V. Engage in professional growth and leadership
Sisters of Mary
Teachers continuously improve their professional
practice, model lifelong learning, and exhibit
leadership in their school and professional
community by promoting and demonstrating
the effective use of digital tools and resources.
a. Participate in local and global learning
communities to explore creative applications
of technology to improve student learning
b. Exhibit leadership by demonstrating a vision
of technology infusion, participating in shared
decision making and community building, and
developing the leadership and technology skills
of others
c. Evaluate and reflect on current research and
professional practice on a regular basis to
make effective use of existing and emerging
digital tools and resources in support of student
learning
d. Contribute to the effectiveness, vitality, and self-renewal
of the teaching profession and of their
school and community
practice, model lifelong learning, and exhibit
leadership in their school and professional
community by promoting and demonstrating
the effective use of digital tools and resources.
a. Participate in local and global learning
communities to explore creative applications
of technology to improve student learning
b. Exhibit leadership by demonstrating a vision
of technology infusion, participating in shared
decision making and community building, and
developing the leadership and technology skills
of others
c. Evaluate and reflect on current research and
professional practice on a regular basis to
make effective use of existing and emerging
digital tools and resources in support of student
learning
d. Contribute to the effectiveness, vitality, and self-renewal
of the teaching profession and of their
school and community
I am lucky - I live in a professional learning network. Living in a convent full of over 100 former teachers, current teachers, and teachers-to-be, I can discuss and improve my professional practice every day. In fact, I already have the opportunity to "evaluate and reflect on current research and professional practice on a regular basis" both in formal and informal settings each evening when I come home from school. Not only am I renewed in my interest and love of teaching, but I myself am able to contribute to the effectiveness and delight in teaching of my Sisters. And while most of our conversations take place over a cup of coffee or around a table of popcorn strings rather than a digital network, what we discuss is going to come out in how we teach, how we interact with colleagues, and how we share our love of teaching in a digital environment. I demonstrated what I am learning from my own professional learning network through a couple of different projects.
In the digital imagery project, I introduced myself to my class using a professional photo and a brief description of myself, my major and my interests on the online discussion board for the class. I uploaded a photo of myself into Paint, and used that program to crop my photo and add my name to the photo. As I wrote about myself, I discussed my own interests and ideas for technological references in my major.
This project allowed me to collaborate and communicate with my classroom community in a way that I shared my own ideas about teaching while also reading others’ ideas in order to expand my own knowledge. This gave me a wide range of creative ideas for using technology in the classroom. It also allowed me and my classmates to reflect on current professional practice by seeing the ideas of other teachers – many of whom are using unique applications of technology for their various fields. Beyond this, we saw new digital resources that we could incorporate into our own classrooms. Each of us took leadership in our own small community by introducing not only ourselves but also our technological ideas.
I also engaged in the digital teaching world by my search for two lesson plans: a good one...and a less good one. The good lesson I found was a brief geography lesson on the five themes of geography, found here: Digital Camera and Geography. This lesson plan requires students to use digital cameras and/or their phones to take pictures of the geographic themes around them and then text or email them to one another in order to determine the themes and age of the objects pictured. The use of the internet allows the students to learn good netiquette as well as study the geography in the places around them. It is listed for high school, but would probably be more appropriate for middle school. This lesson could also be improved by having students upload their photos to a Google drive (etc.) and organizing them by theme or age.
The poor lesson I found is called Stonehenge: Solving Ancient Mysteries. While the lesson itself looks like it would be engaging to students, who are required to do a relatively large amount of research in order to learn about the science and history of excavation and archaeology, the internet resources it suggests are not only outdated but also not really necessary to the lesson. Use of Google Earth or some other visual representation of Stonehenge would be a great addition to this lesson.
The research for these lessons allowed me the opportunity to interact with other professionals who are displaying and talking about teaching. Because I discussed the lessons with my classmates, along with the lessons they found, I was able to immediately interact with my colleagues and reflect on current teaching opportunities and ways in which technology could be integrated into the classroom. This allowed us some self-renewal as we contemplated and created new ways to combine engaging material with engaging format - and especially by incorporating technological aspects into our lessons.
This project allowed me to collaborate and communicate with my classroom community in a way that I shared my own ideas about teaching while also reading others’ ideas in order to expand my own knowledge. This gave me a wide range of creative ideas for using technology in the classroom. It also allowed me and my classmates to reflect on current professional practice by seeing the ideas of other teachers – many of whom are using unique applications of technology for their various fields. Beyond this, we saw new digital resources that we could incorporate into our own classrooms. Each of us took leadership in our own small community by introducing not only ourselves but also our technological ideas.
I also engaged in the digital teaching world by my search for two lesson plans: a good one...and a less good one. The good lesson I found was a brief geography lesson on the five themes of geography, found here: Digital Camera and Geography. This lesson plan requires students to use digital cameras and/or their phones to take pictures of the geographic themes around them and then text or email them to one another in order to determine the themes and age of the objects pictured. The use of the internet allows the students to learn good netiquette as well as study the geography in the places around them. It is listed for high school, but would probably be more appropriate for middle school. This lesson could also be improved by having students upload their photos to a Google drive (etc.) and organizing them by theme or age.
The poor lesson I found is called Stonehenge: Solving Ancient Mysteries. While the lesson itself looks like it would be engaging to students, who are required to do a relatively large amount of research in order to learn about the science and history of excavation and archaeology, the internet resources it suggests are not only outdated but also not really necessary to the lesson. Use of Google Earth or some other visual representation of Stonehenge would be a great addition to this lesson.
The research for these lessons allowed me the opportunity to interact with other professionals who are displaying and talking about teaching. Because I discussed the lessons with my classmates, along with the lessons they found, I was able to immediately interact with my colleagues and reflect on current teaching opportunities and ways in which technology could be integrated into the classroom. This allowed us some self-renewal as we contemplated and created new ways to combine engaging material with engaging format - and especially by incorporating technological aspects into our lessons.
VI. Professional Standard for Michigan Teachers: Online Learning
culturalcatholic.com
Participate and reflect on, and demonstrate the ability to create and facilitate learning in collaborative online learning experiences:
a. Participates in specialized learning communities
in content areas;
b. Uses and evaluates professional development
resources within and outside the district;
c. Regularly seeks online opportunities for improvement;
d. Effectively creates and uses a variety of online
resources to individualize instruction and enhance
teaching and learning in the classroom.
a. Participates in specialized learning communities
in content areas;
b. Uses and evaluates professional development
resources within and outside the district;
c. Regularly seeks online opportunities for improvement;
d. Effectively creates and uses a variety of online
resources to individualize instruction and enhance
teaching and learning in the classroom.
Last but not least, as a student studying for a Michigan teacher certification, I need to learn how I can best teach my future students to excel and do their best in online learning. I worked together with classmates - my current learning community - to discuss some of the challenges that students might find in online learning. These discussions allowed each of us the opportunity to think about our own content areas and others and the challenges that different students might have in working in our areas and online. One discussion, for example, allowed myself and a classmate to consider the difficulties that dyslexic and autistic students might have in working online - and the danger that they may not know why they are struggling or be able to advocate for themselves to learn better.
Another discussion allowed my classmates and I to work together to come up with a list of collaborative activities that our students could complete in a virtual environment - the students would be able to work together on these projects without even needing to be in the same classroom. Some of the ideas we came up with were cartooning online, wikis, Google Docs, and online timelines.
While discussion of online learning experiences is very important, I was also able to participate in collaborative research with my classmates as we worked together to create a team wiki to determine what we learned about plagiarism and copyright issues. My classmates and I were able to practice our online learning skills through this as well as our collaboration skills. For example, we got into a thorough discussion of the ethics of plagiarism and copyright law and how we could best express this to our other classmates and students.
I also had the opportunity to learn from other classmates by taking their Moodle courses. This gave me a good feel for how my students might feel from the other side of my online lesson. I was able to collaborate with my classmates in the course, as well as to consider the information and instruction I was receiving from my classmate "teacher." Here is an example discussion that my Moodle classmate and I had concerning what we had learned about monopolies:
Finally, I was able to demonstrate my ability to create online learning experiences and individualize instruction through my webquest and Moodle course. On my webquest, I allowed students to follow one of three different paths to learn the information that I wanted the whole class to learn, and then share their learning with their classmates so that everyone could learn.
In my Moodle course, students were asked to take their new knowledge about gulags, analyze and evaluate it themselves, and then compare their knowledge to what their classmates had learned in a team wiki format - taking evaluative collaboration to the next level.
In all of these activities and discussions, I was able to learn from my classmates about new ways to teach my students online and reflect on the challenges and strengths to be found in online learning. I also had the chance to learn in online environments and collaborate online. Finally, my own work allowed me the ability to demonstrate what I have learned about teaching online courses to a broader audience - anyone who visits my websites will be able to see the correlation between online learning, student collaboration and the wide variety of Michigan history standards and national technology standards that were covered through the coursework.
