that they include technology integration objectives and strategies that align with district, school, and teacher initiatives. For example, two of LSH's initiatives in their AYP plan are to use SIOP and RtI, and they do not include any goals or deliberate connections or strategies to use technology to engage students and increase achievement.
Goal: All future AYP improvement plans will contain specific technology integration strategies so that students will have rigorous learning experiences that are media rich to help raise student achievement to grade level expectations and beyond.
Objective: PLCs will include 2-3 common technology strategies for each teaching strategy or initiative, i.e., SIOP, RtI. so they will more effectively engage, differentiate, and cultivate student learning.
Actions: - Meet with administrators to include Technology Integration Specialist with PLC model.
- Establish technology initiative for inclusion with PLC strategies and initiatives, i.e., SMART Boards, Google Apps
- Create rubric to measure level of technology integration by teachers for student learning based on teacher mastery level of basic, adapting, and transforming.
- Create rubric to measure impact of technology integration on students and their level of technology use for learning.
- Create professional development opportunities (professional growth projects) for teachers to integrate technology common for the group into their lessons aligned with initiatives and that will foster teacher growth and lead to student achievement.
- Facilitate PLC development of professional growth projects.
Timeline: 6 months
Evidence: - Each PLC will complete a professional growth project involving educational technology.
My Personal Professional Development Plan
As an educator, my personal goals are to advance my knowledge and my career in educational technology. - I will expand my personal professional learning network to consist of educators, researchers, and futuristic thinkers from around the world so I will be exposed to new ideas, technology, and strategies as they emerge.
I will be selected as a TA for Online Teaching Associate's Online Teaching course OTA 121 so that I may be employed as an OTA Online Teaching OTA-121 instructor and expand my experience in PD and training adults to integrate various technologies for student learning.I will select a topic for my thesis so that I may complete my Master in Science in Educational Technology.- Completed: Barriers of Integrating Technology into Curriculum and Instruction
I will complete my Masters of Science in Educational Technology so that I can expand my career opportunities using technology in and out of education.- I will become a Google Certified Educator so that I will be better able to help teachers in my district integrate Google Apps for student learning.
I will complete Cognitive Coaching training so that I will be more effective as a technology integration specialist and help coach other teachers through self-directed thinking to experience deeper meaning and learning.- I will become a SMART Certified Trainer.
To accomplish my goals, I will keep-up on emerging technology, strategies, and trends. - I will attend conferences, workshops, and webinars about using technology for student learning and professional development.
- I will attend TIES
2011 and 2012. - I will attend one national technology conference by 2012.
- ISTE, FETC, or iNACOL's Virtual Symposium
- I will participate in appropriate technology integration focused webinars as they are announced.
- I will attend appropriate regional workshops as they are announced.
- I will keep abreast of emerging technology integration trends and research.
- I will explore research on emerging tools and trends in educational technology.
- I will explore research on best practices in educational technology.
- I will explore research about effective and sustainable professional development for educational technology.
- I will I will continue to subscribe to educational technology magazines.
- Technology & Learning, EDTECH K-12, THE Journal
- I will continue to subscribe to the Diigo group Diigo in Education.
- I will continue to read websites, such as Edutopia, that highlight and discuss emerging educational technology trends and strategies.
- I will expand my use of Twitter and connections to other leaders and practitioners of educational technology to participate in discussions about technology rather than just be exposed to information. #edtech
- I will blog and use Twitter to share more online about educational technology to become an active participant in the evolution of educational technology around the region, state, country, and world instead of just in my district. This will expose me to new ideas, people, strategies, and trends that I can learn from, contribute to, and in return bring to teachers and students for rich learning opportunities.
- I will continue to increase my skill level and efficacy as a teacher and specialist using educational technology.
- I will integrate more existing technology and emerging technology to develop more effective strategies using tools that will engage students and challenge them to learn.
- I will become more skilled using the SMART Board, SMART Notebook, and SMART Response System.
- I will attend SMART Certified Trainer training.
- I will attend a Google Teacher Academy.
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