My journey on the Digital Learning and Leading (DLL) M.Ed. road began at an Apple Teacher Academy. This academy was part of the Lamar University/Apple Community Education Initiative. I was fortunate to be selected, along with 7 other staff members, from my district to attend this academy and participate in the Initiative (these members along with our Coordinator of Digital Learning, became the digital learning team for our district). During the academy I began to learn to code in Swift Playgrounds. In addition, I worked collaboratively with people from the Austin area on a community app challenge. In the challenge, I helped create an app prototype and pitch for the Ronald McDonald House.
It was at the Apple Teacher Academy that I first experienced the COVA (Harapnuik, 2018) + CSLE (Harapnuik, 2015) approach as I began to create my ePortfolio. I was given a choice in the program used to create the ePortfolio as well as how I would organize it. My ePortfolio has become a place for me to share my learning and my thoughts. While I was involved with the Lamar/Apple partnership, I shared my thoughts and reflections through my blog. As I continued in the DLL program, I found myself changing where I was sharing my voice as I posted more to sections geared to coursework and I stopped posting to my blog.
Through the entirety of the DLL program, I have come to understand the power of voice and sharing that voice with the world. Moving forward, I plan to continue the use of my ePortfolio because it is a powerful tool to share my learning with others. My plan is to use my ePortfolio as a place to share resources and opportunities for learning with my staff (and the world) as well as a place to share my reflections on learning via the ePortfolio blog.
One thing I have learned from the process is I wish I had used a different program (or at least a different template) to create the ePortfolio due to restrictions on my creativity by what the template allows, however, I have learned to make it work.
Also, during the Apple Teacher Academy, Lamar challenged us to find out about our technology literacy. During this activity I completed a digital competency survey From the results, I found my area of greatest strength is the ability to explain how to use programs and technology. This was not surprising because I am a former keyboarding and computer application teacher and my current role is an instructional technology specialist, so I spend much of my time showing people how to use technology and programs. I needed to grow the most in my use of social media. My PLN and utilizing social media is growing, partly because of the DLL program. However, I will admit, this is something I am still working on. I definitely post more to social media, but it is mostly from my school’s accounts.
At the conclusion of the Academy, the members of my district came together and planned a coding academy for the students in grades 3-11 in our district. In July, we held a successful summer coding academy where our students gained experience in coding, created their own app prototype and pitched the prototype to their parents and each other.
In the fall and spring, I continued my road of learning with Lamar and Apple when I formalized my Learning Philosophy and wrote my Learning Manifesto. Writing both my learning philosophy and my learning manifesto into a document I was going to share with the world was a struggle for me, but I ended up with products that I am proud to share. In addition, during this time I learned about Growth Mindset and the power of yet (StanfordAlumni, 2014). This, very appropriately, is my school’s theme this year. I think that it is perfect in this time of such change due to the pandemic. We may not be experts in working in school in the pandemic…yet.
During this time the digital learning team learned about disruptive education and, once again came together and collaborated on a district-wide Innovation Plan. Our plan for innovation is to give students, on each campus in the district, more authentic learning experiences via project-based learning. In addition, we asked our district to support additional opportunities to use computational thinking through expanded coding opportunities. This process involved creating a research backed innovation plan as well as a call to action. This is a reflection on the progress of the innovation plan.
As I continued on the road of my learning journey in the Lamar/Apple Initiative, I learned about, and experienced, Choice, Ownership, Voice through Authentic Assignments (COVA) and Creating Significant Learning Environments (CSLE). My experience with COVA + CSLE was consistent throughout my DLL journey, both when learning in the Initiative and later in the DLL program.
As I move forward in my journey, I must remember that in order to create authentic learning opportunities, I need to teach learners to connect the dots, not just collect the dots (Godin, 2012). I will create a culture of learning that, as Douglas Thomas said, “The teachers job is creating context where we can cultivate imagination, where we can honor passion and where we can help people connect their passion to the things that they need to learn” (Thomas, 2012).
In the spring of 2020, I took a fork in the road of my learning and enrolled in the DLL program at Lamar. I was fortunate that two other members of the digital learning team, Nicole Alexander and Patience Blythe Creech, were continuing on the journey with me. I was also joined by others from the Lamar/Apple partnership as well as others who I came to know via class meetings and discussion posts. As members of the DLL program, we have learned from and with each other.
On one stop on the road of my learning was designing effective professional learning. At this stop, I learned the importance of changing from the traditional professional development model to professional learning. In order for learning to be effective, it must be of significant duration, there must be support, it must be active, modeled and specific to the learner (Gulamhussein, 2013). During this stop, I designed personalized professional learning through badges for my campus. When designing my professional learning I purposely included all of my staff members. I feel it is important for all staff on campus to continue to learn. Because this is a personalized learning via badging, there will be opportunities for learning for all staff members.
By changing traditional, “sit and get” professional development to personalized professional learning via badging staff members will gain experience learning in a new way. It will also allow the staff to learn tools to help students learn in new ways that give them ownership, choice, voice through authentic learning opportunities.
The next stop in my journey was leading organizational change. During this stop Patience, Nicole and I collaborated as we worked to refine our innovation plan and how to make real change. This course pushed us as we learned how to become agents of change. We were challenged to define our why. It took some work, but we finally could state, in a concise statement, the Why, How and What of our plan for innovation. In addition, we defined our six sources of influence and vital behaviors (Grenny et al., 2013). As part of the vital behaviors we defined what our ideal outcome is, the vital behaviors that will ensure the success of the Plan, determined the measurement we will use to determine if the innovation plan is being implemented and finally, identified our influencers.
During this stop we also created our 4 Disciplines of Execution and defined our 5 stages of change (McChesney et al., 2016). We learned to: focus on the wildly important goal (WIG) which is to create real-world, authentic learning projects at least once per semester. We also learned the difference between lead and lag measures and the importance of acting on the lead measures. Our lag measure is that 90% of our district will complete a project. Our lead measure is to share weekly project updates in the grade-level Google Classroom. We discovered the importance of creating a scorecard of accountability that will be posted in a prominent location on each campus. And created a cadence of accountability to hold each other accountable to implementing the Plan(McChesney et al., 2016). To create this cadence of accountability will hold weekly WIG meetings during the first 15 minutes of weekly team meetings.
As mentioned on the Innovation Plan Reflection, we are still working to implement our Innovation Plan. During our DLL journey, I learned the importance of self-differentiated leadership. We, Patience, Nicole and I, understand that the change we seek may be difficult and we will need to have many crucial conversations in order to move our Plan forward. We learned that when having these crucial conversations we need to remember to: start with the heart, learn to look, make it safe, master our stories, state our path, explore others’ paths, and move to action (Patterson et al, 2012). By remembering these important concepts, we can create safe spaces for those who are willing to embark on our journey with us, as well as those who resist the change we seek.
At another stop in my journey I learned how to assess instructional impact. During this course, collaboration came in the form of advice and peer editing. For the authentic project, I chose to focus on the effectiveness of the personalized professional learning via badging that I created at a previous course. This new professional learning opportunity is being used to prepare teachers to join us in giving students more authentic learning experiences via project based learning. Because of this, it was important to me to find out if the badging system would have a positive impact on my teachers’ learning, thus making the probability of success of the Innovation Plan higher.
One important aspect of Action Research is it is not done by professional researchers, it is done by teachers, or instructional specialists, i.e. it is done by someone who wants to know if what they are doing is having an impact (Merler, 2016). For the Action Research, I developed an outline, performed a review of literature surrounding my topic, and created an action research plan.
The next stop on my DLL road was designing an online learning course. The design of the course utilized significant learning environments and applied constructivist learning theories and instructional design. I created an online course for my staff, Tools for Student Creation (access code: odvbwpn). This course was designed and planned to teach my teachers how to use four different creation tools, Canva, Adobe Spark Post, Adobe Spark Video, and Adobe Spark Page. While learning these products, they will create an exemplar and a lesson plan that they can use with their students. In addition, they will learn to collaborate using these tools.
Throughout the DLL program, I have participated in online courses that created significant learning environments and gave me choice, ownership, voice through authentic learning opportunities. Learning how to create my own effective online course will help me as I design courses for my staff to give them personalized professional learning through badges. Having the courses online will help me to meet my learners, where they are.
As I near the end of the DLL road (I have one course left) this reflection has helped me to see all that I have learned. I have learned so much more than just the content of the courses. I have learned how impactful the COVA + CSLE approach is, and I plan to implement this as I move forward in my career. I have also learned the power of collaboration. In my position, I did not always have someone to collaborate with as I am the only person in my role in my school. However, throughout this program I have learned to not only collaborate with Patience, Nicole and others in the program, but also to collaborate with others in my district. I have learned that I do not have to have all the answers, that it is ok to reach out and ask for help.
I have learned the power of reflection. This was something we had to do in each course, and at first I struggled with these reflections. Honestly, this is not something I had spent much time doing because of the fast paced nature of my job. I have learned that I must stop and reflect so that I can see where I have been, where I am, and where I am going. I have begun implementing reflection in my daily work and it has already made a positive impact.
What comes next and what road will I travel? This is the obvious next question. The answer is actually listed in the purpose of the DLL program. I will “lead organizational change and drive innovation” (Harapnuik, 2019) using all I have learned in the DLL program.
References
Grenny, J., Patterson, K., Maxfield, D., McMillian, R., & Switzler, A. (2013). Influencer: The new science of leading change. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the teachers effective professional development in an era of high stakes accountability. Center for Public Education. Retrieved from http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/system/files/2013-176_ProfessionalDevelopment.pdf
Harapnuik, D. [Dwayne Harapnuik]. (2018, February 13). COVA approach [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ft__0LE3qQ
Harapnuik, D. [Dwayne Harapnuik]. (2015, May 9). Creating significant learning environments (CSLE) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ-c7rz7eT4
Harapnuik, D. (2019, January 20). DLL why & principles. It’s all about the learning creating significant learning environments. http://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=6756
Godin, S. [TedxYouth]. (2012, October 16). Stop stealing dreams [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXpbONjV1Jc&t
McChesney, C., Covey, S., & Huling, J. (2016). The 4 disciplines of execution: Achieving your wildly important goals. New York, NY: Free Press.
Mertler, C., (2016). Action research: Empowering schools and empowering educators (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Patterson, K., Granny, J., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2012). Crucial conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
StanfordAlumni (Director). (2014, October 09). Developing a growth mindset with Carol Dweck [Video file]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiiEeMN7vbQ
Thomas, D. [Tedx Talks]. (2012, September 12). A new culture of learning [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM80GXlyX0U
Sandra Negro 