S2:Connected Learner

2a. Pursue professional learning that deepens expertise in the ISTE Standards in order to serve as a model for educators and leaders.

2b. Actively participate in professional learning networks to enhance coaching practice and keep current with emerging technology and innovations in pedagogy and the learning sciences.

Description of the Artifact

During the 2019 Spring school semester I worked with my staff to attend the NSTA conference to help build my knowledge of science and technology. I went to learn new methods, information, and gain resources from teachers across the nation to help build my tool kit, so I could bring back resources to my school site and share with my staff. At the conference, I met fellow teachers I knew from Southern California schools, Keira Watkins and Allen Andrews. We went to different conferences and met nightly to share what we learned from our sessions. One of the sessions I went to was 10 Tech Tools to Engage Students. This session had great resources that can be used in an everyday classroom. From Quizlet to help students learn about vocabulary, and Adobe Spark to help student share their ideas in new creative ways. One of my favorite new tech tools I learned from this session was Edpuzzle. This is a a website that you can take videos from YouTube, Khan academy, or TED talk, and input quizzes. Following the ISTE standard 2a to of pursuing professional learning that deepens the understanding of the ISTE standards to be a model to other educators.

Artifact Implementation: One of the interesting ideas that I came away with from the conference was the use of physics and rockets. So I got the science department together at my school to discuss how we could implement these tools into our lessons and build a bigger lesson along the NGSS story lines that would get students interested. This was guided by my understanding of ISTE 5a standard to pursue professional learning to become a model to other educators.

Impact: The NSTA helped show me ideas of science and technology that are going on around the country. I brought back new ideas for incorporating technology into my lessons and sharing them with educators. Following standard 5a from the ISTE standards. Also, becoming a leader aligning with ISTE standard 2b., Actively participate in professional learning networks to enhance coaching practice and keep current with emerging technology and innovations in pedagogy and the learning sciences.

2c. Establish shared goals with educators, reflect on successes and continually improve coaching and teaching practice.

Artifact Description: When I got back from the the NSTA Conference I sat down with fellow science teachers to share concepts that I learned from the conference. I also had put together a plan for my class to incorporate some of the STEM ideas that I learned from other educators in the conference. With the help of the other 8th grade teachers, we set up a unit for students to learn the NGSS standard MS-PS2-2 Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions. The ideas was to make a mission to Mars that the students had to plan out for themselves. We made a shared goal for our classes to have the students build rockets and launch them to compete against each other and other classes. This is aligned with the ideas from ISTE standard 2c., Establish shared goals with educators, reflect on successes and continually improve coaching and teaching practice.

Implementation: When I came back from the conference I wanted to incorporate some of the methodologies and new tech tools that I learned, with my school. I sat down with the other science teachers and we built a plan to have an end-of-the-year rocket launch challenge. For this, we came up with a scoring guide of how to judge the rockets against each class. Over the last 8 weeks of school, we worked on using different tools in each of our classes to help student learning. Then, we would meet monthly and discuss what tools worked and which did not.

At the end of the project, I made a video of their adventures of building, designing, and launching the rockets to document what they had learned. The video helped share our goals with students and staff as described in ISTE Standard 2c. Establish shared goals with educators, reflect on successes and continually improve coaching and teaching practice.

Impact: The impact that it had for me, was that student said they had fun with this project. This was a big success for, because I came into the school mid-year and had trouble getting the students to buy-in. When I was able to build a big lesson that spanned multiple days with a story and a mission students were more bought in. Having them compete with other students made their experience even more impactful. The class as a whole was also more willing to stay on task because they knew that they were in competition with another class. The other science teacher was thankful to get help and a new spin on a lesson that he had done the last 5 years. Ron let me know that he enjoyed working together and was thankful of some of the ideas that I bought to the table because he was able to incorporate them into his teaching.

Reflect

In the Spring of 2019 I went to the NSTA conference to help learn from teachers around the nation. During this time, I built my professional learning network to help enhance my coaching practice to learn about emerging technologies. This helped me reach 2a of the ISTE Coach Standards, growing a learning network. I started an education twitter account and added different teachers I met so I could learn more about what they are doing in their classes as way to gain competency in standard 2b.

When I came back from the NSTA Conference, I shared what I learned with fellow staff member and we set goals that we wanted to accomplish for the rest of the year. For example, I came back with some new resources for building a lesson around rockets. So we set out a plan to have a rocket launch contest between me and another teacher for an end of the year project. This helped build on the ideas of the ISTE Coach Standard 2c.

Next year we are working on a protocol to help us understand what tools work and what tools do not. This will help us begin to master the ISTE Coach Standard 2b.