About

The Teacher Innovation Network creates space for teacher leaders to connect, create, collaborate, and heal in order to get back to a place of innovation where they can support and inspire one another.

Participating County Offices

History

This network was born out of the desire to provide educators with relevant and meaningful EdTech professional development in a post-distance learning world. The COVID-19 pandemic presented many challenges in education, and during distance learning all teachers were forced to become proficient in using technology with students. Once students returned back to the classrooms, with a shift in school priorities, we noticed at our county offices that giving synchronous ed tech professional development to teachers and districts was rare. As Ed Tech and Innovation-focused leaders, we wanted to find out what the new needs of classroom teachers were in order to gain insight into how we might redesign our offerings in a way that would be fun and engaging for educators.

This idea of starting a new teacher focused community of practice started in Santa Clara when Christa and Gena decided to go through the design thinking process as a way to gain teacher insight into a new PD re-design. We invited a group of teachers who we knew to be innovative and forward thinking in their use of technology in the classroom pre-pandemic. These were teachers who were technology leaders in their districts and ones who we would see present and/or attend many of the CUE conferences. What we learned was that many of them were feeling like their creativity and risk taking had gone backwards when it came to use of educational technology. From those interviews, together we came up with this actionable problem statement:

“Ed Tech teachers need a way to connect, create, collaborate and heal in order to get back to a place of innovation where we can support and inspire one another.”

Once we had our problem statement, we decided to join forces with three other County Office Ed Tech Coordinators who were sharing similar struggles in their counties. This combination of classroom teachers and county office leaders gave us more brain power to continue our design thinking process for this PD re-design. Here's an example of one of our ideation brainstorms that gives some insight into why we decided to create an EdTech Playground and Debugging group:

We are currently in the prototype and testing phase of this design process and are relying on YOU to join our network so that we can make this Teacher Innovation Network the best that it could possibly be.

Knowing that educator needs are constantly evolving, we are always open to feedback and new ideas and are hoping that this network can encourage educators to try and share new things that are happening in their classrooms so that we can ignite a spark for creative and joyful learning. We're also here as a support group to help you think through problems in order to come up with new and innovative solutions. Please join us in this statewide collaborative network, and you are highly encouraged to invite any and all colleagues who may be interested.

Meet the Team:

Sarah Kohlbeck

Shasta County Office of Education
Educational Technology Coordinator

Sarah is the Educational Technology Coordinator for the Shasta County Office of Education. She loves supporting educators with Google tools in the Google for Education Workspace as a Certifed Google Trainer. She is passionate about Student Engagement in both hybrid, distance learning, and in-person learning, as well as UDL strategies to support students. She is also an Adobe Creative Educator, a Fligrid Certified Educator, an Apple Teacher, and a presenter for Designed for Learning where she supports educators with meaningful trainings across the country. Sarah was the 2021 Classified Employee of the year for all of Shasta County in Technical Services. She loves geeking out with her fellow educators and collaborating on fun and special projects such as this amazing network.

Christa Norum

Santa Clara County Office of Education
Educational Technology Coordinator

An educator since 2005, Christa is currently an Educational Technology Coordinator at the Santa Clara County Office of Education. As a classroom teacher for 12 years, she explored new strategies and technology with students, supported colleagues as a Technology Integration Coach, coordinated and delivered district-wide professional development, and created a student technology leadership group. As a Teacher on Special Assignment, she enjoyed co-planning and co-teaching with teachers. Christa loves collaborating with fellow educators who are passionate about designing meaningful and innovative learning experiences for students. She is thrilled for the opportunity to make connections and build community through this new endeavor.

Genevieve (Gena) Pacada

Santa Clara County Office of Education

Makerspace Training Specialist

Gena is a Makerspace Training Specialist at the Santa Clara County Office of Education with an MS in Education Media Design and Technology. She has been an educator since 2002 and has had the roles of elementary teacher, middle school teacher, Technology TOSA, Ed Tech Coordinator and currently is creating a new makerspace program at the Santa Clara COE. As a Google Certified Innovator, sketchnoter, digital lesson designer, UDL coach and maker, she believes that everyone has a unique creative voice and that it’s our job as educators to help students find it.

Tawny Reinhardt

Sacramento County Office of Education
Educational Technology & Digital Learning Coordinator

Tawny has always enjoyed learning about new ways to implement meaningful technology into the classroom. During her nine years as a classroom teacher, she often volunteered to pilot new tech with her students, creating a collaborative learning environment. With her MS in educational technology, she was excited to take her experience to the county level in order to support even more teachers in learning how technology not only enhances strong pedagogy, but is also vital for 21st century learners. She is honored to be part of this amazing team to reach teachers across the state.

Stephanie Sumarna

Santa Cruz County Office of Education
EdTech & Innovation ToSA

Stephanie Sumarna has been an educator for more than 13 years. Her life as an educator changed when she attended her first CUE Conference. She has always been passionate about utilizing EdTech and innovative teaching practices to support her students, but it was at this conference that she realized there was a bigger world of like minded educators. She implemented Genius Hour in her third grade classroom at Bonny Doon Elementary School right away and never looked back. At the Santa Cruz County Office of Education she is realizing her dream of building networks within her community & beyond to foster that same excitement for what school could be.

Anupama (Anu) Gupta

Santa Clara County Office of Education

Educational Technology Coordinator

Anupama Gupta recently joined the EdTech team as a Coordinator at the Santa Clara County Office of Education. She is passionate and excited to be part of this team of like minded educators. Igniting curiosity and making learning fun and engaging for students has been her key endeavor all throughout her fifteen plus years as an educator. As a classroom teacher and as an Equity Coach, she constantly integrated technology in instruction and used it as a powerful tool to create opportunities for collaboration, inspire creativity, and develop critical thinking in students. She has designed and implemented Project Based learning and Universal Design lessons and supported teachers with making lessons cross curricular. She enjoys taking students through the Design Thinking process to develop problem solving skills and empathy. In her new position, she is looking forward to taking this work forward and exploring new learning opportunities.

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