2016-2017 Reflection

Reflection

Well it is way past time for my reflection. I have already decided that next year I would like to plan a bit earlier to maintain a weekly teacher reflection based on the goals that I am setting. 

Perhaps my biggest issue is planning in the beginning of the year, reflecting more often and then by the time I hit Christmas, we are on a massive rollercoaster to the finish, and I have completely forgotten to stop and reflect. 

I believe by adding events into the calendar to pause a reflection and refer myself back to my plan, I believe I will have greater success. 

In the mean-time here are some thoughts from the 2016-2017 school year. 

This year I had planned to focus my attention in the direction of 3 major projects: IVC Distance Delivery, Online Learning, and IT. The outcomes for IVC that I had set were to: 

1. High quality IVC classes, extending CTE classes to all HS
2. Targeted SSP and PLC Trainings: IVC Checklist focus (based on Danielson Framework) 
3. Training in how to use IVC for T & L and H.S. staff 
4. PD via IVC (ex: Canvas) 
5. Virtual Field Trips for Schools to extend CTE Pathways
6. Cross-school student collaboration projects (ie Student Techs) for CTE Pathways extension.

Of all these set, I was very successful at building the cross school Student Tech Program with the starts of building it into CTE or internships. We provided some PD via IVC, and unfortunately provided no virtual field trips. We did spend time during SSP for targeted PD, but quickly realized we needed more time to do anything deeper. Next year I will be developing a plan to implement a monthly PLC via DD. Finally, the training for others to use the IVC equipment occurred more informally then formally. People are becoming used the idea of having it in their schools, but I would like to build an easy how to use guide in Canvas and our school district website. So others can just connect during their PLC’s. I hope to build a campaign in the fall to share with principals to encourage use, along with providing Virtual Field Trips via Nepris. 

Outcomes that were created for online learning included: 

1. Beg & Adv Canvas training courses for teachers in-person and online (personalized PD, Badging, CE Credits) 
2. Support for Apex and Canvas (Trainings for teachers and students) in-person and online
3. Support use of Canvas for OER Curation Process
4. Personalized/ Blended Learning & BYOD Canvas Modules Examples for training and PLC’s 
5. Alaska Studies Canvas Course
6. ConnectEd Canvas Course based on Blended Learning models. 
7. Support/ Training for T & L to build their own Canvas Courses

It feels like I spent the majority of the year building resources and training materials for Apex/ Canvas teachers and lab facilitators, which I greatly enjoyed. These need to be formalized and moved into a Canvas Course for teachers to take as an independent training. In addition, I had great success in building the Canvas OER Curation course, and the 3 day training that was provided went well. The groundwork has been laid for this to be very useful and dynamic next year, which will be heavily used for Personalized learning. Another huge success was the building of blended learning modules and examples for training and plc. These will be placed into Canvas Catalog this summer so teachers can add them into their Canvas courses as templates. 

We also made in-roads to preparing the Alaska Studies course, and a Canvas template has been made for teachers to build the course. Finally we provided a ConnectEd/ StudySync course that wasn’t well attended but built framework for future trainings. As for the support and training for T & L building their own course, I believe I did poorly here. This summer I will be putting together a Canvas training course for Admin center folks, and then offering a training to them to build better courses. 

Outcomes that were created for Instructional technology teacher were: 

1. Help with Communication process for tech support, with librarians as first contact for tech support. 
2. Support plans for technology refresh in HS and MS
3. Support plans for Software Support in HS and MS
4. Provide tools and training to support the transition to personalized Learning (train the trainer for librarians) 
5. Provide New Teacher Basic FNSBSD Tech Canvas Modules

Of all the areas on this planning document, I feel I did the poorest here. I felt that I did not get to spend as much time in schools as I would have liked, implementing and modeling lessons with teachers and students. However, I consider over and over again how and where this now fits into my new position, and perhaps it should be blended more into the other two outcome goals above. I did, however, work with my supervisor to build communication processes for tech support with librarians and student techs. I look forward to really seating it and reinforcing it for next year. The model suggests that teachers, students and staff go to their school librarian for tech support. The librarian decides if she will provide support, or if it can be done by a student tech, or if requires contacting me. In turn, I will work with librarians to train them and give them model lessons to share with teachers, a train the librarian model. This year I also encouraged librarians to work with their principals and teachers to create a refresh plan for the next 5 years. But it would have been better to build a template plan and offer it to the librarians. Finally we are slowly building capacity for software support through Canvas courses, PD trainings and training librarians. Student techs also worked to provide 4 Google Playground events to have people learn about Google Apps. And in addition to this, we have planned for a process for providing tech support for personalized learning for next year, in addition to summer work for building resources on our district website. And for goal number 5, we did have an excellent start at this but just ran out of steam and time to get it done. I will continue to work on it over the summer and offer it in the Canvas Catalog for the fall.