5.2: Professional Learning:
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Artifact
Technology Workshop – Data-Driven Teaching Reflection This artifact is the website developed and implemented as a polished professional learning workshop that teaches teachers how to integrate Google Forms and Flubaroo, a free add-on, as an technology-enhanced assessment tool that provides instant student learning data, self-grades, and can be customized to send assessment results and remediation materials to students. The teachers who attended the face-to-face workshop can access all materials, including collaborative implementation ideas documents and surveys, online through the website. To promote best practices in teaching, learning, and assessment, we built the workshop to support data-based individualized instruction, visible learning, and effective use of formative assessments. The workshop was developed in collaboration with a teacher in the school where it was implemented. Together, we ensured that our session would align to state learning standards (Henson, 2008) and national professional learning standards (ISTE, 2015). The Georgia Professional Standards Commissions, for example, requires that professional learning teach teachers to “assess and analyze student learning, make appropriate adjustments to instruction, monitor student learning, and have a positive effect on learning for all students” (Henson, 2008). Our workshop accomplishes this professional learning goal by introducing a method of improving the way and the speed with which teachers currently attempt this goal. With modern technology, teachers can gather and analyze student learning data immediately and make adjustments to instruction accordingly. Likewise, our workshop meets national professional learning standards by facilitating teachers’ ability to ‘provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments” (ISTE, 2015). The workshop models the principles of adult learning by attending to the Adult Learning Theory’s six principles of adult learning while developing the workshop. These principles include, for example, that “adults bring like experience and knowledge to learning experiences [and] adults are relevancy oriented” (QOTFC, 2007). We made sure to incorporate workshop attendees’ insight into the workshop itself both via discussion elements and through the idea graphic organizer stored in a shared Google Doc and linked to the website. To ensure the workshop was relevancy-oriented, we incorporated time for teachers to actually work with Google Forms to create their own assessment tools for immediate use in their classrooms. Through completion of this artifact, it became clear that teachers are reluctant to attend trainings and are even more reluctant to integrate new ideas during the school year. The few teachers who attended the workshop, early adopters all, reported that they found the strategy very useful and would implement soon, but the constraints of the school year made immediate implementation unlikely. When I present this idea again, I will improve it by presenting it earlier in the year and by showcasing its direct impact in my own classroom. The impact on faculty development is yet to be seen, but all workshop attendees reported that they would implement the strategy soon. The impact on student learning was assessed via pre- and post-test during the initial trial implementation in my collaborating partner’s class, and subsequent implementations can be assessed similarly. References ISTE. (2015). ISTE standards: Teachers. International Society for Technology in Education. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/ISTE-standards/standards-for-teachers. QOTFC. (2007). Adult learning theory and principles. Queensland Occupational Therapy Fieldwork Collaborative. Retrieved from http://www.qotfc.edu.au/resource/?page=65375. |