Opening Another Chapter as One is Closing
I love to learn and grow. This ultimately led to me pursuing a career in education so that I could help instill this love in the students that I would encounter on my teaching journey. This love of learning has led me to take pride in calling myself a lifelong learner and am constantly seeking out opportunities to help me grow and evolve in my practice, whether that may be an additional degree, professional development opportunities, watching YouTube tutorials, or following different educators blogs. As I am wrapping up my Master in Educational Technology from Michigan State University, there are three areas that intrigued me and I plan to continue exploring: using the design thinking process, growing as a leader, and the role of school library makerspaces.
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Goal 1
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As the Digital Literacy Specialist within my building, I have the opportunity to work with teachers on how to successfully implement different technology tools within their classrooms in order to help enhance student learning and understanding. As my school moves to a more competency-based method of assessing students' understanding, I am seeing how the design thinking process would be beneficial to both the teachers and students in my building. I plan to
take additional time to explore design thinking. One of the ways that I will do this is to participate in TATA Consultancy Services GoIT Facilitator Training sessions. Where I will have the opportunity to participate in a condensed version of the student program which introduces students to the design thinking process and then has them follow through the process revolving around a problem that they are trying to solve within their community. I will be able to take this program back to my school and assist teachers and students as they move through the program as an introduction to design thinking. The company also runs monthly challenges that I can have groups of students participate in through the library.
Goal 2
This also leads me to the goal of further developing my leadership skills. I have never envisioned myself as a leader, but in my position, I do take on leadership roles when it comes to technology implementation within my building. Due to this, I feel that it is important to continue to work on and strengthen my leadership skills and the impression I make as a leader. I can do this by continuing to explore and make strides in who I am as a
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leader by participating in the Galileo Teacher Leadership Consortium. This program is a two-year commitment in which I will have the opportunity to explore educational and leadership issues and themes and have the opportunity to self-assess and take my learning back to my own school.
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Photo by Benjamin Thomas on Unsplash
Goal 3
I have always considered myself a maker. I had previously heard about makerspaces and the maker movement but had never spent much time thinking about the value of making and the role it plays in student learning and understanding. Now, especially with my school moving to a Project-Based Learning (PBL) approach, I plan to grow my makerspace and encourage both students and teachers to come and use what it has to offer to design, explore, learn, create, and learn how to face failures and come back to the table to iterate. Since I plan to run the makerspace out of my school library, I have found a blog from a fellow teacher-librarian, Diana Rendina, that outlines how she has set up and uses her makerspace. There are also numerous links to additional resources that I can also explore in my quest to build and increase usage of my makerspace. Once I have had the opportunity to grow the space some more and increase student traffic and engagement with it, then I plan to branch out and showcase to teachers how the makerspace can support their curriculums and help to increase student learning and understanding.
Moving forward, these goals will help me to excel within my position and help to provide both teachers and students within my building with authentic learning experiences that drive a deeper understanding of concepts.