3a. Establish trusting and respectful coaching relationships that encourage educators to explore new instructional strategies.
3b. Partner with educators to identify digital learning content that is culturally relevant, developmentally appropriate and aligned to content standards.
3c. Partner with educators to evaluate the efficacy of digital learning content and tools to inform procurement decisions and adoption.
3d. Personalize support for educators by planning and modeling the effective use of technology to improve student learning.
It was wonderful to watch the teachers each present their slides at our last meeting. They obviously felt proud of the work they had done over the year, even with the challenges and stress of a global pandemic. The collaboration helped them feel a sense of community and group accomplishment as well as gave everyone a review of the content we had covered over the year. First 5 San Francisco featured this slideshow in their newsletter and the i3institute has used the slideshow to highlight our work, and introduce what we’ll be doing for the 2021-2022 school work. In the future I hope that this slideshow inspires other educators not only for the examples of deep project work but also for the way these educators worked together as a collective to deepen their understanding around PBL and inquiry.
This slideshow represents an entire year of my work as a facilitator and I am very proud of it. It showed me how a simple piece of technology, such as sharing a Google Slides file, can make a large impact on learners. My participants gained confidence, reviewed content, and created documentation using technology all through this final project. I believe this shows how I was able to establish a trusting relationship that encouraged these instructors to explore new instructional strategies (3a).
3a. Establish trusting and respectful coaching relationships that encourage educators to explore new instructional strategies.
During the 2020-2021 school year my regular facilitation of the inquiry and project-based learning (PBL) teacher professional learning community (PLC) was moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This PLC was sponsored by First 5 San Francisco and is part of the Quality Connections initiative. Learn more about First 5 San Francisco and Quality Connections here. I have facilitated this group for the past 2 years and had previously met with this PLC in person and we would end each year with a culminating event where teachers had the opportunity to create documentation of their PBL journey over the year. This year we had to adjust and created a final collaborative Google Slides presentation to showcase our work together. For many of these educators, this year was the first year they implemented a PBL curriculum.
This slideshow was created during the second to last virtual meeting this PLC group had together. I created the outline of slides including one slide for each teacher ahead of time and introduced the entire slideshow to the group at the beginning of our meeting. I then had us work collaboratively on each slide and give ideas on what the content should be. We also went over what an individual slide could look like and what types of elements they might include. After we worked on the collaborative slides, I gave everyone 30 minutes to work on their individual slide. They could also continue to work on their slides outside of our meeting as we had a month until our next meeting where we would be presenting. In between our meetings, I gave feedback inside of the notes section on each slide as the teachers worked to complete their slides.
3b. Partner with educators to identify digital learning content that is culturally relevant, developmentally appropriate and aligned to content standards.
3c. Partner with educators to evaluate the efficacy of digital learning content and tools to inform procurement decisions and adoption.
This slideshow is a software critique of two software, IXL, a math drill and practice software, and Bioman, a science simulation/edugame software. I collaborated on this critique with three other students in my educational technology master’s program at California State University of Fullerton (CSUF). The assignment required us to think critically about elements of the software that would make it effective for students while working collaboratively in our group.
My group and I worked together to evaluate the software for elements of quality including the cultural relevance, the contents’ developmental appropriateness, and alignment to content standards (3b), among others. After evaluating the efficacy of the digital learning content and tools, we designed this slideshow as a way of communicating our findings to a potential group that would decide on adopting the software (3c). One of my group members was able to implement the IXL game to review math content as a result of our critique.
Understanding quality elements of software will help me make informed decisions on appropriate software when asked to choose software in a program requesting to implement new teaching strategies. When I get the chance to use these new skills, I believe the impact will be in implementing impactful software that can improve student outcomes. Students from my group member’s classroom were able to use the IXL program because of our screening and it got them excited about reviewing material through game-based learning. I feel that sharing with other teachers will also help them see how game-based learning will help them improve student outcomes.
Working collaboratively to understand elements of quality and how to identify them in actual educational software helped me gain the necessary experience to proficiently complete a software critique in the future. I gained knowledge on elements of quality to look for and experienced working in a group when critiquing educational software as it will be a valuable skill for a technology-focused educator.
I believe that collaboration is an important skill to have not only as an educator but also considering all human relationships! I appreciate that I had the software critique experience partnering with other educators to create competency around identifying digital learning content that is culturally relevant, developmentally appropriate and aligned to content standards (3b). The software critique recommendation report experience also allowed me the opportunity to evaluate the efficacy of digital learning content and tools to inform procurement decisions and adoption (3c). Facilitating collaboration of teachers during my inquiry and PBL PLC through a shared Google Slides presentation shows how I was able to establish a trusting and respectful coaching relationship that encouraged educators to explore new instructional strategies (3a). I will continue to hone my collaboration competency as I gain opportunities to collaborate individually in a coaching capacity in order to personalize support for educators by planning and modeling effective use of technology to improve student learning (3d).
