NETS-T++5

5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership
//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. Teachers://


 * a. participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning.

Reflection:
My artifact for this standard is a screen capture of my e-mail inbox. All of the visible e-mails are from the CFF Listserv. I became a member of the Listserv during my first year as CFF coach and it has been instrumental in presenting materials and ideas for educational activities to me. I also have posted questions that I needed some help with and offered answers to questions from other educators across the state. Over the last three years, the Listserv has probably been my most effective method of staying up to date on the newest and coolest technology innovations for education. It's almost like the Listserv functioned as my RSS feed. As long as the Listserv continues to function as a highly successful learning community device, I feel like I will be extremely proficient as far as this standard is concerned. I don't want to limit myself to using this outlet as my only learning community but it does provide many creative technology applications for improving student learning. One additional resource that we are trying to tap in to more this year during our professional development time is a professional learning community at our school. We are going to work more as a department to talk about best-practices and strategies that are working in our classrooms. Hopefully we can research technologies for our courses and then work together to implement them effectively.


 * 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.

Reflection:
This e-mail was sent to my principal recently detailing some professional development sessions that I will be conducting with teachers in my district. We have set aside some pockets of time so that teachers at the high school can work on lesson building with new technologies. I'm orchestrating these sessions with small groups of teachers and it's really helping them feel more comfortable with the Promethean boards in their classrooms. Next week our meetings will revolve around how to use the Activ Expressions in the classroom. We will even have some cross-curricular activities for the science and english teachers. I won't say that I feel extremely comfortable while presenting material to these teachers because I'm still somewhat new to the school and I don't want to step on anyone's shoes but I do love helping these teachers incorporate technology in to their lessons. One goal for me in the near future is to get a better feeling of what my Directors of Education feel is our vision of technology infusion. I'm getting better at working with other teachers to increase their technology skills but I would like to know what our district feels is truly important. They did us a great service by equipping 12 new classrooms with Promethean boards and purchasing three sets of Activ Expressions. I hope that they will continue to provide opportunities for our teachers to learn about educational technologies.