2.4 |
Collaborator
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2.4a |
Dedicate planning time to collaborate with colleagues to create authentic learning experiences that leverage technology.This artifact showcases the result of the dedicated planning time I spent collaborating with our costumer success agent from Discovery Education, Patti Duncan, and my colleague, Dr. Jennifer Parker, to lead a district training on the NEW Discover Education Experience. In the webinar I create an authentic learning experience that leverages technology by inviting educators to experience Discovery Education Experience from within the county adopted learning management system Schoology. Educators open a Studio Slideshow from within a Schoology Course, experience a Discovery Education Experience assignment as a student in Schoology, and learn how to share digital resources to provide more options for students to engage in the learning process in authentically.
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2.4b |
Collaborate and co-learn with students to discover and use new digital resources and diagnose and troubleshoot technology issues.I host a monthly Online Learning Forum in which educators from across the county are invited to collaborate and co-learn to discover and use new digital resources and diagnose and troubleshoot technology issues. The monthly forums have provided a platform for me to explore new and innovative ways to overcome the limitations of the major platforms I support in the county with the educators who are using them daily. For example, at one online learning forum I collaborated with a teacher who wanted to incorporate peer mentor meetings in her online course. We began by identifying the major obstacles we both foresaw in implementing a peer mentor program with students enrolled from different districts across the county. While some students were working with district provided Microsoft accounts, other students were working with district provided Google accounts. We spent some time troubleshooting how a student with a Microsoft account could mentor a student with a Google account or vice versa. Through collaboration we determined students could use a new Skype feature that enables users to connect online as a guest. We also discussed the need to hold partners accountable for their time together and some ways we might go about that from afar to ensure mentor partner time was productive. The slides below shows how I lead monthly online learning forums and some of the follow up conversation from the forum that we used as a platform to develop a mentor partner program.
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2.4c |
Use collaborative tools to expand students' authentic, real-world learning experiences by engaging virtually with experts, teams and students, locally and globally.I use collaborative tools to expand students' (educators in this case) authentic, real-world learning experiences by engaging virtually with experts from Schoology and Discovery Education Experience to further develop our collective understanding of the affordances of the platforms that are freely available to us in the county. I take steps to connect district technology coaches with a Schoology expert to learn more about the functionality in Schoology that supports standards-based grading practices (slide 1-2). I use Zoom as a collaborative tool to connect with a Schoology expert that resides in another state who can share their expert experiences with myself and the local technology coaches present (slide 3-4). I also make the recording available in a Schoology group for anyone who was unable to connect synchronously so that they can also benefit from the Schoology expert's knowledge at another time.
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2.4d |
Demonstrate cultural competency when communicating with students, parents and colleagues and interact with them as co-collaborators in student learning.I use several digital tools and strategies to demonstrate cultural competency when communicating with students, parents, and colleagues and interact with them as co-collaborators in student learning. First, I provide a written introduction to Schoology in both English and Spanish (slide 1). With the letter in an editable format I can easily translate the document into other languages based on the needs of my students and their families (slide 2). Second, I teach both my students and their families at open house how to change the language in Schoology (slide 3). Finally, I empower students with tools like Microsoft Immersive Reader so that they can change the language of the websites they visit from the Microsoft Edge browser (slide 4). This same tool allows students and/or their families to translate any written feedback that I provide. The use of such translation tools enable me to interact with students, parents, and colleagues as co-collaborators in student learning.
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