Adventures in EdTech

The course, 21st Century Ed Leadership, has been one of my favorites throughout this program. I liked it so much because it felt very aligned to the work I do as a TOSA in our district. We plan district-wide PD, plan staff meetings, and periodically observe other staff members, so I really enjoyed digging into resources tied to these topics to help improve what I'm already doing. My favorite assignment in this course was the walk-through. In my opinion, educators do not have enough opportunities to observe each other. In my TOSA role, I am constantly in other people's classrooms and I have to say, there is just SO much talent across our district! We have amazing things happening at all grade levels and at all buildings, and it would be so beneficial if teachers could have more time to observe and learn from each other. This walk-through form helped me to narrow my focus when going into a teacher's classroom to observe for technology integration. It made the observation s...

In our 21st century ed leadership course, we planned a district-wide challenge. Our goal for this project was to improve culture, foster collaboration, and encourage innovative teaching practices across our district.  We brainstormed ideas together in class and then collaborated digitally in between meetings to move our plan forward. We came up with a great plan to get our teachers excited about technology and trying new things! Each week, teachers will have a new set of tech challenges to complete and they will earn points which they can cash in for laptop stickers and other swag. We plan to implement this challenge in January as a way to jumpstart the new year and to spice up the winter blues. This capstone project was fun to plan but it also had many challenges. First, working to plan a large-scale event with around 20 people is no easy task, particularly since much of the planning was done via digital collaboration instead of in-person discussions. During our second c...