Bloom into EdTech: The Blog

Over the past few weeks I have been working with my colleagues on building online professional development (PD) courses using Schoology. As I went over the basics in Schoology (analytics, badges, updates) and spoke about course design, I wanted to draw attention to what online professional development could look like to teachers. As staff development specialists, we collectively analyzed and discussed what we believed to be an authentic online experience - one that teachers can emulate in their own classrooms. This brought up a conversation on the digital tools that are used everyday by educators, as well as certain settings found in Schoology. Instead of teaching about the digital tools that are widely used in classrooms (which is not the premise of their online PD, I take ownership of ed. tech), why not exemplify how they are used through online PD? This way teachers not only have the practice in the application, but can begin to understand the instructional reasoning behind usin

During the 2018-2019 school year, I created a regional Professional Learning Community(PLC) entitled "Technology in the Classroom". This was a diverse group of individuals who came from a variety of schools with a vast array of technology competencies. We met four times throughout the school year and conquered many educational technology tools, practices, and theories. The last meeting of the year consisted of my PLC participating in a design challenge to solve one of the UN Global Issues. The premise of creating an environment in which they became a part of the learning process, was for them to experience learning first-hand that involved risk-taking, working with limited resources, presenting to a panel of judges (my wonderful colleagues) and, most of all, working collaboratively. After the presentations to the judges were given, we reflected upon their personal experience partaking in the design challenge. Great conversations took place about the future of educa