Eight down, one to go
Eight weeks ago I wrote my first ever blog posting. I didn't include this in the first one, but I spent most of an entire school day working on developing the blog site and that initial post (the title alone took more than an hour). I wrote about how I would use this site to reflect on the transition from teacher to coach. And then I wrote more posts, but with much less development, planning, and deliberation. I wrote blog posts to get the assignments finished for that week (usually on Saturday night...late...when they were due by midnight). The relentlessness of grading, planning, living my own life, readying my house for spring and trying desperately not to miss out on appreciating the last 10 weeks of my son's never-to-be-repeated second grade year took precedence over creativity and cleverness.
So, now, at the end, I'll take a little more time with this post. The assignment is to write about my take-aways from the course.
First, this has been a fast eight weeks. I have appreciated getting the chance to investigate online learning tools, philosophy, and pedagogy. I may not have read every word of every assignment (ok...I probably didn't even come close) but I have a great archive of resources now to explore in my free-time this summer. [Note: there will be no free-time this summer, but I can dream, and will be able to refer to these resources as needed!]. I really can't remember much of the specifics as I type this (again pretty late for a school night), but that is why I started this Evernote back in week 2 of the course:
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s53/sh/36de7190-91c1-4505-9bda-73e60193d87b/07640b76f80fe23dd2c8a3b611452bb2
I think the greatest take-away for me of the course has been the chance to really open my eyes, mind, and imagination to what a learning environment can look like once a school moves to 1:1. And the biggest realization is that what I have always held so tightly to as a teacher (traditional schedule, high stakes end of chapter tests, aiming for the middle so you push the slower kids and slow down the faster, focus on learning a static set of material my way) is archaic. Technology has changed, kids have changed, job needs have changed...but I stayed pretty much the same. Why? Inertia, familiarity, easiness, time...valid reasons, but insufficient to hold back the necessary progression.
And in about one week, I start trying to lead over 100 teachers to the same realization so that they can have the motivation, drive, desire, and tools to make substantive changes to the way we approach secondary education.
Sounds like a piece of cake (pun intended...for those of you who get it :) )
So, now, at the end, I'll take a little more time with this post. The assignment is to write about my take-aways from the course.
First, this has been a fast eight weeks. I have appreciated getting the chance to investigate online learning tools, philosophy, and pedagogy. I may not have read every word of every assignment (ok...I probably didn't even come close) but I have a great archive of resources now to explore in my free-time this summer. [Note: there will be no free-time this summer, but I can dream, and will be able to refer to these resources as needed!]. I really can't remember much of the specifics as I type this (again pretty late for a school night), but that is why I started this Evernote back in week 2 of the course:
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s53/sh/36de7190-91c1-4505-9bda-73e60193d87b/07640b76f80fe23dd2c8a3b611452bb2
I think the greatest take-away for me of the course has been the chance to really open my eyes, mind, and imagination to what a learning environment can look like once a school moves to 1:1. And the biggest realization is that what I have always held so tightly to as a teacher (traditional schedule, high stakes end of chapter tests, aiming for the middle so you push the slower kids and slow down the faster, focus on learning a static set of material my way) is archaic. Technology has changed, kids have changed, job needs have changed...but I stayed pretty much the same. Why? Inertia, familiarity, easiness, time...valid reasons, but insufficient to hold back the necessary progression.
And in about one week, I start trying to lead over 100 teachers to the same realization so that they can have the motivation, drive, desire, and tools to make substantive changes to the way we approach secondary education.
Sounds like a piece of cake (pun intended...for those of you who get it :) )