{"id":275,"date":"2018-06-10T20:01:42","date_gmt":"2018-06-10T20:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/awalkinthewoods\/?p=275"},"modified":"2018-06-11T20:53:46","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T20:53:46","slug":"employee-development-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/awalkinthewoods\/employee-development-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Employee Development Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

There has been a lot of discussion in the past few years regarding the promotion and development of a people-technology hybrid model for education. \u00a0It is an exciting time as the possibilities are endless and also a challenging time due to budget, resource and support limitations that vary according to schools and school districts.<\/p>\n

Technology can be used in education to promote organizational citizenship behaviour<\/strong>. Each year, our school district has all students in Grades 4, 7, 10 and 12 as well as staff take an anonymous online Satisfaction<\/strong> Survey<\/strong>. It is a province wide customer satisfaction type questionnaire that was developed to help meet the needs of students, staff and parents. \u00a0A link to the types of questions asked can be found here<\/a> on the BC Ministry of Education website. There is also an online survey that students complete each year entitled Tell Them From Me<\/em><\/strong>. This anonymous survey is conducted in grades 8-12 and collects information that individual schools can then use to determine better ways to teach and reach kids based on the input collected. It enables student voices to be heard and focuses on the assessment of intellectual, social, emotional learning of students. \u00a0Here is a video link<\/a> explaining how the results from Tell Them From Me<\/em> can be immediately applicable. The goal is to recognize and acknowledge the needs of students and to make changes that will enable students to be more engaged in their learning which in turn leads to a higher rate of high school completion. \u00a0These types of surveys are extremely eye-opening and enable self-reflection to take place. For example, last year, we discovered that there were a high majority of Grade 8 students who felt that they didn’t have an adult in the building that they could turn to for help. We made it our mission to put initiatives in place that would ensure that each student had a special connection to at least one adult. \u00a0The difficulty with these types of surveys are that not every school has access to technology that would allow for students to complete them during school time (which is how they are conducted). \u00a0At my school alone, we have over 1200 students and only 120 laptops available at a time so it makes it rather difficult to smoothly coordinate this whole school initiative while balancing \u00a0teaching schedules and blocks. \u00a0Another pressing issue, is the lack of consistent WiFi service in \u00a0schools as well. When large groups of people are on at one time, the service usually crashes or becomes significantly slower resulting in frustration from both the teachers and the students.<\/p>\n

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We had an initiative in our District a few years ago, where there were Digital Literacy coaches available in each school to help mentor other teachers in the application of technology within the classroom to help co-create\u00a0<\/strong>lessons that would inspire wonder and innovation in our students beyond paper\/pencil tasks. \u00a0I was one of those coaches and worked out of the School Board Office helping to promote digital literacy through whole school and small group workshops as well as one on one sessions. \u00a0We needed ways to help keep parents informed and ways for students to be able to access learning materials outside of class time. I helped teachers create their own websites, create flipped classrooms (where the \u00a0lesson is taught online and the work done in the classroom) and find innovative ways to share \u00a0student learning through programs like KidBlog or FreshGrade (a learning portfolio platform accessible by students, teachers and parents). \u00a0As digital literacy coaches, we wanted to avoid teachers simply replacing paper tasks with digital ones that basically did the same thing. Our goal was to help teachers move beyond the basics and find new ways for students to share their individual unique learning and focus on student strengths. We referred to the SAMR model <\/strong>developed by Dr. Ruben R. Puentedura\u00a0frequently as a way to help explain how to create a hybrid model of technology and education for teachers. \u00a0Here is a link to a great video clip<\/a> explaining the model and how it applies to the classroom. \u00a0Basically there are 4 levels as illustrated below with the first being simply a substitute activity leading all the way to an activity that would have originally been impossible to do without technology. \u00a0For example, the first two levels of the SAMR model enhance teaching but the final level transforms it and enables students to collaborate beyond the 4 walls of the classroom and have access to a global community for feedback and self-reflection.<\/p>\n

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www.marsscott.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Our District has moved away from having Digital Literacy Coaches within schools to having two technology support mentors who work with teachers who are interested in providing opportunities for students to learn coding and robotics within the classroom. \u00a0Teachers can apply for grants each year to receive iPads, GoPros, mini robots and other tech gadgets. \u00a0Teachers are also supplied with one tech device for themselves to use within the classroom (an iPad or a laptop) and each teacher was asked this year to define their teaching style and how they use the device provided to support student learning.<\/p>\n

Some ways in which my school district \u00a0provides innovation in a Service Oriented Culture\u00a0<\/span>is by offering Microsoft Office<\/em> for free to all of our students. \u00a0Students can upload this program on up to 6 different personal devices and it will still be accessible to them after they graduate. We used to use Google Classroom<\/em> to enable students to collaborate online, however, due to Google<\/em> servers being located in places other than Canada, we wanted to ensure that our students privacy was protected under Canadian laws and switched to Microsoft Office<\/em>. \u00a0By providing students with free access to Microsoft Office<\/em>, student learning can take place both inside and outside school hours and on personal devices that are convenient for students to use. We used Microsoft Office<\/em> forms \u00a0at our school this year with our Grade 9’s to conduct student surveys to better improve courses like Career Education that have recently become embedded and to promote student engagement in their learning. We also use it to create quick surveys for staff that allow for immediate responses. We also use apps like Remind<\/em> to keep parents and students informed of upcoming events and assignments for individual classes. We utilize social media such as Instagram<\/em> to post whole school messages that will make it more likely for high school students to see. Teachers can access lesson ideas and build their professional learning community through forums such as Pinterest<\/em>, Twitte<\/em>r and Teachers Pay Teachers<\/em>. Teachers and students are able to access and bring experts\/mentors from the local and global communities into the classroom through programs like Skype<\/em>. Virtual reality programs enable students to build and develop their STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) skills. \u00a0Fun and engaging programs like Kahoot<\/em> help enhance student learning and enable teachers to reflect on areas that need further work. Students can create and share their learning globally<\/strong> through student made podcasts, videos and blogs. Collaboration is no longer confined to the four walls of a classroom or building. Students can work together on the same document at the same time and provide peer feedback in real time. \u00a0We are currently using a program called MyBlueprint<\/em> to enable students to create portfolios and collect artifacts of their learning that can be shared with Universities and parents. \u00a0This program ties into their highschool courses, provides transcripts, enables them to complete surveys that help them better understand their strengths and provides possible career suggestions.<\/p>\n

Technology when used to promote student engagement, to assess emotional, social and intelligence needs of students and used to transform learning that goes beyond the four walls of the classroom is a very useful tool indeed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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References:<\/p>\n

Government of British Columbia. Retrieved from https:\/\/www2.gov.bc.ca\/gov\/content\/education-training\/administration\/kindergarten-to-grade-12\/surveys\/satisfaction-survey<\/p>\n

Kandampully, J., Bilghihan, A., Tingting, C. (2016). Developing a People-Technology Hybrids Model to Unleash Innovation and Creativity: The New Hospitality Frontier. \u00a0https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.jhtm.2016.07.003<\/p>\n

Northouse, P.G. (2019).\u00a0 Leadership: Theory and Practice.\u00a0 <\/em>(8th<\/sup> ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA:\u00a0 Sage Publications, Inc.<\/p>\n

Scott, M. (2016, May 23). A Glimpse Into Technology Coaching. Retrieved from\u00a0http:\/\/marsscott.com\/visionaryleadership\/a-glimpse-into-technology-coaching\/<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There has been a lot of discussion in the past few years regarding the promotion and development of a people-technology hybrid model for education. \u00a0It is an exciting time as the possibilities are endless and also a challenging time due to budget, resource and support limitations that vary according to schools and school districts. Technology […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ldrs500","category-unit-6","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/awalkinthewoods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/awalkinthewoods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/awalkinthewoods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/awalkinthewoods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/awalkinthewoods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/awalkinthewoods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/awalkinthewoods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/awalkinthewoods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/awalkinthewoods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/awalkinthewoods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}