Coaching vs Mentoring: Helping Teachers Integrate Technology Effectively - #TCEA17

Coaching vs. Mentoring: Helping Teachers Integrate Technology
Dr. Bruce Ellis
Senior Director of Professional Development
TCEA

Resources:

• Presentation: https://goo.gl/vNXSzc

Check out the Region 13 Instructional Coaching Conference June 26-28, 2017

The coaching/mentoring process is different for each teacher:

• Some can run with just an idea
• Others need a demonstration
• Some need you to teach a lesson with them/for them

Coaching

• Is about skill & knowledge acquisition
• Content expert focusing on concrete issues
• Short term - only as long as needed
• Clear expectations and goals from the beginning.

Mentoring

• Mentoring is like counseling
• Relationship-oriented to address professional adn personal issues
• Ongoing - preferably more than a year
• Trust comes before sharing

Which is Best for Your Teachers?

• It depends!!!!!

Strategies for Mentoring

• Journaling - mentor doesn't necessarily look at this
• Reflection Journals - mentor responds to what the teacher has written
• Blogging
• Tweeting - You can encourage folks to lurk!
• Leaving Post-it Notes - much more personal than email!
• Post Cards - much more personal than email!

Strategies for Coaching Using Google Tools

• Create a form with a list of goals from which to choose.
• Teachers go to and complete the form. Print out the individualized plans.
• Meet with teacher and go over their plan. Begin scheduling visits.
• Continue to visit, model, and observe. Give specific feedback.
• See links to online "supplies" in Bruce's PowerPoint
• Also see links to instructions for using Google Sheets Add-on autoCrat in PowerPoint

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MOOCs for Professional Development - #TCEA15

Notes from MOOCs for Professional Development Presentation at TCEA 2015

Dr. Kay Abernathy, Lamar University
http://www.slideshare.net/kayabernathy/moo-cs-for-professional-development-tcea-feb-2015-44308825


Lamar University sponsored the MOOC on Social Media Communication Tools for Educators which Dr. Abernathy facilitated. It was free, but offered a certificate of completion. Participants can later pay a fee to get college credit. Partial purpose was to recruit future students for online masters programs.

Built in openeducation.blackboard.com. You can build up to five MOOCs for free on this platform.

Dr. Abernathy also put all of the course information in her Word Press blog. She said we can use it!

• http://kayabernathy.org/2015/02/04/syllabus-and-weeks-1-5-moocs-for-professional-development/

What is a MOOC? - Massive Open Online Course
Video Explanation by Dave Cormier




More Characteristics

• Courses do not have specific assignments but active participants are required to stay up to date with rough schedules.
• Participants and instructors aggregate, remix, and repurpose that content during the course.
• Classroom is one of many hubs where interaction occurs, including blogs or portfolios, websites, social networking sites, and more.

Topic and Purpose

• To investigate a MOOC of social media content for PD related to initiation and implementation of social media tools for PD concepts transference to PK-12 educators and students.

Participants

• 112 Enrolled
• 100 did not complete (MOOC Option)
• 12 completed course and survey
• 10.75% response rate

Participants

• Examination of blogs, Facebook postings, and Twitter posts representative of participants who completed the MOOC course during the same timeframe as the 12 survey respondents
• Analysis revealed three themes: Social Media Tools, Reflective Writing, Transference to Practice

Questions to Consider

• Who is the audience?
• Why are we encouraging the use of MOOCs?
• How will we show evidence of learning?
• How will we encourage others to express their voice?

References and Resources

• Facebook: LU Social Media for Communication MOOC
• openeducation.blackboard.com: Search for Social Media Communications Tools for Educators

MY THOUGHT: K-12 could really benefit from all the MOOCs out there in Coursera, edX, Canvas, etc, by allowing teachers to gain PD credit for completing them!

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Still MOOCing Along...

Image Source
Used Under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND License

Week 4 of the Foundations of Virtual Instruction MOOC I started on June 30th is wrapping up today. By this time next week, I will hopefully have successfully completed my first MOOC.

Overall, it's been an interesting experience. Because I've completed an online masters degree, read extensively on virtual learning, taken an online course in facilitating virtual PD courses, and even helped design and facilitate a few online staff development courses in my school district, much of the content covered has been somewhat familiar to me. The upside of this has been my ability to focus more on the experience than the content in the course.

Quick Updates

In case you read my post on starting this MOOC, or if you decide to go back and read it, I'll update a few of my early observations:

• The 2 to 4 hours per week of work was a pretty accurate estimate. I've spent that much time on the content most weeks. Closer to 2 hours than 4.
• After a couple of weeks in the course and success on the quizzes, I decided to go ahead and pay for the Coursera Signature Track option, which will allow me to earn a verified certificate.  I'll put this on my CV/resume at some point and we will see if this makes any difference in future employment endeavors I might pursue.
• In my last post, I estimated there were about 200 people in the course based on activity in the discussion forums. Boy, was I off on that estimate! At the end of our first week in the class, the instructor sent us an update letting us know that there were over 12,000 people enrolled in the course!

New Observations and Thoughts

I'm really glad this hasn't been a full-blown college course. I had to say goodbye to a very precious pet during the second week of the course and have also been fighting allergies or something for the past week, so my enthusiasm for learning hasn't been what it normally is.

Although I've spoken to others who've taken MOOCs that they felt were the equivalent to college courses, I think this course is a pared down version. There is a ton of material in the lectures each week, but the assignments have not been super challenging. Multiple choice quizzes that make sure we are understanding the content which are between 8 and 10 questions each week plus one assignment where we had to turn in a lesson plan and then assess three of our peers plans have not been too demanding. And in the end, if things did become too overwhelming, I could have quit. No GPA to worry about. No harm, no foul. The no GPA part is good, because the final exam coming this week might be a challenge, given that I haven't been as focused a student as usual (see previous paragraph).

I do need to make an A in the course though if I want to keep open the option of doing an 11 week practicum with UC Irvine after finishing three more Coursera courses. Fingers crossed!

Discussion Boards Weren't So Bad

Public Domain Image

In my previous post I mentioned that the discussion boards were going to be a challenge, and that I would have to be ok with participating in conversations while missing a whole lot of others at the same time. Well, the discussion boards did become the most interesting part of the course for me, but not in the way that I thought they would. I found myself hardly participating on the boards that were tied to the course content (these were encouraged but not required) and focusing a lot more on tangent topics/conversations started by my fellow students. I've been involved in threads on iPads in the Classroom, a thread that cropped up discussing the usefulness of the legal content presented this past week, and my favorite thread which has been actively discussing the quality of assignments we peer assessed this week.

I was especially interested/distressed to find out that even in MOOCs, people try to cheat! Reports of lesson plans copied entirely from other locations on the Internet (not even in a format that met the rubric) were posted on the discussion board. There is a way to report these in Coursera. I should not be shocked, but I was. I am always disheartened by cheating. Especially from people involved in education!

Reports of cheating aside, I've really enjoyed making connections and hearing the perspectives of people from K-12 to higher ed and from California to New Zealand to Malta. It has been a refreshing reminder of the very large world we live in, how connected it can be thanks to today's technology, and of the similar challenges that face education and educators everywhere.

As I write this, I'm in sixth place in discussion board participation. That's with just 52 posts on my part, which tells you how active the boards are (or aren't) even with 12,000 people enrolled in the course. 

One More Week...

Week 5, the final week of this course, starts tomorrow. After I survive the final exam and finish out the course, I'll be sure to share my final thoughts. Including whether or not I'll go on to the next course in the four course sequence. 

Any other MOOCers out there? I'd love for you to share your impressions/thoughts/experiences in the comments, including links back to your own reflective blog posts. :-)

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

So I'm Taking a MOOC...

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Under a Creative Commons License

Late last week I was innocently checking my Twitter feed, and I saw an announcement for a MOOC called Foundations of Virtual Instruction.  I clicked to investigate, and I was immediately intrigued for several reasons.

• The course is aimed at learning about K-12 online instruction, which I'm interested in knowing more about.
• The course is offered through Coursera, a known online learning platform which I have heard and read good things about.
• The course is offered by an existing higher education institution, the University of California at Irvine.
• The course lasts five weeks and requires two to four hours of work per week. Perfect for summer learning, especially since I work through the summer.
• The course is taught by an instructor who has experience in teaching online in K-12. (You can watch the video on the course info page to learn more about her.)
• I can take the course for FREE, but for a small fee I can also earn a verified certificate that proves I have completed the coursework. (More about this below.)

So, I found out about this course late last week and made the decision to jump in and sign up a couple of days before the course started on June 30th.

My Experience So Far

Public Domain Image

I will sum up my experience so far with the sophisticated phrase: "It's been really cool!"

Here is what I have liked:

• The course syllabus clearly communicates what is expected and how the course grade will be calculated.
• The video lectures are professionally created and presented in short chunks and are interactive! During the videos, pauses are built in which ask you to type in a short answer or to answer a multiple choice question based on what you are learning. I don't know if data is kept on these questions, but they are excellent for giving the learner an opportunity to reflect on what they are learning.
• I have the option to earn a verified certificate for a small fee. I signed up for the verified certificate trial so I could evaluate the quality of the course and my likelihood of completing it (I've started a couple of MOOCs in the past and not made it through...) before paying any money. 
• They are serious about the verification thing! I had to take a headshot of myself with my webcam and input a typing sample that would identify me by my unique typing pattern prior to taking the first quiz! Apparently, I will have to do this each time I take or turn in any assignment in the course that is graded. This is more verification than I had to do for the online master's degree I completed four years ago!
• This course is the first in a set of courses that build upon each other. If I complete all four courses and earn verified certificates for each of them plus complete a capstone project, I can earn a Specialization Certificate from UC Irvine and Coursera. Coursera and its partner organizations currently offer 10 different specializations. It's not the same as college credit, but it is cost effective and shows your current or prospective employer that you are serious about continuously educating yourself.
• Based on the activity in the discussion forums, there are over 200 people in this course, and they are literally from all over the world! It's fascinating to see all of these people, in some cases to get a piece of their story, and along the way learn from their insights.

The one big challenge for me...

• Did I mention over 200 people? It may be many, many more than that; there is no official listing of the members of the course that I have found. The discussion boards became overwhelming to me within the first two days. People posting literally all the time from time zones around the world. The discussion boards are not required as far as the grade for the course goes, but they are highly encouraged in order for participants to engage more with the material. I want to engage with others, because I'm that kind of learner. I'm going to have to make peace with the fact that I can't read everyone's contributions, and much like I do on Twitter, I will just catch and interact with a few. I have managed to have more interaction on the "unofficial" open discussion boards which are not based on course content. So hopefully that will continue to be a place for connection.

So far, so good! The positives are definitely outweighing the challenges four days in to the course. Based on my experience thus far, I think Summer 2014 might see me complete my first MOOC. I will keep you posted!

Have you had any experiences with MOOCs? If so, I'd love to hear about it! Please leave a comment below. :-)

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Connecting Teaching, Learning, & Leadership

Notes from an edWeb.net Webinar 4/28/14
Dr. Joe Mazza
Director of Connected Teaching, Learning & Leadership
North Penn School District


Dr. Mazza just took on his position in December. He is a project manager, promoting connected teaching, learning, & leadership.

He is trying to bring Admin, Educators, Parents, Students, Community, & School Board together in a transparent way. Eighteen schools and 13,000+ students.




Dr. Mazza showed us this video to give an idea of what connected educators can do with Twitter:


Twitter in D123 from OLHD123 on Vimeo.


What does it mean to "be connected?"

• You have taken control of your own learning
• You have made the decision to be a public learner, swimming through social media waters using tools like Twitter, Google+, Linked In, blogs, etc.
• You understand & embrace the fact you are role-modeling for kids with every post, tweet, blog, and digital footprint you make.
• You try to contribute as much as you take from your Personal Learning Network (PLN)
• You are committed to paying it forward with your connectivity, being a resource for others, and building capacity with your own learning community.

Dr. Mazza was the Lead Learner at Knapp Elementary School. (He got rid of the word principal so kids would understand better that we never stop learning!) 

5 Keys to Connected Teaching, Learning, & Leadership

• Transparency as a cultural norm
• Leadership that encourages innovation, edu-risk-taking, and finds ways to say "yes."
• Evolution of policies around connectivity for all.
• Collaborative transparency across stakeholders
• Curation, anytime-anywhere learning opportunities, infusion of PLN-like culture of sharing among organization

Transparency

• Offline AND Online - Offline culture will be AMPLIFIED online. Develop core beliefs everyone can agree on for communication.
• GLASS WALLS > Brick & mortar. Share your story.
• Tweeting minutes, notes, inservice learning events with follow-up posts.
• "The smartest person in the room IS THE ROOM." At the end of the day, it's about all the different perspectives you gain for the best interest of the kids.

Leadership

• Embracing "Lead Learner" mentality.
• Finding ways to "say yes" to stakeholders.
• Role modeling edu-risks, global collaboration, hashtag participation.
• Blurring lines between local and global PLN
• Ex: Use PLN to connect with classes all over the world for mystery Skype, etc

Policy

• Built to protect organization or encourage innovation on the part of all stakeholders?
• Who has a consistent seat at the policy table?
• Seeing through the lens of students, teachers, parents, leaders. How much time does edtech leadership spend gaining perspective?
• Student voice as a key to meeting their evolving needs.

Collaborative Transparency

• Some 2-way communications tools: TodaysMeet, Google Aps, Evernote, Google+, Facebook, PollEverywhere, Livestreaming, Blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram
• Newest collaboration tool for Joe - Voxer
• Voxer a tool that allows you to send audio messages, text messages, and pictures.
• Joe demoed Voxer with educational leader friends of his. They spoke to him through his phone. It's like a walkie-talkie across the Internet!
• He learned about Voxer from students, now uses it personally!

Anytime, Anywhere Learning for All

• Recognizing organizational hashtags, chats for "credit"
• Flipped faculty meetings, learning opportunities for students, staff, & community
• School/District EdCamps & ParentCamps - go to edcamp.wikispaces.com to learn more!
• Online Courses (e.g. Twitter 101 for Parents & Educators) 

Podcasts

• Ideas: PD in the car, to start PLC/Leadership Meetings, PTA/PTO/HSA Mtgs
• #PTchat Radio, #EdTechChat Radio, and more!
• NP-EDcast - Joe captures the great things going on in his school district.

Project Manager for Connected Teaching, Learning & Leadership

• Full job descriptions at leadlearner.com
• Dot connector
• Capacity-builder
• Hand-holder
• Innovation coach
• #nped - North Penn School District, Sharing Our Learning 24/7/365

K-12 Lead Learner Role

• Tweet, RT, Favorite, #FF
• Blog, podcast, vide
• Community forums
• Offer staff dev, webinars, eCourses, Un-conferences
• Curation of teaching, learning, & ledership resources
• Inform, Communicate, Solicit feedback, celebrate successes
• Light "innovation fires"

Every Educator an Innovator - A blog post Joe has coming out soon at Edutopia

• Maximize Today - Be More Effective & Efficient Tomorrow

Questions from the Audience:

• How do you deal with pushback? - Pushback happens for a reason. See it as a part of the process and work through the reluctance.
• Wondering about safety? Tools to ensure only student and parent access? - In Joe's district, they work for transparency. But they do not send out student names on social media. They do get parent permission to share student photos and work on media and are strict to respect what parents want.
• Curation for professional learning - One of Joe's schools uses Storify to collect all of the Tweets sent out with their hashtag and then sends it to families once a week. For families without connectivity, they print it out and send it home. So no one is left out. Meet families where they are.
• Curation for professional learning - also uses Paper.li and sets it up to search for key terms related to school/district goals. This creates an overview for teachers to look at when they have time.

Final thought from Joe: Don't wait to have conversations in your schools and districts about these topics until the summer or September - start having them now!

Link to slides from presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/LeadLearner/moving-away-from-silos-connected-teaching-learning-leadership

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Tips for Education Conference Presenters

Photo from Flikr User MattHurst Used Under a Creative Commons License

My favorite part of attending conferences like SXSWedu, TCEA, Tech Forum, or iPadpalooza is getting to learn from education colleagues and share my own learning with them in formal and informal spaces. Having just attended two conferences within the space of a month and done a solo presentation at one of them, I have a few tips fresh on my mind that might help anyone who plans to present at a conference or professional development event. These tips are based on a mixture of my experiences as a presenter and as an audience member. I think these tips will benefit first-time and experienced presenters.

Presentation Tips

1. Create digital resources and post them online so your audience can refer to them during your presentation and refer back to them after the event.  If you are creating a slide deck or other digital resource to use during your presentation, make it available to your audience at the start of your time with them. This will help them know how many notes they need to take and where they can go back to to reference your information after the event is over. Some of my favorite tools for this are Google Presentations, SlideShare, LiveBinders, and Prezi.
2. Make it easy for your audience to access your digital resources. Go to a website like tiny.cc where you can make a shortened link and a QR code for your resources. The shortened link helps tremendously, especially with anything hosted online that has an ugly long URL. A QR code is easily scanned by the numerous folks using their smartphones or tablet devices. Be sure to use both a QR code and short link if possible to accommodate all of your participants. If you can use only one, the shortened link will suffice for everyone.
3. Create a hashtag for your session so attendees can create buzz by Tweeting about it! This will help you in numerous ways. You can go back and search for the hashtag later to see what stood out to your audience based on what they shared. You can also invite participants to ask questions of you using the hashtag and get back to them later via Twitter if you run out of time during the session. You can also use Storify to curate the Tweets from your session after it is over; having a unique hashtag to search by will make your curation much easier.
4. Make any QR codes you use REALLY BIG on the screen. Don't be afraid to make it as big as possible. You likely won't know the size of the room you are presenting in until just before your presentation. Nothing can slow down the momentum of a presentation like everyone having to walk up to the screen to scan a QR code because they are sitting too far away. Although I like tiny.cc for creating shortened URLs, the QR codes it makes are very small and they get blurry when I resize them to make them larger. I recently discovered QRCode Monkey, which lets you choose the size of the QR code you are creating. I choose "Bumber sticker" size (their misspelling, not mine!) and that usually allows me to fill the screen.
5. Display the shortened URL for your digital resources and/or the Twitter hashtag on every screen in your presentation if possible. This will allow participants who come in late to easily access your resources and catch up. It also acts as a support for anyone who might get lost during the presentation by accidentally closing out of a tab in their web browser or because their device malfunctions. I have not used this technique myself in the past, but saw it in use at SXSWedu and thought it was a great idea! I will definitely incorporate it in the future.

What Are Your Ideas or Questions?

Those are the ideas that rise to the top for me right now. How about you? If you've presented at education conferences or attended presentations, what tips would you share or suggest? Or what questions have been stirred after reading the suggestions above? I hope you'll share ideas and questions in the comments section below, so we can continue to learn together!





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 All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Got Twitter? Make it Better! #TCEA14

At the 2014 TCEA Convention and Exposition, I presented a concurrent session called Got Twitter? Make it Better! I have presented several workshops over the past few years which introduce folks to using Twitter for professional learning, but have also wanted to share other tips and tools that have made my use of Twitter more productive. So I was excited to get to do just that this year!

Here is a quick summary of what I shared. I assume folks reading this already know the basics of using Twitter and how to follow, Tweet, and Retweet. If you aren't comfortable with the basics, you should start with my Twitter for Professional Learning resources before delving into the info presented here.

Below this list, you will find a link to the LiveBinder I used to collect the information and resources for this presentation. One caveat: Don't try all of these tools at one time! I've listed them in the order I think they will be of most benefit. Try them one at a time for a little while. Get a handle on one before you try another. And not all tools will work for  you. That's ok, too! Use what will benefit you, not frustrate you.

Ways to Make Twitter Better

• Use #hashtags when you search for information on Twitter and use them on the Tweets you send out. #Hashtags help categorize Tweets to make it easier to find information that will really benefit you. For example, the #mlearning hashtag will bring up Tweets related to mobile learning, and #txed will bring up Tweets related to Texas education. In the LiveBinder below this list, I have included numerous articles listing popular education #hashtags.
• Participate in a Twitter chat. Twitter chats take place live for approximately one hour every week or every other week and are centered around a specific topic such as digital citizenship or English teaching. During a chat, all participants use the chat hashtag on their Tweets. Specific questions are asked and participants give their answers or generate other questions. Chats can move quickly. You might just want to watch/lurk on your first chat. And use TweetChat.com to keep up with the comments. A comprehensive list of current chats going on in education is included in the LiveBinder below.
• Use Diigo to save all of those links you find on Twitter! You can save links to a Word doc or favorite them in the browser on your computer, but what happens when you are working from another device? You can't get to those resources. Diigo keeps all of your bookmarks online, or "in the cloud", allowing you to access them from any computer or mobile device. It also allows you to categorize your bookmarks using tags for easier searching later. And there are advanced features such as highlighting and note taking on websites. Be sure to access the Diigo resources in the LiveBinder below.
• Hootsuite is a tool for accessing your Twitter account and seeing all of your Twitter action in multiple columns. It also allows you to set up searches on Twitter users or hashtags you want to make sure you keep up with. Give Hootsuite a try, and you might not directly visit twitter.com ever again!
• If you tend to Tweet a lot during certain hours of the day, Buffer may be the tool for you. Buffer will allow you to schedule Tweets at pre-determined times throughout the day. So, when you are working or teaching, your Twitter is still sharing information, and it is broadening your audience, which may in turn broaden the network of people you can learn from. I've connected with educators in the UK and Australia and other countries by using Buffer to send Tweets out when I am working or sleeping.
• You probably already know about Pinterest, but did you know you could do double-duty with it? If you go into your Pinterest settings and link it with your Twitter account, you can Tweet when you pin. That broadens the number of folks who could benefit from what you are sharing.
• Scoop.it is a personal favorite of mine. It is similar to Pinterest in that it allows me to save links connected to one topic, but it has the added feature of allowing tagging of posts and comments/conversation about the resources you share. Scoop.it can also be integrated with your Twitter account so when you save a resource to a Scoop.it board, you can also Tweet it out simultaneously. Scoop.it also learns your interests and suggests more resources for you based on those interests.
• Are there folks you follow on Twitter who are awesome bloggers? When you see they've written a new post, you can't wait to read it? Well, chances are, if you are only following their blog via Twitter, you are missing some posts. That's where Feedly can help you out. Feedly makes it easy to subscribe to blogs and not miss a post. And, if you do get behind on reading, it's easy to just "mark all as read" and start from scratch. When you integrate Feedly with Twitter and/or Buffer, you also have an easy way to share the good stuff you read with your Twitter network. 

LiveBinder of Resources

Visit the LiveBinder below to view the resources I collected for the tools listed above and shared during my live presentation.

Got Twitter? Make it Better! – TCEA 2014

Alternate link to LiveBinder: www.tiny.cc/twitterbetter


What tools do you like to use to improve or streamline your Twitter experience? Please share in the comments!



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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Glad I Was Disappointed Today

Photo Used With Permission Under a Creative Commons License

NOTE: I'm going to talk a bit about the difficulties I had participating in edcampHOME today. I want to make clear that this is not meant as a complaint about edcampHOME or its organizers. They did a great job getting a ton of people organized into sessions where wonderful networking and learning occurred!

Today I participated in edcampHOME. After having a great experience with EdCampOnline back in
October, I was really looking forward to another opportunity to learn with and from educators from across the country, live and right from the comfort of my own computer.

I received an email a few days ago and went over all of the instructions for participation twice so I would know exactly what to do on the day.

I drove to my office because I'd left my best headset there before the holidays and because I knew I'd have a robust internet connection to participate in this professional development opportunity.

I listened carefully to the instructions given live during the opening discussions.

I signed up for my first session and received a confirmation email that I had gotten in.

I waited for an invitation to a Google Hangout where the session would occur, but the invite never came.

I tried several ways to get someone's attention to get help, but there was a lot going on, and I was not the only one having problems.

I had an opportunity to go watch other sessions, but not really participate in them other than listening. By the time I gave up on getting my first session invite and decided to go watch another session, the session was wrapping up.

OK. No problem. I am resilient and a second session was coming up. This time, it would work!

I followed the sign-up procedure again and got the confirmation email again.

Sadly, the Google Hangout invite I needed to fully participate in the session did not come.

This time, I did get the attention of one of the organizers, and I'm not sure what she did, but my Google Hangout invite for the session finally came. Yay!!!

I got into the session with moments to spare. Those who were already there were gracious and made me feel very welcome. That was comforting, but on the flip side I was even more bummed that I'd missed out on conversing with them for a longer time!

Why am I bothering to blog about this? 

Because I want to remember the lessons of this day.

Remember what it feels like when you do everything in your power to get things right, and the outcome still falls short.

Remember that even when others are trying their best, there may still be issues.

Remember what it feels like to be a teacher with an amazing opportunity hanging on technology working correctly, only to be disappointed when something fails and it is beyond anyone's ability to help in a timely manner.

Remember that even as I try to fix/apologize/encourage a teacher when things go awry, they may understand on a rational/logical level, but the sting of disappointment is still there. And it can make it harder to want to try again the next time.

Remember that when things don't go as planned, there are often lessons to be learned if I look hard enough.

Although I did not get to fully participate in a complete session during edcampHOME today, I am glad I tried. And I'm glad I still managed to come away with a powerful and needed lesson.


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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

EdTechSandyK's Top 5 Posts of 2013

Graphic Used With Permission

On January 1st this year, I took time to look over the top five posts on my blog from 2012. It was interesting to see which posts received the most hits, as I assume "most hits" = "resonated the most with readers." Because this was a helpful exercise for me at the end of 2012 / start of 2013, I thought I'd give it another go as 2013 ticks away its final hours and 2014 looms on the horizon.

So, I bring you (insert dramatic drum roll) the top five most visited (and hopefully read!) posts on my blog from 2013 as tracked by Blogger:

1. How to Decode a Tweet, 1/7/13 - I originally wrote this post and created the graphic for it because I needed it for a Twitter for Professional Development workshop that I was going to be co-leading the next month. I had used someone else's similar post in previous workshops, but Twitter had changed its layout enough that I felt an update was prudent. Little did I know this would become my most popular post of the year! I also learned a lesson from this post: If you go to the trouble to customize a graphic, put your name on it somewhere. I've seen the graphic passed around and re-used in numerous places over the last year without any credit or link to the original post provided.
   
   
2. iPad Basic Training for Teachers, 8/30/13 - After spending a spring and summer immersed in designing training for my school district's "iPads for Teachers" initiative, I thought it would be beneficial if I shared our process and online materials. I was right! In addition to receiving the second highest number of visitors on my blog, this post also generated requests for permission to link to the materials. In looking back over this post, I now realize that it is almost 2014, and we still need to get the materials updated to iOS 7 information. I could be discouraged by that, but instead, I'm going to look at it as job security and a chance to further practice my video tutorial making skills!
   
   
3. 10 Killer iPad Projects Students Will Love, 6/24/13 - This post is comprised of notes I took at an ISTE 2013 concurrent session. So, no original work for me, but a chance to further spread the great ideas and resources which Holly Dornak and Jessica Dyer of Lamar CISD took time to share with us at the conference.
   
   
4. My Favorite Videos for Describing Educators' Professional Use of Twitter, 10/20/13 - I talk about Twitter. A lot! And I am interested in others' experiences with learning via this microblogging tool. As a result, I am constantly saving resources that I can turn to when it is time to create a presentation or just shoot a link to someone to say, "Hey, this is what I'm trying to tell you about." After seeing a wonderful new video in October created by teacher and edtech graduate student Victoria Olson, I was inspired to compose a post mentioning some of my all time favorite Twitter explanation videos. The idea obviously appealed to the online audience, propelling this late-in-the-year post to the fourth most visited on my blog.
   
   
5. Your Facebook Privacy is YOUR Responsibility, Not Your Friends'..., 1/13/13 - Although I tried really hard to tone it down a bit, as I reread this post I can sense the frustration I was feeling when I wrote it. As an advocate for digital citizenship for people of all ages, I admit to becoming easily irritated by the inaccurate information that is constantly propagated online, and my patience in this area continues to erode. When I hit certain levels of frustration, they often get worked out in a blog post. Hopefully, between my moments of venting, some true enlightenment results for anyone who takes time to read. I'm soothed by the fact that this made my top five most-read list for 2013.

Another year has sped by. (They really do go faster each year!) As I look back on 2013, I see an iPad and social media focus in my top five posts. Much like 2012. Mobile learning and online connection continue to dominate my thoughts and the interests of my readers. Will 2014 bring any significant changes? I look forward to finding out with you!

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

#EdCampOnline Experience 10-26-13 #ce13

Yesterday I had the exciting opportunity to participate in the first ever EdCamp to be held online. If you are not familiar with EdCamps, they differ from traditional professional development experiences in that they are organized by the participants on the day of the event. This EdCamp video gives a brief introduction to EdCamps, and this TEDxPhiladelphia talk by Kristen Swanson gives a much more in-depth story of how the EdCamp movement came to be and what it seeks to provide to educators.

I have watched many EdCamps from afar by following their hashtags on Twitter while they are taking place, but have never had the opportunity to participate in one in person myself. I am excited that EdCamp Austin is coming to my area very soon, but I was also pumped when I heard about EdCamp Online and registered for it right away. After being a part of yesterday's event, I am even more excited about the in-person experience I will be having in just a couple of weeks!

To preserve the experience, I created a Storify using the Tweets I sent out during EdCamp Online. They include general getting organized Tweets, information from the session on engagement in online learning that I took part in, and the wrap-up. Also included is evidence of some technical issues that were bound to happen with a large endeavor like this one.  I've embedded the Storify slide show below so you can see what my experience was like. You can also click here to view the Storify in a different format. 

I hope it will help inspire you to take part in an EdCamp experience at your first opportunity!

NOTE: When Storify shut down in May, 2018, I exported my Storify collections to Wakelet. Below is the original collection of Tweets I saved during Edcamp Online in 2013, now hosted on Wakelet.



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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

My Favorite Videos For Describing Educators' Professional Use of Twitter

A snapshot of the information flowing
through my Twitter stream today.

I have been actively using Twitter for professional learning for a little over four years. It has become my most valuable professional learning resource during that time.

As a result of the tremendous value I've gotten from it, I've written about and presented on Twitter quite a few times. You would think that based on my extensive use of the tool and the number of times I've presented formally on it, words which describe its value and use would trip easily off of my tongue. You would be wrong.

I am often at a loss for words when I am trying to briefly describe Twitter as a learning tool. Especially to someone who is highly skeptical of "that Twitter thing" anyway or who has only ever used Twitter to follow celebrities and friends for social purposes. For whatever reason, I have difficulty with the initial task of helping them see Twitter for the powerful learning tool it can be when used specifically for that purpose.

Fortunately, I am not alone in my quest to convince others of the value of Twitter for professional learning! There are many educators out there who are passionate about spreading the word, and a few of them have made videos which help me compensate for lacking in the ability to initially describe what the heck using Twitter for professional learning looks like.

In case you are ever in the position of trying to describe Twitter for personalized professional development, here are my favorite videos for introducing Twitter to teachers. I find that after sharing videos like these, I am able to better move the conversation forward and share tips for finding and sharing quality content on Twitter. I hope these videos are helpful to you as well!

The Videos

Twitter in D123 - A professionally done video by a school district, showing how staff members including teachers, tech coaches, administrators, and the superintendent use Twitter for professional growth. I love this video because it is under 2 1/2 minutes long and serves as a good intro to discussing Twitter.


Twitter in D123 from OLHD123 on Vimeo.


Re-Imagine Your Professional Development Experience...With Twitter! - Created by elementary technology teacher and edtech graduate student Victoria Olson, this video gives a wonderful overview of the use of Twitter for PD. As I write this post, this video is only a week old. I came to know about it because Victoria asked permission to use a graphic I had created in her video. I particularly like how Victoria breaks down three stages of Twitter participation into the Lurker, the Participant, and the Author. I love, love, love this video, and I can't wait to use it with educators who want to know more about Twitter!




Why Tweet? A Personal Journey Through the Twitterverse - University of Alaska professor Skip Via  created this video a couple of years ago to address what he saw as resistance to use Twitter for professional learning among higher education faculty. I relate to this video because it describes an experience similar to mine, where I left Twitter after trying it for the first time because I just didn't get it. Dr. Via also incorporates some graphics in his video which help explain how the connections you make on Twitter expand your scope of learning and influence.




Obvious to You, Amazing to Others - This video is not directly about Twitter, but I like to show it before the end of every gathering where I discuss Twitter for professional learning. From my earliest days of teaching, I never understood why I had to go ask other teachers for ideas all of the time. I would see evidence of projects they were doing with their students, wonder about them, and then just march right in and ask if I could know more. The teachers were never reluctant to share, but I always had to ask first. I exposed my own students to numerous impactful learning opportunities because of those conversations. This video helped me understand; we do things because they are obviously smart/right/good to us, but don't think it's worth sharing them with others because they make so much sense to us. Educators often wonder what they have to offer to other educators via Twitter (or any other medium). I use this video to help convince them to just share what they are already doing, because the rest of us need to know.

Now It's Your Turn!

Please take time to share in the comments below any other videos you have used when talking with educators about Twitter. Or, share a way that one of the videos above was helpful to you!


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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Effective Coaching - #TECSIG Fall 2013 Breakout Session

Does anyone have a model where core teachers have extra off periods for technology coaching?

• One district has that model but for core area coaching (not technology)
• Another district pays a stipend to classroom teachers to be first-line support to teachers in addition to their teaching duties. 
• Another district has an on campus person who has a stipend and also core content specialists who teach two classes but use the rest of the time for coaching other teachers. At district level, now focus on building capacity in the core content specialists instead of working directly with teachers. Meet with content specialists and try to help them prepare for the next two weeks at school.

Another model - District-level coaches go to campuses and teach a class for teachers while they observe.

Another district shared they have six district-level people and prefers this over liaisons because there is inconsistency in a campus-based person's ability to devote time to the job. Campus based personnel are also more likely to be given campus duties such as covering classes, organizing science fair, creating and sending newsletters, etc.

Definite tension between coaches being fix-it people and instructionally focused repeated across school districts.

• Decision trees for whom to contact in what kinds of situations
• Use the 10 minute rule - if it's going to take more than 10 minutes for a fix, it's a technician problem
• Sometimes it's your instructional coaches who have the problem saying no
• Great resource from Brenham ISD: https://sites.google.com/a/brenhamk-12.net/bisd-new-hires/about-us

Changing what PD looks like: Would challenge based learning opportunities help with building capacity in to teachers who are already constrained for time? Could this be done in a blended or fully online space?

Apple has an online SAMR assessment survey (FREE) that will help teachers self-assess where they are in their technology learning. People are notoriously bad at assessing their own skills, however.

Bright Bytes Clarity for Schools - Not free, but allows teachers, students, parents, and administrators to assess where they are in tech integration. Region 11 has purchased this for all of their schools. Identifies gaps and offers solutions. Look for info videos on Vimeo.
http://www.brightbytes.net/clarity-for-public-school-2/

How can we stimulate binge learning? (Similar to binge viewing of videos on Netflix.)

• Appy Hours
• Potlucks

Be models of growth, not perfection.

• Share your own stories of how you learned something. Ex: Coach shares she used to take a picture of how her IWB was set up so when the cables got rearranged she could hook it back up herself.

Provide incentives for attending PD. Ex: Tech Bucks you can save up to purchase technology items. (Ann D. had this idea.)

Speed Geeking - Get some teachers who will share a snipit of something they are doing in their classroom. Set up in stations (Ex: in library) and have other teachers rotate through the stations for 10 minutes.

Book study recommendation for tech coaches - ISTE's Technology Facilitation and Leadership Standards

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

5 to 6 Hours of Basic Training on iPads? What?

Photo Used Under Creative Commons License

My last post was on the plan the educational technology team in my school district came up with for iPad Basic Training for Teachers. As iPads began making their way into our school district through different avenues last year, we felt it was important to make sure our teachers had a basic understanding of how to use the iPad before we even began to talk with them about using the iPad for teaching and learning.

In conversations with people inside and outside of my district, upon hearing we were proposing five to six hours of training in the basics, we were occasionally met with "What? You want HOW MUCH TIME to do basic iPad training?" The strongest reactions usually came from people who were already iPhone and iPad users themselves.

I'm going to list a few of the reasons we felt five or six hours was the minimum amount of time we needed for iPad basic training. They are not necessarily listed in order of importance, but all contribute to the reasons that prioritizing for this kind of training should be included in any implementation that puts iPads into the hands of teachers for the first time. The same principles can apply to any tablet, laptop, or mobile device you are deploying to teachers.

• If a teaching force is made up of typical adults, chances are only about half of them have experience with a smartphone. According to Pew Internet, approximately 56% of American adults own smart phones (data from April-May 2013).

• Only one-third of a teaching force has experience with a tablet device (data from April-May 2013) and not all of the tablets they have experience with are iOS devices.

• When planning for effective training, you have to assume that as of now the majority of your teachers have not used tablet devices before. If you are an edtech specialist or "natural techie,", think back to times when you have used totally new devices. I remember touching an interactive whiteboard for the first time in the early 2000's. I still remember the trainer saying, "Press harder, you won't break it." Breaking it was a real fear of mine since I had not used that type of technology before. Your teachers have a wide range of fears when adopting new technologies, too.

• Staff members who own personal smartphones and tablets use them for personal reasons, which are different from the reasons and ways these devices will be used in the classroom. For example, how a person evaluates an app they are going to download for personal reasons is very different from how they should evaluate an app they are going to download for use with students.

• Even teachers with smart phone/tablet experience do not know all of the ins and outs of the device. 
• They may have never investigated device restrictions or accessibility settings which might be beneficial in classroom use.
• Have they learned time-saving gestures such as the five-finger pinch for closing an app? (I learned that when I saw someone else do it, about a year after getting an iPad.) 
• What about the hidden-characters on the iPad keyboard, such as the apostrophe you can get if you long-press the comma key or the quotation marks you get when you long-press the question mark key? I didn't know those were there until I watched training materials we had gathered for our teachers. Based on their reactions to our trainings, many experienced iOS users didn't know about them either.
• Several teachers we interacted with admitted they didn't know how to download apps or manage an Apple ID/iTunes account because someone else in their family, often their children, managed their devices for them or did stuff for them when they asked for help instead of showing them how to do it.

• For those who are self-taught on iOS devices, if you added up all of the little bits of time you put into learning how to use your device as you needed to learn it, I would be willing to bet six hours would be a low number for the time you invested. 

• When deploying iPads for teaching and learning, time is not a luxury that exists in terms of allowing teachers to learn the basics "in their own time as needed." They need to be brought up to speed as quickly as possible so they will feel comfortable with starting to use the devices instructionally. Scaffold the "how to" so you can move everyone toward meaningful educational use.

In my previous blog post on iPad Basic Training for Teachers, I explained that we decided to deliver the majority of our training through self-paced online modules. Although our primary reason at the time was the need to reach hundreds of teachers with several hours of training, the online delivery of the training has proved effective for other reasons. It allowed those with more experience to quickly move past information on topics such as "The Parts of an iPad." 

The amount of material covered is best absorbed in small chunks as well. When we trained in person in two three-hour sessions on separate days, at the end of each session, the participants' eyes were glazing over. They needed to be introduced to the different concepts and then given time to experiment and play. And people with existing experience needed to be able to move forward faster. Online modules allow for personalization in learning. We received many positive comments in our end-of-module surveys regarding the ability of the participants to watch the materials online while practicing with their iPads, review the material as needed, and fast-forward through skills they already knew.

One of my favorite bits of feedback was from a teacher who had been a technology specialist on her campus several years ago and now serves as a classroom teacher. She took time to email myself and my boss. Here is what she had to say:

Well, for someone who thinks I am a know-it-all on the iPad, thank you for these trainings! I learned so many things just from Module 1. I can’t wait to finish the training! 

Thanks for all the time you put into these trainings!

As teachers are implementing iPads in their classrooms this Fall, time will tell how effective our plan was overall. But the comment above, as well as multiple positive comments in our end-of-module surveys, make me believe the approach was the right one to take. And I will continue to remind myself of the benefits as I think of the time we're going to have to reinvest to update all of the training materials now that iOS 7 is out!

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

iPad Basic Training for Teachers

The Background

Photo Used Under a Creative Commons License

In the Spring of 2013, my school district committed to issuing an iPad to every classroom teacher. The purposes for this initiative were to give teachers an additional tool for teaching and learning and to familiarize teachers with mobile devices in anticipation of more iPads being purchased for classroom use and a grades 6-12 BYOD program coming in the next school year.

This type of initiative is exactly what my supervisor Kim (AKA @DigitalLearners) and I had been waiting/hoping for.

This is why we had been reading everything we could via Twitter and blogs and attending every session we could at professional events about mobile learning and iPads for the past three years.

And yet, when the prospect finally became a reality, it was a little overwhelming. From all of the wonderful resources we had compiled, we needed to come up with a plan to get our teachers up-to-speed and comfortable with using iPads, while planting seeds of a vision for the use of mobile technologies in their classrooms. Most of the iPads would be in the hands of teachers by the end of the semester. Time was of the essence.

Thankfully, we had had a couple of trial runs in the fall. Federal funds had brought small sets of iPads to each of our Title I campuses, and we had put together six hours of in-person training on using iPads in teaching and learning for math and reading intervention teachers at 10 campuses. Additionally, a principal at one of our elementaries had secured funding to purchase an iPad for each of his teachers. With these 35-40 teachers, we asked them to cover some basics that we had posed online, and we did an additional two hours of in-person after school training with them. You can see our training agendas for these in person sessions here.

We were about to distribute iPads to 800 teachers. The timeline and our number of staff members would not allow us to do multiple-hour in-person trainings with all of them. Yet we felt based on our fall experiences that five to six hours of "the basics" was vital to giving this initiative the basis it needed to get off to a successful start. Online training was the only viable solution.

Thankfully, in the bank of resources we had been collecting was this iPad training page from Comal ISD which included this proficiency checklist. Comal graciously gave us permission to adapt their materials, and thus iPad Basic Training for Teachers online was born.

Training Plan

We took our fall experience and Comal's checklist and divided the basics into five one hour modules. Only the first module is delivered in a face-to-face format. Here is how it is organized:

• Receiving an iPad Session (in-person): Apple ID Set-Up, Precautions, and Security
• Teachers view this video which goes over important policy, and they are introduced to the Teacher iPad Proficiency Checklist. EdTech staff assists teachers with creating an AppleID that does not require a credit card.
• Module 1: Vision and Basic Operations
• Module 2: Email, Calendar, Web Browsing, General Settings
• Module 3: App Management
• Module 4: Camera, iBooks, Educreations

Teachers needed to receive credit for completing the modules, so we set up eCourses in our Eduphoria Workshop system which include quizzes at the end based on the proficiency checklist. Basically, it's an honor system where teachers answer quiz questions with a "yes" or "no". Each "question" is one of the proficiencies on the master checklist, such as "I can create folders on my iPad for organizing apps."

We wanted the training resources to be readily available to our teachers on an ongoing basis without the need for a password to access them, so they are posted on our public website (see links above).

You are welcome to use the resources posted on my district's website and YouTube channel in your own trainings. I ask that you credit my school district if you use any district created resources or if you use the organizational ideas of our training. I would also appreciate if you share with me how you use it!

Why?

Are any of you thinking, "Really? Four to five to six hours of training on iPads? They're intuitive, right? Kids use them with little if any guidance. What the heck?"

Good questions! That, my friends, is the topic of my next blog post!

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

What would you tell teachers new to #BYOD / #BYOT?

Photo from @AquiAmigo Presentation at SXSWEdu 2013

I've been putting this question out on Twitter, but thought perhaps I'd get more in depth responses if I ask via my blog. So, here it goes!

Here is the scenario: You have three hours of face-to-face staff development scheduled with grades 6-12 teachers who are new to BYOD. Students will be bringing their own devices to school for the first time in just a few months.

Here are my questions:

• What is the most important information to tell the teachers?
• What hands-on activities would you incorporate into the training?
• What practical ideas/tips/tricks would you share with them to set them up for success?
• What classroom management tips would you give them?
• What am I forgetting to ask/include in my questions?

I have done research on this over the last couple of years and bookmarked tons of resources, but would like to collect ideas from front-line teachers and trainers who are experienced in teaching in a BYOD/BYOT environment.

Thanks bunches in advance for any ideas and links you share in the comments below!

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I also sent a couple of questions on this topic out to my Twitter network. Below is a slideshow of their answers to what they would include in a BYOD training for teachers and what their favorite QR code creators are.

Twitter for Professional Learning #ISTE13

Photo Courtesy of @mistergoode via Twitter

On Tuesday, June 25th, I presented a poster session on Twitter for Professional Learning at the ISTE 2013 conference in San Antonio, Texas. My co-worker and usual partner-in-presentations Kim Garcia was scheduled to present with me, but was unable to due to illness. :-(

I really enjoyed the format of this "come-and-go" session, where I was able to have conversations with educators who were interested in Twitter for extending their own learning as well as the learning of their colleagues. I actually have another blog post in mind on the topic of poster sessions. Stay tuned for more info!

Meanwhile, if you are interested in resources on Twitter for professional learning, scroll down to check out the LiveBinder I put together for ISTE. Whether you are a beginner or experienced user of Twitter for growing yourself professionally, you are likely to find some helpful resources here. If you are conducting PD on Twitter for others, this collection is also a good place to start gathering resources.

I hope these resources are helpful to you! Happy Tweeting!

Twitter for Professional Learning – ISTE 2013

Alternate link to LiveBinder: http://tiny.cc/TwitterISTE2013

iPLC: Planting the Seed Through Staff Development #iPlza13

Notes from iPadPalooza 2013 Presentation

Errin Jennings
Instructional Technology Specialist
Dripping Springs ISD
kimtag.com/errinjennings

Prezi for presentation: http://prezi.com/ye9_bubdlzou

We are using http://todaysmeet.com/iPLC to share ideas for whom to follow on different networks to grow our PLN.

When you introduce something to faculty (or students), communicate clearly. For example, if using a back channel, let participants know focus of comments should be on topic at hand. Just saying "Be professional" might not be enough.

Broadcasting the seed emails - send out little tidbits, and see who bites.

Face to face conversations are still important. If you are a tech specialist, converse with a teacher and ask them to figure out the tool. Then they become your trainer of trainers.

In department meetings, faculty meetings, etc, pick one tool. You or a teacher model it. Watch for it to be used in other classrooms. Celebrate when it is used; help troubleshoot if there are barriers to using it.

Consider flipping meetings. Give info in advance so people can process, then have more discussion at the in person meeting.

PD RULES:

• Practice First. Never ever use technology without trying it out in the location where you will be using it.
• One thing at a time. Pace yourself so you don't overwhelm people.
• Be Authentic. Don't force the use of new technology just because it's cool. Should be appropriate to age and learning.
• Let others drive. Let other teachers become familiar with tools and share them.
• Stay current yourself
• Record & reward good teachers.
• It's ok to say "I don't know".

NOTE: This is my first ever post using Blogsy, so if there are any link mistakes or massive formatting issues, I will correct later. :-)

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