Digital and On-Demand PD: Creating New Opportunities for Learning

The pandemic gave rise to a professional development shift. Instead of having large conferences in which people traveled, many educator conferences moved to an online format. Bringing people together from around the world without traveling has allowed teachers to explore the world of educational technology and instructional strategies in a new way - from the convenience of their own homes. While I am excited to get back to convention center hopping in the future, I have loved the flexibility digital conferences have offered. This past year, I have attended conferences in places like Texas and Minnesota, places that I would never travel to just for professional learning because of cost and time. The on-demand nature created by this modality of learning has expanded my knowledge in the areas of educational technology, blended learning, and instructional strategies while challenging me to rethink adult learning and professional development structure altogether. So what's been learned? 

Always be prepared to adapt. 

In March 2020, I was supposed to attend the Midwest Google Summit in Wisconsin. Having attended that conference before, I knew it was worth the 90-minute drive and would be a collaborative trip for my fellow instructional coaches. This conference was canceled right around the initial shutdown of the pandemic, but quickly mini-conferences and related information began to fill my inbox. Many educators innovated and found creative ways to replicate or recreate that conference experience using Zoom, Google Meet, and other digital platforms to share live and recorded information. Throughout the next school year, my instructional coach friends and I even attended a few together, creating a backchannel to connect, reflect, and digitally hop to the best "room" or livestream going at the time. Through these experiences, we learned flexibility both as attendees who sometimes had to mute our cameras to get work done while listening into a session and as presenters who sometimes had to record our presentations to no audiences to be later accessed by the information educators on-demand. This test of flexibility reminded us of the importance of our content and the connections we make to others - even if it is an afterthought or reaction posted later on social media. 

Two times speed really can save a significant amount of time. 

My husband has listened to podcasts on two-times speed for some time. While chasing three small children around, it has been the only way for him to listen to a few of his favorite podcasts. Time is precious. I had always scoffed at this practice until I was forced to teach Intro to Communication in a remote format. With low-bandwidths and computers without cameras, the only way to grade speeches was having students prerecord them and upload them to Flipgrid. Watching five sections of speech videos (three at the high school and two at the community college) is time-consuming, but cutting that time in half could allow me to efficiently give important and specific feedback to my students that they deserved. Suddenly, I noticed that my habit of listening to YouTube videos, podcasts, and student work at a normal speed felt unnatural. The same feeling extended to conferences, particularly my favorite conference of the year - IDEACon. 

This past year, IDEACon (the Illinois Digital Educators Association Annual Conference) joined forces with TCEA (Texas Computer Education Association) to deliver a joint digital conference. This conference meant that I had twice the on-demand videos to choose from, and I wasn't limited to four timeslots. I could essentially watch all the videos I wanted and decided when I wanted to press play. I selected pace and place, which allowed me to watch over twenty sessions over a few weeks instead of only seeing a handful of sessions in a single day. The digital conference format made blended learning possible in the professional development world. It allowed me to learn from a broader group of educators I might not have been fortunate to encounter in a more traditional format. Using the two-times speed also allowed me to rewatch and find key tidbits of information from my favorite presentations, too. 

Participate in supplemental or "slow chats" to continue the connections beyond the PD experience. 

An on-demand presentation I attended earlier in the pandemic included a hashtag for a supplemental or "slow chat" This hashtag was promoted throughout the session and was accompanied by questions that encouraged attendees to share and reflect. This slow chat creates a space where participants could interact with the presenters and the other attendees. This interaction and opportunity to engage with others is powerful. The biggest drawback that I see with online and asynchronous PD is missing the conversations with others. Utilizing social media to converse and connect makes learning extend beyond the single experience. With my latest PD session, Blended and Beyond, I am using the hashtag to engage with my attendees of an asynchronous conference. If you've something to share about blended learning, use the hashtag - #blendedandbeyond21. I'd love to hear your thoughts! 

Register for the WeVideo Creator Community Summit

Being able to attend multiple conferences and PD experience on a broader level opens people's eyes to different teaching styles. 

Attending different conferences throughout the past year and more has exposed me to different learning styles and philosophies that I would not have seen had I only had access to face-to-face professional development. Other school districts and regions of the country have unique focuses that have opened my eyes to what teaching could look like if I shifted my thinking. In my experience, I have seen new tech tools, learning management systems, and even approaches to instruction within a traditional classroom. Even the unique style of a presenter can lead to a new insight or nugget of knowledge to apply to our classrooms. 

There's always something new to learn.

Whether it is simply a presentation strategy, a new tool, or a complete overhaul of your teaching philosophy, there is always something new to learn. As teachers, our profession is always evolving, and our students are ever-changing. To meet their needs, we need to continue to grow ourselves. Professional development on a digital platform opens new doors and makes learning more accessible. This format also allows for more opportunities that are consumed on our schedules and time frame. Without leaving our couches, we can learn from the best and brightest educators. In turn, we can sign up to share our insights by creating our own videos and resources to share. We are a community, and we cannot learn in a vacuum. While I am excited to return to face-to-face learning and seeing my edu-friends in person, I am grateful for the subset of professional learning that has been born out of the pandemic. Let the learning continue!

Here are a few links to some of my favorite edtech companies that offer PD:

• Flipgrid Ambassador
• Google Certified Educator
• WeVideo Professional Learning
• Pear Deck Training
• EdPuzzle Online PD
• Adobe Creative Educator Program
• Wakelet Ambassador

Gee - I’d love to organize my Gmail Inbox: Tips for Prioritizing Your Inbox

When July hits, a sense of panic fills countless teachers. Back-to-school shopping and sales will begin. If you're not ready to dive into the 2021-2022 school year just yet, there are a few ways that you can organize your Gmail inbox to prioritize what you see and, more importantly, when you see it. Aside from "out of the office" automated responses, these Gmail tips and tricks are great for summer snoozes and even better organization in the fall. 

Snooze your mail.

Suppose you're not ready to read an email from an admin or don't want to read the tech updates for the fall, no worries! Snooze the email. Schedule the email to reappear when you're ready to read it. Summer is your time to recharge and relax. Everyone has a different process and approach. For me, I like to plan ahead. I work a little bit overtime in the mornings before my family wakes up, and then, after crossing something off my to-do list, I enjoy my days. Some people want to set aside a weekend later in the summer to prepare for the next school year. Whatever the process is for you - follow it. Snoozing your mail allows you to schedule and control your workflow in a manner that makes sense to you. 

Schedule reminders to yourself.

Speaking of pending tasks, scheduling reminders is a great way to create visual to-do lists or remind yourself to complete a time-sensitive task. Scheduled reminders allow us to focus on what is in front of us and not worry about essential actions that need to occur later. I love scheduling reminders about sending out my weekly staff email or scheduling a recurring form to appear at 6 AM when I first look at my email for the day. Other items that I schedule for myself are reminders about the start of the semester, grading periods, and other noteworthy activities that arise - like upcoming PDs and meetings. Scheduling tasks takes the worry or anxiety of forthcoming events off my plate until it is time to give it my attention.

Sort your mail by assigning labels.

I am a fan of folders - physical and digital. I like having critical information sorted into alphabetized, labeled, and color-coded. Putting every piece of information in its place brings me joy and my inner Marie Kondo. At the beginning of the year, especially, teacher inboxes are filled with critical emails from so many entities, with attachments that need to be referenced later—those emails matter. Shorting information into appropriate labels can make finding essential information like health notifications from the nurse, department emails, or committee notes quicker and easier. This sense of sorting reduces the visual clutter in one's inbox and clears the way for more pressing emails and pending tasks that need to be completed immediately. 

Star your inbox to further organize and prioritize your messages.

Starred is a label automatically built into Google. Starred emails have their filter, and they also serve as visual reminders. When using the desktop version of Gmail, users can set the color of the stars. Coding stars based on priority or classification can be helpful for some. I love using stars to indicate that an email contains information or necessitates a response before leaving for the day. Color also brings me joy. The star feature is a quick tool for me that I have found helpful. Again, play with the features provided by Gmail and use the tools that apply to your organizational style. 

Use the priority inbox features to group unread, starred, and other labels as needed. 

A dean wanted help organizing his inbox a few years back. So I began experimenting with the priority inbox feature to support his organizational needs and that this feature can really help anyone who frequently receives a specific type or group of emails. For example, a coach might want to create a label for the sport they coach or the activity they sponsor. Or a teacher might simply want to sort student emails into a separate category from department or administrative emails. To prioritize automated emails for referrals, we created a priority inbox that allowed referrals to appear in a section by itself at the top. Then, all unread emails appeared below. A final third section was designated for opened emails that he started to address later. This process helped him to visualize his workflow and feel organized based on the task he needed to accomplish. While I don't have a section for labeled emails, I do like using the stars. My priority inbox is starred, read, and unread emails. This visualization gives me purpose and becomes a visual to-do list during busy times of the school year. 

No matter how you choose to organize your Gmail and your digital life, don't hesitate to use the tools that are available to you to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of the tools. Keeping yourself organized is empowering and can free up your mind to worry about what's happening in the real world AND can allow you to soak up the summer sun, too! We all need a break, and tech tools like Gmail can be leveraged to help ease your mind and snooze a little longer this summer. 

Taking the Best from 2020: Lessons Worth Keeping

This summer, I am checking something off my professional bucket list by working on my principal's endorsement. Even with grad classes and internship hours, this summer is moving at a much slower pace than last summer. Summer 2020 was filled with meetings, committees, and preparing teachers to be ready for the most unpredictable school year of our lives. Despite the desire to never hear the Zoom doorbell again, many aspects of last year lead to positive learning outcomes for students and teachers alike. I have wrestled with a question this summer: how can we leverage those great lessons and learning outcomes to create innovative and powerful educational experiences for our students in fall 2021 and beyond? 

We embraced flexibility.

An ever-changing schedule and teaching circumstances forced us all to embrace flexibility. Health and safety regulations were constantly shifting as new information became available. School schedules and instructional plans were drafted, created, revised, and scrapped altogether. In that planning process, teachers identified essential skills and curricular topics that needed to be taught to support student learning. In addition, teachers across disciplines and age levels developed social-emotional learning strategies and other ways to provide students with a sense of community in their respected classrooms. Then teachers and staff had to determine the modality and methods to teach this information. We flew the plane and built it mid-flight; we were flexible. What mattered most was the connections and relationships, and all the rest came second - or some days not at all. Because of flexibility, we learned to reteach, reinvent, and recreate educational experiences that we never thought we'd have to create, all from our couches, spare bedrooms, and basements with our kids, pets, and personal lives swirling about us. And when the modalities changed from full remote to hybrid to full remote again in a week, we exhibited our flexibility and rolled with the metaphorical punches. 

While I hope to never see so many shifts in my academic career again, I hope that we are more open-minded to new learning modalities, curriculum shifts, and instructional technology. Frustrating as it was to scrap lesson plans and reimagine every academic experience, we had time to collaborate with others and reflect on what mattered most. We were flexible and then flexible again, and in some ways, we all succeeded with the educational experience we might never have tried if we were not forced to do so. 

We used technology in innovative and meaningful ways. 

A few of my colleagues and dear friends were tech resistant for a while. When we started using Chromebooks at a rapid rate, some said, "I'm fine with paper." As Google Classroom captivated our content, a few stuck to the shallow end. In March 2020, those barely wadding in the kiddie pool of educational technology had to dive headfirst into uncharted waters. Being in full quarantine, all teachers had to adopt educational tools to deliver content and only had a weekend to prepare. With that challenge thrust upon us, so many teachers rose to the incredible feat of using educational technology to communicate, collaborate, and innovate with their students. Teachers learned Kahoot, Pear Deck, Flipgrid, EdPuzzle, Padlet, and every Google Workspace tool in the toolbox. They mastered online feedback with extensions like Mote and Permanent Clipboard. They even became content creators with Screencastify and WeVideo. Teachers found countless tools and ways to formatively assess and engage students in the learning process even while learning from home. 

Some teachers might have stayed shallow with these tools or never tried many of them at all. Trying something new and creating a walkthrough video or recording can be intimidating. Like our students, we judge ourselves and strive for perfection, which can hinder the creative process, but we went all in and surprised ourselves because we had no choice. I am so excited to see what teachers generate and create moving forward. Because we have tried, sometimes failed, but more often than not succeeded with these new tools to innovate our teaching, we now can continue to do so while still enjoying our face-to-face time with students and maybe even writing something on paper every once in a while, too. 

We forged personalized learning pathways. 

With new educational technology skills and flexibility under our belts, we have the tools to implement blended learning and personalization into the classroom more than ever. Last year, teachers had to retool and rethink how they taught lessons. Many created videos and resources that can supplement and personalize student learning. The tools we spent hours designing and developing do not have to be wasted because we are back to in-person learning. 

We learned that some students learn better in a flipped classroom environment or with resources to rewatch or pause as needed during the pandemic. As such, I am hopeful that moving forward, we've created multiple ways for students to acquire knowledge and also various ways in which students can demonstrate mastery. My district adopted a new LMS platform that if we had not been in the pandemic, we would not have shifted our curriculum and assessments nearly as quickly. Again, now that we have created resources out of necessity, I hope that those resources will continue to provide multiple pathways on which students can navigate and learn. 

We encouraged student self-efficacy. 

Beyond school, the pandemic was difficult for our children. Being isolated, in a place of uncertainty, and coping with a myriad of challenges at home, countless students faced situations that increased anxiety and fear. While they had to cope with a great deal, they also learned that they could take charge of their learning. Students had to innovate and create. They had to think in ways they might never have to before. While some students disengaged, teachers also found that some students soared with digital and remote learning. While we can agree that in-person learning is what works best for most students at the K-12 level, some students found great success in a digital or remote environment. Incorporating some of those strategies into our classrooms can help increase student learning independence and efficacy. Students CAN be the drivers of their learning, and we witnessed this firsthand during the pandemic. Encouraging students to take ownership of their learning will help them pursue education and careers beyond the K-12 hallways.  

We extended grace. 

Finally, one takeaway I hope we continue to remember is giving grace to our students, our colleagues, and most importantly, ourselves. This past year, there were days when the internet failed us, when lessons didn't work, and when students were unable to show up for a myriad of reasons. Collectively, we attempted to assume the best in all people and all situations. We accepted failures and shortcomings, and we provided support to our colleagues when we needed to do so. Let us continue to see the best, believe the best, and lift up others when needed. When we remember and truly honor the word grace, our schools, and our world can begin to heal from 2020. 

As a future educational leader, I hope to leverage our most challenging experiences for the positive. Every situation is an opportunity to learn. This last year was perhaps the most challenging collective experience we all faced together. Taking the best moments and outcomes from this past year, I believe we can create a much more innovative and positive educational experience for our students moving forward.