The End of an Amazing Journey!

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the 3 Part IICT Course has been an amazing journey. I cannot even fathom the huge learning curve that has happened. I think after I go through the huge amount of resources, which by the way I have organized into multiple folders, I will be amazed!

 I have found that being organized is a HUGE task when faced with the enormous amount of collaborated information during this 3 part course.

The leadership project was the main part of part 4 of our course and I am thrilled with the prospect of being able to use this at my new school (once I have settled in of course and see the lay of the land).

There will be challenges of course, but I feel I have the necessary tools and education to move forward. 

Tying everything in with the Standards of Practice for teaching, has really made me feel how special we are as a profession. I am going to endeavour to stick to these standards at all times and going forward am definitely going to take more AQs in the future.

A special thank you to all of the instructors who have made this experience so special and so uplifting. I will be forever changed as a teacher, which is a great thing! Here's to future plans and accomplishments.......................................

LE 3 Reflections

As LE3 begins, it is time to look back over my other blogs and realize the massive learning curve that has happened and continues to do so!

Assessing a time when I was a teacher or a leader with technology really made me think whether I followed some of the qualities of being a leader or not. I found that quite a few of my colleagues had the same issues as myself; a lot of teacher-led activities and not enough hands-on. Quite surprising, really! Keeping current and being involved in communities to promote discussion, is key to honing one's leadership qualities. To be a quality leader takes an enormous amount of dedication and effort.

Collaborative Inquiry (CI) really interested me. While I had some idea about CI, I did not really know the theory behind it. Once again, my interest was peaked. I have tried to implement some of the CI theory into my lessons now and am on the road to implementing it in all my planning, I think! As anything new, you have to self-reflect and collaborate to see how and if you are progressing. I suppose that is another key to wanting to be a great leader, too!
I think I do a good job making my classroom a safe environment and also a friendly, open-door environment for both students and teachers. I really liked one of the videos that we watched about leadership and some of the quotes. Here it is:

The one quote that really caught my attention was: "Authority is a poor substitute for Leadership." How true that is. How many times in our working lives have we came across that attitude with our bosses? I try to be a leader that teaches by example and try to help whoever I can, whenever I can. Your time is free, give it generously as it costs you nothing! It is amazing to me how much time my colleagues give to students and are totally committed to their students and their learning. Throughout this course, I have remarked quite often how committed we all are to making our teaching more engaging for all of our students; as we are all committed to student learning and committed to students even with extra-curricular activities.

The activity that we all performed about programs for new teachers again amazed me; the amount of knowledge that we all shared with each other and the actual overall knowledge level of my colleagues astounded me. I learned about quite a few new programs and spent some time researching and trying different programs. Again, professional knowledge is abundant among all of my colleagues. Sharing is such a crucial part of building one's resources and all of my colleague did not hesitate to share when asked. The ideas to help new teachers out exemplifies the research, experience and overall knowledge of my colleagues; such a variance in the types of programs, also. I had not heard of some of the programs, like Comic Life, Voki and Adobe Spark to mention a few.

The PD activities that we created for a half-day teaching sessions for our fellow colleagues were extremely educational. They varied immensely and I retained a lot of new sites and programs to research and look into to use in my lesson planning and delivery. The commitment to ongoing professional learning is apparent in what all of us found. The amount of collaboration and research that we have shared is so immense that I have created multiple folders to keep websites, programs, hardware etc. I have had to be so organized to keep the folders easily understandable and easily accessible by the type of technology that I want to access.

Mentoring an older colleague at my school since the start of the year has taught me a lot about my leadership qualities; both good and bad! I have reflected about what I need to improve in and how to make a difference across the whole school. I have also realized how challenging it is going to be to implement my ideas and how crucial it is to have all parties on board; administration, teachers, students, community etc. Involving parents/guardians is a key concept to developing a successful technology plan. Sometimes, parents and the overall community in general are a forgotten part of a technology plan. Having the parents on board is crucial to getting the student to adopt a positive attitude towards learning and incorporating technology.

Being one of the tenets of professional knowledge, life-long learning is a must for all teachers who want to be leaders in technology. Ongoing professional learning and professional knowledge are key to our standards of practice as teachers. I want to be that life-long learner and want to pass that attitude on to each and every one of my students. Finding a balance in today's society with the vast amount of technology at our fingertips is our struggle moving forward. Time management is still a skill that needs to be developed in all areas of our lives including the use of technology for education, convenience and betterment; and not just for entertainment.

LE2 Reflections IICT Specialist

The first part of the learning activity was to post programs that we use in our teaching and may I say, it was unbelievable how much knowledge was shared. It is absolutely mind-blowing to realize how much technology is out there and how much each teacher has assimilated and still is! A pure example of the Standards of Practice in the area of Professional Knowledge! Some of my colleagues are absolutely inspirational with their ideas and contagious with their enthusiasm.

The ministry documents activity really opened my eyes up to the language that the ministry uses towards technology use in the curriculum. I was quite surprised in some areas and subjects about the lack of specific language towards the use and in others the amount of specific language detailed. From subject to subject it differed greatly. Although technology was mentioned in almost all subject curriculum language, there seems to be a gap in the overall consistency across the whole gambit. Finding a consistency in the board documents can be a little challenging from a professional practice point of view. Technology standards and use tend to be very open just like the new French curriculum!

Our chat session about issues at schools concerning technology use was very informative. I realized that there are fellow teachers struggling with the same issues with technology that I am encountering. There were also others that had an amazing environment and a whole plethora of resources related to technology and its overall use in lessons and classroom activities. What shone through in the 'Google Hangout Chat' for me, was the importance of being a leader and showing leadership qualities to either improve or continue to nurture a positive attitude towards the use of technology in the whole school environment. The commitment shown by my colleagues towards making engaging lessons and activities for their students, was inspirational to say the least. It makes me want to become a better educator and open a new future of learning using technology.

Creating a plan for the whole school year to promote the use of technology and training, was actually quite difficult. I realized that there are so many moving parts and human-beings! The idea of team-work really did become apparent for me while organizing each month's technology idea. Ongoing learning is for me one of the Standards of Practice that has to come from a positive attitude towards change. Adapting to a new way of teaching using technology is crucial to meeting the standards of practice that are so key to us as educators. Involving the parents was a very important issue in designing a plan to use technology, too. Having all parties involved in the 'movement' is beneficial to the students and their families and creates a consistent growth-mindset among all participants.

The video conferencing activity that we did was quite informative. The amount of lesson ideas and the scope of the information available, blew my mind! Having an author video-conference with students was one idea that really portrays the use of technology to engage learners. Video-conferencing with other countries and cities and even with another class from your board, makes learning so much more 'realistic' to students and helps engage them. Even the idea of video-conferencing with parents who are not physically able to come and meet the teacher, blew my mind! It was once again apparent, how educators are committed to the standards of practice in all areas; professional knowledge, ongoing learning and a total commitment to engaging learners.

IICT Specialist LE 1 Reflections

I am excited to start the Specialist part of my IICT course. We have started with leadership qualities and some activities to read and discuss about what we need to be a good leader within the educational community.

One of the activities was to identify what makes a great leader and to choose someone that exudes these qualities. I chose Gandhdi, as he is such an inspiration to me with the qualities of honesty and humility being at the top of my list for leadership. I also like how he gained follower after follower by leading by example and started a revolution of conflict resolution through peace. 

GAFE (Google Apps For Education) was the next activity that we were to explore. I have a bit of a foundation with Google apps, but limited for the time being. I hope to explore Google forms, hangouts, surveys and other apps within the platform and I have identified becoming Google Certified as one of my goals over the next 18 months or so. I think the GAFE options are awesome and love the live editing features of a document with the ability to chat with the person or persons that have access to the document in real time.

Bloom's Taxonomy is definitely something I had heard about, but never ventured into reading about. It is a great way to integrate technology in all the levels of learning and helps make the learner more independent and a higher thinker. Like the SAMR model, it is definitely a tool that I am going to use going forward in my lesson planning and delivery.

How to handle change is a big part of becoming a leader and adapting to the ever-evolving world of technology, especially! The circumstances that happen in a school demonstrate how each community has its own issues and challenges. Some of my colleagues have described circumstances where change was dealt with very well, others where change was not handled or communicated properly. Change is often initiated by administration without any choice, too! 
Following the standards of practice helps me give every situation a clearer picture and allows me to realize how committed I am, as well as my colleagues, to professional growth; handling change is an important part of that!

Some of the changes that happen during the school year, demonstrates how flexible as educators we need to be. Being committed to our students and finding new ways or better ways to engage them, falls right into the reason why we take AQs and how we adapt our practices using our professional knowledge.
The discussions that we are having during this LE1 section of my course, makes me realize that collaboration is the best way to communicate both positive and negative challenges that face us. I am still amazed, even after part 1 and 2 of the course, how much I am learning from the discussions about our individual circumstances in our schools. I look back after each e-activity that I finish and it still excites me how much I am learning! The new pedagogy of research used to scare me, but now it excites me and I no longer have that reflex of being skeptical. 

I am willing to 'try everything' now, which is a huge improvement in my attitude. Experience, research, collaboration and research are a fundamental part of our discussions in this AQ and I am happy to both give and take any great ideas from my colleagues. I aim to pass on all this knowledge to my colleagues that I communicate with on an ongoing basis.

Intehgration Part 2.....................My Reflections

The one point I want to talk about that has really turned my head during LE3 and LE4 is that of leadership. Included in the leadership role is the issue of the role that you want to aspire to in your school with regards to technology.

I had no idea how crucial leadership could be to integrating technology into our lesson planning and delivery. Needless to say, it has shook something in me that was not quite alive! I am so excited about becoming a leader and demonstrating all the qualities needed to nurture a technology attitude towards 21st century learning. It has become my main aim now to lead by example no matter what school I end up at and I will meet the challenges head-on and inspire others to do like-wise. Sharing and collaboration are such an important part of being a leader.

I really enjoyed the articles and the resources in LE3 and LE4. 'Digital Citizenship' really came to the fore-front once again for me in relation to technology. The articles I read about the advantages and disadvantages of using devices in the classroom really interested me, also. I learned that there are way more advantages than disadvantages to using technology; for teachers, students and even parents. I will include links to some of the websites that I read material from at the end of this blog.

Once again, the amount of information that I garnered from the discussion forums was amazing! So many good ideas and so many things that I did not even think about! The collaborative process throughout this course has been a complete success for me in all areas of my learning and teaching. The commitment to students that has been demonstrated in the activities and ideas by fellow teachers have definitely continued to inspire me. 

The learning community that has transpired from our discussions continues to inspire me; I also to want to create a similar environment within my school. The amount of shared knowledge has demonstrated to me the commitment that fellow teachers have towards their profession. Throughout the discussions, teachers have demonstrated their desire to help educate a future generation of learners.

 Just by taking this course, each teacher has demonstrated a willingness to want to continue to learn; especially with something as important as the integration of technology into their lesson planning and delivery. The array of ideas and diverse school settings that we each are involved in, demonstrates the unbelievable amount of knowledge that is out there! The creation of a 3 year technology plan for my school instills the spirit of community and being a leader in the implementation of ideas for the community. 

Moving forward, I have so much more to learn and I aim to approach all my learning with a positive attitude. I am taking the Specialist Part 3 AQ for Integration of Technology and am really looking forward to the challenge. I am both excited and passionate about the future and what it holds for me professionally. I have an aim to be Google Certified, Smartboard Certified and to learn about as many Apps and useful resources to help nurture a technological environment within any school; especially with my lesson planning and delivery. The future is so bright, I might have to wear shades!

The overall learning that each of us have accomplished by taking this course, leads to us applying the knowledge to our lesson planning and delivery and becomes a huge part of our professional practice. 

Links to some resources and websites:

http://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/tech-ed/pros-and-cons-of-allowing-digital-devices-in-the-classroom/

http://www.teachhub.com/advantagesdisadvantages-ipad-classroom

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/02/20/from-distraction-to-learning-tool-mobile-devices-in-the-classroom.aspx?=CTMOB

https://mps-eventreg.com/gk/g/6gRbqPIQelv-575

LE 3 Reflections Continued...............................

The amount of information that I have taken in over the course of this AQ actually blows my mind!

There is so much shared information that I have started to organize sub-folders with all the different websites and links to articles to make sure that I do not lose any of these awesome resources. I was just looking today at the amount of resources and it is actually quite amazing that I have been able to read and digest most of the information given and shared.

I really like sharing and collaborating on all the activities that we have done and really appreciate the effort that fellow teachers have put into sharing their ideas and resources on a daily basis. It has given me a renewed spirit and hope about collaboration and I am going to pay it forward to the next school I work at and hope to nurture an environment of technology, full-on!

I am looking forward to the LE 4 portion of the course and know it will be as interesting at the first 3 parts.

LE 3 Thoughts and Reflections

I have really enjoyed some of the activities that we have done in this unit; from realizing how lacking the school board is in resources and training, to renewing hope that I could be a part of the change to inspire other teachers, I have come full-circle to my attitude towards collaborating. I was quite frustrated at the lack of opportunities to collaborate, but now realize that I can be the catalyst by doing it with my own power of positive thinking and can use my own skills to teach reinforcement.

Teacher development has come to the forefront of my mind and has really made me think about what a great decision I made to take all 3 parts of the Integration AQs for Technology. It has woken up the lazy, complacent attitude that has been allowed to fester. Combine that with the fact that I am moving to a new school in September, I feel like I have a renewed spirit and vigor towards teaching. At my new school, I am definitely going to be leaning towards staff development and training in technology and am going to let my ideas and attitude known to all that are willing participants!

The introduction of Google docs to allow people to either edit in real time or on their own schedule, has really peaked my interest. I am loving the Google Calendar and think that going forward it is going to be one of the tools that I will use consistently. Being able to co-ordinate to arrange meetings and teaching workshops or teach and greets, is such a plus for me to have the tools to accomplish this.

The discussions that we have had about staff development and the ideas we have shared among ourselves, has given me a sense of both reality and hope. I realize that the challenges to change the culture of technology in our schools is one of major proportions, but I feel that going forward, it can be very exciting and very self-fulfilling. Communication is the key and twin that with collaboration, I think that all teachers can hop these hurdles with the least amount of discomfort possible. The world of education has opened up even more with the integration of technology as one of the tools of life-long learning and will only get better as the future unfolds. I am excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!