Creating Future Ready Advocates

For several years, our school district has been using the Visioning Document as a tool to drive change in the way we do things. If you aren't familiar with this document, it involved  35 superintendents in Texas in 2008 who wanted to create a new vision for public education in Texas. It is clearly labeled as "a work in progress" and is meant to start conversations about how public education could and should change. Many of our principals have gone through the Principal Visioning Institute and they brought it down to the teacher level in WISD. 

This past school year, we changed the name to Future Ready Academy, but the premise was the same- helping teachers grow professionally without the expectation of it being a "trainer of trainer" role. Then we heard about the iSchool Initiative and both their Certified Teacher program & iSchool Student Advocate program. I visited with April Riley from Aledo ISD and she shared with me the impact the teacher program had on their district. After discussions with Travis Allen, founder of iSchool Initiative, we secured dates for the Student Advocate program. We eventually added the Certified Teacher program, but that post will come later. 

The Student Advocate program was held late in May, when schedules are crazy and days are already jam-packed! Everyone made the best of it, and we started the application process, which included interviews on three different campuses. Although the process was tedious, it was a good experience for the students to go through, and one that will probably serve them well as the continue along their educational journey. One thing that was clear, Weatherford ISD has AMAZING students! If we had 80 spots, we could have filled 80 spots. Unfortunately, we were limited to 40 students, 10 on each of the secondary campuses. 

After the selection process, students attended a three day training with involved public speaking, problem solving, team building, ISTE Standards for Students, digital citizenship, identifying issues in our district, solutions, and finally a presentation. It was fast-paced and a lot was covered in the three short days, but it was inspiring to see the student presentations on the last day. 

Technology was a natural part of the day, students using their Chromebooks to answer questions and find information without being told. Sometimes teachers feel that they have to come up with an activity to use technology, but really it should be a tool, just like paper, pencils, calculators, or textbooks.

A parent meeting was held after the first day, to share with parents about the program and what it means for the students to be an iSchool Student Advocate. As the meeting was about to begin, one of the iSchool leaders talked to the students who were in attendance and tasked them with facilitating the meeting. The students stepped up to this challenge without even a second of hesitation and were able to easily share what had taken place on the first day of the program. It was great to see the confidence and their ability to verbalize what they learned from the first day. One student said, "If school was like this every day, I would love coming to school!" 

On the 2nd day, District Administrators came in and talked about issues in our district that the students might want to create solutions for during this program. Not all of the issues involved technology, but the solution could. 

Students got busy choosing an issue and then working on creating a solution. There was a lot of discussion and brainstorming during this part of the program. Students had already been working with Google Slides, so this was a natural tool for them to use.

On the third day, the students polished up their presentations that they worked on the day before. One group was so motivated to have a great presentation that they spent an additional 4-5 hours at Chick-Fil-A working on their project after they had already been working on it during the 2nd day. That is an empowered learner!

Then it was time to start pitching their solutions to an audience. We did this jointly with students in Aledo ISD, so the audience was even bigger. The students did such a great job, especially considering the short amount of time they had to work with. 

We are very excited to see this program grow and are looking forward to seeing all that our Student Advocates are able to accomplish this next school year. Their first project will be to help with our Back to School District-Wide Convocation! 

Stay tuned for a post about our experience with the iSchool Certified Teacher program! Creating even more Future Ready Advocates!

What? It is May (I mean JUNE!!) ?!?

I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but it is MAY  JUNE!!! I saw this image on Facebook recently, and this is just how I feel right now! Or at least that was how I felt a few weeks ago when I started this blog! Sometimes blog posts take a little longer than expected. 

During the last few months, the focus has been on creating a personalized learning environment for ALL. This means we are looking at ways to personalize learning for our students, as well as for our adult learners! For our students, we are developing blended learning classes at one of our middle school campuses and at our high school. Blended learning is a learning environment where students learn with both face to face instruction and an online component. 

After touring a couple of districts during the fall, we have started our own journey into blended learning. Teachers and administrators first visited campuses in Lewisville ISD and saw how teachers created blended learning environments in a variety of content areas and at different levels. Sometimes, just seeing the physical space helps us to shift the way we see our learning spaces. On each of the campuses, there were many different types of collaborative spaces for the students to use while on campus. At the high school level, students could choose not to work on campus on their online days, but space was certainly available if the students were on campus.

We were able to see first hand the power of a blended learning environment. In a high school algebra class, students were receiving one on one help, even though it was not a face to face day. 

At the middle school level, students would check-in at various collaborative spaces using a device and a Google form and begin work.

Lewisville ISD was so gracious as to invite us to attend a blended learning training in the spring. We took eight teachers to the training, some who will be teaching a blended learning course in the fall, and some who are interested in learning more and offering a blended learning environment for their students.

We will be reading the book, Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools by Michael B. Horn & Heather Staker.

Our journey has just begun, but we are excited about the possiblities and how we can better meet the learning needs of our students! 

Rolling Out Our Professional Learning Badges

Well, we did it! We pushed out our new WISD Professional Learning Badges program. It wasn't quite ready, but we pushed it out anyway. Recently, at EdShift 2016, a presenter talked about how companies push out products that might not quite be perfect and allowed their consumers to help them make it better. We felt like our badge program could work like that and it did! Teachers immediately let us know which links weren't working, what badges they wanted added, and suggestions for making the site easier to navigate. You can read about the beginning of our professional learning badges program HERE.

Our site first looked like this:

We thought it looked good, until we saw other sites. Other sites were more polished, more professional looking. Thankfully, I was able to connect with several people at TCEA who helped me improve our site! First, I went to a session by Michelle Phillips of Prosper ISD. She helped me see that a team of ONE can actually create and manage a professional learning badge site. Her site, EdTech in Action covers her process very clearly and has great suggestions for being successful. In addition, I talked with Dr. Roland Rios of Ft. Sam Houston ISD, who gave me access to his entire badging site. What a help that was, as I worked to make our site better! Here is what our site looked like AFTER TCEA:

Thanks to conversations and help from Brandi Rosales, I was able to clean it up and make it look better! And thanks to Google, I was even able to manipulate the HTML code to delete the borders on the table. I just "Googled" it! It has also been great to bounce ideas off of others, such as Sara Romine, a member of my Twitter PLN, who has created a digital badge system for her campus. I am always so appreciative of all who are willing to help! 

I probably should have taken the advice about rolling the program out to just a campus or two, but we decided to roll it out to the whole district. It was first shared  on our monthly Future Ready Focus. Luckily, not everyone reads it, so badge request submissions were slow at first. After I got back from TCEA and sent the information out again, the badge requests started coming in quickly! After a couple of days, almost 70 badges had been requested! In addition, several new badges had been suggested, and the site had been tweaked  a bit more! 

With badge requests coming in, a badge holder had to be created, as well as a plan of how to print & distribute badges. After a vote in the office, this was our chosen badge holder:

Badges were then printed on 1.5 x 1.5 in stickers (Avery 22805), which could them be placed on the laminated poster. We printed and laminated 100 posters and then printed sheets of all of the stickers. Our whole department jumped in to help, which was greatly appreciated! I then went through the different spread sheets and organized badge holders & badge stickers for all who had requested them. 

Today we started distributing badges to the different campuses. It was a lot of fun to see everyone excited about receiving their badges! Here are just a few pictures from the day!

More badge requests are coming in, more badges need to be delivered, and more badges need to be created and added. There are certainly improvements that can be made, but we are excited about where we are headed and look forward to growing our badge program, maybe moving to a digital badge program in the future.

* Something I would recommend, that was recommended to me (that I DIDN'T do) is to create the forms so that they populate just ONE spreadsheet. We will make this change soon, as keeping up with 6 different spreadsheets is a little much. AutoCrat will also make some of this easier, so I hope to become more proficient in that soon.

For more help with creating badging systems, check out Kasey Bell's post on Badges in Professional Learning on her Shake Up Learning website.

TCEA 16 Takeaways

I just returned home from a week FULL of learning, connecting, sharing & growing at TCEA in Austin. The connections I made, both new and old, made the week a great experience! 

My focus for the week was on learning more about creating personalized professional learning opportunities for our teachers and supporting a 1:1 initiative. Google tools and tips are always on my radar, so I planned to work that in also! Thankfully, my TLBFF, Tina Berumen, created a collaborative Google Doc for session notes, so that we could all share & learn! 

The Google Academy was a great day of learning all things Google! From the Keynote Panel to all of the breakout sessions, I learned so much. The session on Google sites by Christy Fennewald gave me helpful information on how to make my WISD Professional Badges site better. I was cautioned to not have too many tabs, and to work on eliminating drop-downs. 

By Tuesday, we had about 35 people from WISD at TCEA to learn! One of our assistant principals, Leslie Ackmann, had create a Google+ Community for all of us to share our notes and presentation information. We also established a district hashtag for TCEA, #WISDtcea16, which enabled us to share learning quickly. It was awesome to see the excitement as they went from session to session, tweeted & posted! We even had one campus, our Ninth Grade Center, that would meet each evening to debrief.  The best part- the teachers organized this! 

As I was gathering information on badging for professional learning, I met so many helpful people! It is so funny how things will transpire, but I mentioned to my friend, Michelle Cooper about the badge system. She introduced me to Scott Floyd who had created a system for White Oak ISD, who introduced me to Dr. Roland Rios, from Fort Sam Houston ISD. Scott also told me that I need to meet Kelly Fitzgerald. What is amazing is how each of these people spent time and shared resources with me, someone they had just met, to help me create a successful badging system for our teachers. Coincidentally, Kasey Bell of ShakeUpLearning also updated a blog post on Badging, which was sent to me no less than four times! Guess what I am working on this weekend?!

I was also reminded that some of the best learning happens outside sessions, in hallways, at tables at the back of the exhibit hall, at dinner, anywhere you are able to have conversations with others. I'm so appreciative of the time Brandi Rosales took to help me with features for the badge site! We truly have some AMAZING people in education in North Texas!!

There were no shortage of sessions offered for 1:1 rollouts, initiatives, PD and support! A couple of the best were Chad Jones from Lamar CISD who went step by step on how to rollout devices or programs. It was so thorough, from starting with the end result and working backwards, to developing a detailed planning document to make sure all stakeholders are involved and informed. Their instructional technology website, iCafe, is amazing and helps teachers find the help they need at any time of day! 

Another great session was by Temple ISD's Instructional Technology team, Jessica Mays & Jacki Wright. What I liked best about this session is they shared how they worked through issues they had when implementing 1:1 at their high school. It is always helpful when people share their failures, along with their successes! Our high school will soon have a student tech team, so it was great to hear about their TechCats & how they work with teachers & students, along side the instructional technology specialists!

Other cool things that happened:
I presented with two out of my three #TLBFFs, Nancy Jo Lambert & Tina Berumen! We presented on Knocking Down Your Library Walls during the Librarian Academy. 

I met Eric Sheninger, author of Digital Leadership and Uncommon Learning. I have recently read both of his books, so it was nice to be able to meet him in person. Hopefully we can get him to our district soon! And that is Matt Arend photo-bombing! He is an elementary principal in Plano and doing great things in education! I've followed his journey on Twitter and enjoy reading his blog.

Being able to see the excitement & engagement of our teachers was awesome! We had two teachers present on Knocking Down the Walls in Your Classroom. Amanda Rogers & Jacqueline Rose connect their students as a normal part of their classroom environment. They even had students join in the presentation! 

And I found two of our teachers, Jessi Medlin & Shelly Stout, being interviewed in the TCEA Radio booth! I know they will be taking their new learning back to their classrooms, teams & campus!



It was a great week and there were many more connections that happened that inspired me to keep learning & growing! I finally was able to meet Jess Malloy & Ryan Steele, who have created an amazing learning commons on their campus! My #oneword for 2016 is ACTION, so I will be immediately putting into action my new learning about badging systems for professional learning. 


** To grow your #PLN on Twitter, be sure to click on names. They are all linked to the individual Twitter accounts**

EdShift 2016

This past week, I was invited to attend EdShift 2016 by one of our middle school principals, Jeanette McNeely and the librarian on the campus, Marcia Riebe. Honestly, before their invitation, this event wasn't even on my radar. And why not, I wondered?! The keynotes looked amazing & you had the opportunity to talk about education transformation! Two days of workshops, keynotes & dialogue about education.


The opening keynote was being given by SIR KEN ROBINSON, who gave a TED Talk in 2006 called Do Schools Kill Creativity? that is the most watched TED Talk. My principal at the time, Racheal Rife, showed this to us and I can remember being inspired to do better after watching it. If you are not one of the more than 32 million people who have watched this talk, here it is:



During the keynote, Robinson talked a lot about changing the culture of our education system. That we should support a healthy ecosystem of learning, and not be focused on testing. Robinson shared how the testing industry made more money than either the NFL or the movie industry in 2013 and continues to be a huge money maker. He said that if we create a system of conformity and tedious testing, don't be surprised of the results you get (boredom & conformity.) For some, his message is one they have heard many times, but I believe there are still so many who are not tuned in to the need to shift education and hope this message also reaches them.

EdShift 2016 was promoted as an "Education Gabfest" for people who want to change the conversation about education. With experts in the field there to provide support as your team met, decided on a plan and then created a roadmap of how you would shift what you were doing to transform education in your classroom, on your campus, or within your school district. In addition, workshops were offered on topics such as learning spaces, redesigning PD, school culture and more. The information shared during these workshops helped to shift our thinking and provide resources that we could come back to. After the workshops we were able to work on our plan & roadmap, with help from these experts. It was great to be able to ask questions and brainstorm not only with our team, but others who have a different perspective. This process went on throughout the two days. 

The closing keynote was by Jaime Casap, the Chief Education Evangelist at Google and his wrap up was a perfect way to end these two days. He reminded us that there is a need for a culture shift. Jaime talked about how "collaboration" is how problems are solved, but that schools are set up as a solo event. Google is constantly updating apps, searches, tools etc, they are in a constant state of improvement. Are schools? He talked about how education models are created to support the economy and questioned whether we have the right education model for the economy today? And he encouraged us to create a culture of iteration & innovation, where we are always trying, experimenting, doing and redoing! Very inspiring way to end EdShift 2016!

Highlights of the two days:
Having Sir Ken Robinson sign my copy of his new book, Creative Schools. A takeaway from the keynote was that although it may seem overwhelming to change "the system" when we walk into our classroom or onto our campus, WE are the system. WE determine the impact we want to have on our students. We should focus on the culture of our school and not the testing output. 


Watching the very talented sketchnote artist create this visual of the keynote by Sir Ken Robinson. This is one of those jobs that you wouldn't have even thought would exist, but there was someone who created sketchnotes for not only the two keynotes, but also, the student panel discussion.



Learning more about rethinking professional development. Several different presenters talked about the difference between teacher training & teacher coaching. Just as we should personalize learning for our students, we should also personalize learning for our teachers. In the Engage 2 Learn session, I learned that there is a 95% implementation rate when teachers receive coaching instead of just training. Another great takeaway was that we could reach a tipping point by focusing on 16-20% of the teachers. 
During the session led by Michelle King from Learning Forward suggested that schools should clarify with teachers what are resources (Twitter, GAFE, Canvas LMS) and what are initiatives (Fundamental 5, Continuous Improvement.) Another takeaway was that to transform professional development, there should be less "episodic adult pull-out" and more collaborative learning. These two sessions made me even more anxious to get the new professional learning badging system going.

And three fabulous quotes.
Respectfully question everything. (From the Student Panel)

Education disrupts poverty. (Jaime Casap)

Nothing is more important than having a great teacher in the classroom. (Jaime Casap)

These two days were full of conversations, planning, learning and more conversations about how we could truly transform what we are doing in our district. It also reaffirmed the great things we are already working on through our Profile of a Graduate (Learner) and our Strategic Planning process. It is an exciting time to be in education!

My #oneword for 2016

A New Year always brings thoughts of change and improvement- resolutions of eating less, exercising more, spending less, doing more. As I visited social media during the last couple of days, I have seen people choosing one word to guide them throughout the year, instead of a list of resolutions that will be forgotten by Valentine's Day.  The idea, derived from the book, One Word That Will Change Your Life by Jon Gordon, Dan Britton and Jimmy Page, is that if you focus on just one word for an entire year, your life will be simplify your life and add clarity & focus. 

This resonated with me because I have been thinking about what I want to accomplish in 2016, what I want to focus on to make a positive impact. If you search #oneword on Twitter, you will find many posts and tweets about other's one word. I enjoyed reading my friend, Sherry Gick's One Word  post as well as others over the last few days.  The word that came to my mind for me this year is ACTION.

I find that I spend a lot of time reading, researching, thinking, and talking and not enough time actually doing. So in 2016, I want to put into action some of these ideas. For education to improve, we need thinkers but we also need doers. To make the world a better place, we need ideas, but we also need people to put those ideas into action. ACTION, that's my word for 2016!

What's your one word for the new year?

Professional Learning Options

As the Future Ready Learning Coordinator for our district, I work with teachers across the district who would like to learn new approaches to using technology in the classroom, connect globally, or create "future ready" learning opportunities for their students. For some that has been rethinking classroom design, for others it has involved Skype or Google Hangout, a new app or web tool for students to use to present and for others it has been trying blended or flipped learning. My goal is to help teachers locate resources and offer support as they try new ways of teaching & learning, whatever that might be.

So why does it feel like I'm spitting on a forest fire sometimes??  How do I support learners efficiently & effectively, as well as empower them to take some ownership in their professional learning? One of the ideas that I am trying is offering a badging system, that will begin with physical badges to be placed outside the classroom. I first saw information about digital badging through Laura Fleming's Worlds of Learning website. I have looked at other districts (such as Denton ISD and Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD) and how they are using badging to recognize professional learning, and think this is something that might work for our district. As with most things, I am looking at what others are doing and then shaping it into something that will work for us. With a physical badge outside a classroom, teachers on the campus and across the district will know of a person who could be a resource for that skill or tool. 

To start the badging system, areas of focus had to be selected. Just this year we have become a GAFE district, as well as added Canvas as our learning management system (LMS) and so those two areas seemed like a great place to begin. In addition, being a connected educator is something our district encourages and supports, so a badge for this was also needed. Canva is the tool I chose to create the physical badges that we would print for classroom doors. It is so easy to use and I could quickly duplicate a badge to make the next one. Here are just a few that we will start with for this spring. 

For this to be ready to go for the spring semester, we also have to have a way for teachers to earn their badges. I liked how Denton ISD used Google Forms for teachers to request training and/or badges. Things must be easy for teachers to access and easy to manage, so Google Forms seem like a great way to manage everything.

As this continues to develop, I will post about it. Hopefully others will offer suggestions, and this will help hold me accountable for completing this goal. As we all know, other things quietly slip in and before we know it, we are off track! If you have ideas or suggestions, please share!