Category: Professional Development

Professional Development

Come collaborate with us! #coetail #gafesummit #langchat

Lissa Layman

I’m in Dubai getting geared up to present at the Middle East GAFE Summit! I’ll be presenting Conjugating Google Apps in a World Language Classroom after the keynote this afternoon. I’d love to do some collaborating during the session with Google Docs. If you’re free between 5:30am & 6:30am EST and you have a minute, please read & comment on this article! Don’t forget to leave your info :)If you aren’t available live, no worries! Leave your info and some comments so we can see the power of global collaboration with GAFE! Merci!

Professional Development

Collaborate with us! #gafesummit

Lissa Layman

Jeff and I are heading to Dubai tomorrow to present at the Middle East GAFE Summit! I’ll be presenting Conjugating Google Apps in a World Language Classroom. I’d love to do some collaborating during the session with Google Docs. If you’re free between 5:30am & 6:30am EST, let me know and I can give you details! Looking forward to it 🙂

Update: If you have a minute, please read & this article! Don’t forget to leave your info 🙂 If you are available to do it live tomorrow…even better!

COETAIL, Kuwait, Professional Development, Reflector

I’m still here

Lissa Layman

I’ve been kind of absent on here. Instead I’ve been busy traveling, planning PD and reflecting for course 1 of COETAIL.

We’re still having Reflector issues and it’s not yet been rolled out for our entire staff. I’d love to get everything solved this year so we can make it 100% available next year.

Jeff and I are heading to Dubai next weekend for the Middle East GAFE Summit. I’ll have my presentation up for viewing pleasure next week.

I also have some draft posts that I need to finish. My goal is to finish those before we head to Thailand and NESA for Spring Break.

Kuwait, Professional Development

Teaching: A Love/Hate Relationship

Lissa Layman

Recently I read John Spencer‘s two part series “What I Forgot When I left the Classroom” (part 1, part 2). I’ve been thinking about my place in education ever since.

I grew up in a family full of educators and vowed I would never be a teacher. I majored in Chemistry and minored in French at college. I dabbled in working on a dude ranch, in a pharmaceutical lab and as an English assistant in France. I followed my husband to South Carolina and was substitute teaching while looking for a job in a chemistry lab. When a job to teach high school French fell in my lap, I took it. We needed money and I needed a job.

Three and a half short years later I’m certified to teach Chemistry and French but I’ve left the classroom. I’ve also moved halfway around the world to Kuwait. I’ve grown a ton as a person and would (mostly) do it the same again. I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be in the classroom and have even had the chance to teach some French this year. And I don’t know if I can go back. I’ve thought a lot about it and have created a short list…

Things I miss about the classroom:
1. Students. And the relationships that we were able to foster during 3 years of being “together.”
2. The ah-ha moment when a lesson comes together perfectly!

Things I don’t miss and still have nightmares about:
1. Grading.
2. The hard work of creating relationships with students.
3. Managing a classroom and cultivating respectful individuals.
4. Hours and hours spent lesson planning.
5. Creating tests and giving them.
6. Grading.
7. Proctoring standardized tests.
8. Interacting with angry parents.

The list could go on and I’ll probably add to it in the near future. I’m young and my career is in its toddler stage, but I still wonder about what the rest of my professional life will look like. Will I feel the pull back to the classroom? Will I stay involved with education technology? Will I stay in education?! I look forward to seeing what life has in store for me and looking back to see how I’ve grown.

For some other recent reflections…Sunday & today.

iOS, Kuwait, Professional Development

A Reflection on Tech Integration – SAMR

Lissa Layman

I’ve been struggling a lot lately with this whole technology integration initiative that is sweeping the world. Yesterday Jeff and I went into a 1st grade classroom to help them create word-webs and stories using their iPads. It didn’t go as smoothly as one would hope and by the end we were wondering if the technology made the project better.

This morning we were truly challenged as Technology Coaches – two elementary teachers are starting their final project for COETAIL and need to integrate technology into a unit plan. Unlike many teachers that we come into contact with they know about SAMR and want to attain the Redefinition level.
This is what our job is supposed to be…right? Integrating technology in a way that redefines education? I honestly can’t say we’ve done a ton of that this year. I often wonder how many technology coaches (or whatever you’d like to call us) are truly helping teachers CHANGE education through the use of technology. I’m not naive enough to think that it can happen for every task that a student completes…but how about once a unit? Once a month? I’d take once a year! So many people (me included) are quick to make suggestions for integrating technology (in our case iPads) – make movies, use Explain Everything, write blogs, etc. How often do we stop to think…and ask ourselves “Is technology making my lessons better?” and “Where am I on the continuum?” I’ve sat around tables with teachers who truly believe that they are redefining & transforming education when they are simply at the substitution stage. I am just as guilty of this too! There are thousands of education blogs out there boasting about the latest and greatest way technology is “changing” their classroom. But is it really?

So where do we (me, my school, you, your school, educators around the world) go with this? How do we ensure that technology isn’t just a band-aid? I’ve had this discussion with Jeff countless times. But how do we have this discussion with other teachers without stepping on toes and hurting feelings? We haven’t introduced the SAMR or TPACK models to staff yet because we think they’d be a little overwhelmed (have you read Nicholas Provenzano‘s rant?). We are also in limbo waiting to hear what our iPad initiative will look like next year. Do we introduce these models? If so, when?

Quality technology integration isn’t easy. It’s takes time, patience and lots of brain power. It takes CHANGING the way we teach. Are we ready for that?

–

Get started redefining…
Exploring the SAMR model (ECISD Technology)
Brief Intro to TPCK & SAMR (Dr. Ruben Puentedura)
Technology in Education: A Brief Video Intro (Dr. Ruben Puentedura)
More on SAMR (Dr. Ruben Puentedura)
Elementary example of SAMR
TPACK
TPACK Explained

This is in no way a complete list…please feel free to share more!

1:1, Collaboration, iOS, Kuwait, Professional Development

Getting back in the swing of things!

Lissa Layman

Wow it’s been a long time since I posted anything! 2013 had a great start – we were home in MI for Christmas & the New Year and my sister, Abby, came back to Kuwait with us! She is substitute teaching for the semester and just signed a contract to come back next year to teach Pre-K. We’re pretty excited to have a little bit of home here 🙂

One of our biggest challenges as technology coaches this year has been getting teachers on board and actively incorporating technology in their classrooms. There have been a lot of ups and downs with our 1:1 iPad initiative and I don’t think teachers really know what to think – should they invest their time or is it all going to be for naught? Students currently have to pay a fee to acquire a school iPad and gain access to the wireless network. We’re not exactly sure on the numbers but somewhere around 40% of our student body (~2000 students PreK-12) have iPads. This presents many obvious logistical problems for classroom teachers.

As a tech coaches, we’re trying to decide where to focus this semester  Last semester we offered Professional Development after school on Mondays. Although our turnout was good at first, the numbers slowly diminished. We set up a website, but we’re not really sure if our staff actually uses it. Plus we’re still trying to figure out the dynamics of working in a 3-person team.

For the most part our job this semester has become more individualized. The principals sent out an email for us and we’ve appeared at a couple meetings, but we’re trying the let-them-come-to-us method. We don’t want to offer PD that teachers don’t want or won’t come to. But we DO want to support our staff. We’ve been encouraging teachers to give students choice for assignments and allow them to use the iPads. Teachers (individually and in small groups) have started coming to us more to help them plan units & lessons, create their class websites or blogs and support them in the classroom during lessons.

Whenever I get frustrated or down I just try to remember that this is a growing year. I wasn’t involved in the process until we arrived in August (and I’m not always consulted now) so we all just have to work with what we’ve been given. We have some students with iPads which isn’t the ideal 1:1 ratio however it’s much better than most other schools in Kuwait (who don’t even have wi-fi). I’m looking forward to seeing how everything turns out in the next couple years 🙂

Reflector Update:
We’re still in the testing phase of this project. The 5 elementary teachers that are using the app aren’t having great success. We know that it’s not our network or the app itself (I have success using the app on my 2012 laptop connected to the school wireless) or the wireless adapters (we bought & installed 2 new ones with no success). We now think that it might have something to do with the computers that teachers are using (low RAM, etc). We’ll be continuing to investigate during the next couple months!

Some fun events coming up this Spring:
*Jeff and I will be starting our masters with COETAIL on February 4th
*Abby, Jeff and I will be traveling to Greece at the end of February for a long weekend (National Liberation)
*My brother and his girlfriend are coming to visit us in March for their Spring Break
*The three of us will also be traveling to Thailand and attending NESA in April (Jeff is presenting!)

If you’d like to read more about our lives outside of school, feel free to check out our other blog. 🙂

Collaboration, Google, Kuwait, Professional Development

Presentation x2 from #Peak2012

Lissa Layman

Last weekend I attended and presented at the Professional Educators Around Kuwait conference (PEAK). Calls for presentation proposals went out last month and I had a difficult time deciding what to present about. My husband suggested I choose something I was passionate about…so Google Apps it was (duh!). A colleague helped me refine my ideas and off I went!

I had no idea what to expect from this conference. Honestly, I didn’t expect a whole lot. The rooms did not have projectors or internet (I brought my own). There was no keynote, simply 4 sessions with lunch and a raffle afterwards. When I got the HUGE document with the descriptions of the sessions I didn’t think there was any way that there would be enough people present to attend them all. Turns out there were close to 1500 educators from over 30 schools! After my 2 presentations, I attended a session on ‘Arabish‘ and a second session on strategies for teaching students are are English Language Learners. Both were decent but learning about Arabish was incredibly interesting, especially after taking an intro Arabic course this semester. The buffet lunch was fantastic and I even won a tea set at the raffle 🙂

My first session was ‘Harnessing the Power of Google Apps: For Educators.’ I focused on using Google Apps in order to make educators’ lives easier and save them time (Google Apps basics).

My second session was ‘Harnessing the Power of Google Apps: For Collaboration.’ This session assumed that you attended my first session or had a basic understanding of how to use Google Apps. I focused on effectively using Google Apps in order to facilitate and encourage collaboration among teachers and students.

I think these sessions could be combined into a 3-hour workshop where all participants had devices (preferably laptops or Chromebooks). The biggest false assumption that I made was thinking that teachers would bring devices to an education conference and, specifically, to a session on Google Apps. I learned that this was not the case in Kuwait. Many participants had devices, but mobile devices (including iPads) are not optimized for using Google Apps effectively.

My sessions have been submitted to NESA for consideration to be included in the Spring Conference in Bangkok. Our plan is to go to Thailand for Spring Break either way…so it’s a win-win!  I would love any feedback about these presentations for the future 🙂

Google, Kuwait, Professional Development

I’m a #GAFE Qualified Individual

Lissa Layman

I’ve been using Google for personal email for 10+ years. I worked at a Google Apps for Education School and had a classroom that was 1:1 with Chromebooks. I’m now a Technology Coach in a school going 1:1 with iPads. I still use Google Apps daily for personal and professional reasons. So in September I decided I wanted to do some PD on my own time. Three months, countless hours and 6 multiple choice exams later…I’m officially a GAFE Qualified Individual 🙂 YAY!

Even though I’ve been using Google Apps for(what seems like)ever, I learned a ton of new tricks! I tweeted about most of them using #gafe. Here are just a few…

The modules are available (free) for anyone and are specifically geared towards education. Whether your goal is to become a certified trainer, to use GAFE in the classroom or to simply learn a few of Gmail’s sweet tricks…the edu training is a great place to start. The modules are published Google docs so that they can be updated at anytime (cause we all know Google is constantly updating!).

Now that I’m a Qualified Individual I have 12 months to complete the application to become a Certified Trainer. It’s definitely a lot more work than reading through a few modules and taking a couple tests. Although my school does not use GAFE, there are still quite a few teachers here who are using (or are interested in) Google Apps. Last weekend I presented 2 sessions at a conference in Kuwait and will hopefully be able to present at the GAFE Summit in Dubai and/or NESA in the spring.

Becoming a Qualified Individual is one of the ways I’ve been trying to better myself as an educator in 2012. 🙂

Update: I received an email with some additional (great) questions. I thought I’d share them and my answers here in case anyone else is asking the same questions. 🙂

Q: How many questions are on each of the 90 minute tests?
A: Each test has 60 multiple choice questions. I don’t think any of them took me more than 70 minutes to complete.

Q: How much time do you recommend dedicating to studying for each of the tests?
A: I simply read through the modules given by Google. I experimented with some of the tools and tricks as I read through them. None of the modules took longer than the time suggested by Google, but I’m familiar with all of the products so I may have gone through them faster than people who haven’t had experience with Google Apps.

Q: What study material would you recommend (outside of reading through the info on Google’s Apps for Education site — and having that information open in a second window while taking the test)?
A: The tests are tricky. I firmly believe that Google is testing your search skills more than they are testing your information retention skills. The questions are very specific. During each test I had all the chapters of the relevant module open in another browser and searched to find or double-check my answers. Google gives you everything you need for free. I wouldn’t recommend seeking out or buying any other additional materials.

I’ll add more Q&As if I get them!

Collaboration, Google, Kuwait, Professional Development, Social Media

What have you been doing lately to become a better educator?

Lissa Layman

Last month, I bookmarked an article to read – Technology Doesn’t Teach, Teachers Teach by Bill Goodwyn. As I was finally reading it this morning, this quote really jumped out at me:

…we urge our colleagues in the education community to increase their efforts to provide not only the resources to our teachers, but also the necessary professional development [not always mandatory]. We must recognize that the teacher-student relationship comes first. Only then will we continue to see improved results in the wired classrooms of tomorrow.

This got me thinking about what I’ve been doing recently in the professional development category. I’ve been giving PD to our staff, but what have I been doing so that I am becoming a better educator? I’ve also been challenged recently as to why a Technology Integration Coach would need PD other than the IB training offered. Here are some of the PD opportunities I have been seeking out and some of my thoughts…

I don’t do much educational reading over the summer. I rarely get on Twitter and don’t touch my Google Reader. Some may criticize this, but for me it’s a much needed break (especially this year). As we’ve gotten back into the swing of the school year, I’ve been fortunate to have the time each day to spend time reading through my blogs and keeping track of what’s happening on Twitter. I’ve found new people to follow and blogs to read. Although I cherish how my PLN has grown during the last 2 years, I also find myself overwhelmed by all of the educational material put out there on a daily basis. What is actually quality? Who is just trolling for views? Even after you pare down all the information, there is still an incredible amount that is worth reading and using – who has the TIME to do that and how do you choose which tool or idea is best? But attempting to answer these questions is why Twitter and blogs have been and continue to be great places for me to go for self-guided PD.

We are now working at an IB school with all three programs (PYP, MYP, DP). Training teachers in IB is (understandably) a top priority. We currently attend weekly meetings to work towards being category 1 ‘certified’ (we won’t actually get a level 1 certificate, but we will be able to attend category 2 and 3 workshops). It has been very interesting to learn about the IB and MYP curriculum. A lot of it is just common sense & good teaching but quite a bit more is so incredibly different from what I did in the States. I’m eager to learn more in order to collaborate with teachers to integrate technology into the entire IB curriculum.

Working in a Google Apps for Education District and using Chromebooks in my classroom inspired my interest in Google Edu. After attending the South Carolina Google Apps for Education Summit in June, I knew I wanted to learn more. Although I would love to attend a Google Teacher Academy, it’s probably not going to happen in the near future. Another goal of mine is to become a Google Certified Trainer. The first step towards achieving Trainer level is to become a GAFE ‘Qualified Individual.’ I’m currently working my way through the modules and I’m half-way there! I still have the longest three modules & exams to complete – Calendar, Docs & Sites. I’ve already picked up so many tips, tricks and ways to incorporate Google into the classroom that I’m excited to keep going. As I continue to learn more…I’ll be sharing the love on Twitter!

One of the ways in which I have grown as a teacher is becoming a ‘sharer.’ I don’t want to just consume on Twitter and blogs. I want to help people through collaboration. I’ve slowly been doing a better job at this – first in my department in SC, then in my district, through my Twitter & blog and more recently by presenting PD to other teachers. While still in South Carolina I was fortunate to have the opportunity to present at a SC AATF workshop, at the SCFLTA conference and at the GAFE Summit. This year, I’m adding presenting to a new staff and presenting at international GAFE Summits to the list. My husband and I were accepted to present at both Bangkok and Mumbai. My presentation is titled “Conjugating Google Apps in the World Language Classroom.” This will be a great opportunity to meet and learn from new colleagues in educational technology from around the world.

But why do all this? Would I still have a job if I didn’t spend hours each day forcing myself to go above and beyond what is expected? Probably. Most people have no idea what I’m doing on a daily basis for my own professional development. Would I feel good about myself if I wasted my time? Probably not. I’m eager to learn in order to help our teachers implement technology meaningfully. Actual technology might not be changing on a daily basis, but HOW people are using it does. I won’t claim to know everything but there sure are a lot of resources out there that can help me (slowly) come closer. I also can’t forget that I am no longer in the classroom; I’m not using technology with my students on a daily basis. My best ideas seemed to come to me in the moment…how can I keep them coming? I don’t want to lose my connection to meaningfully implementing technology in the classroom. The only way to stay current and relevant is to push myself always be ‘better’ than yesterday.

1:1, Google, iOS, Kuwait, Professional Development

iPad Tips & Tricks

Lissa Layman

Based on the feedback we received from our staff, we decided to officially start our professional development with ‘iPad Basics’ or as we called it, ‘iPad Tips & Tricks.’ The goal of the PD was to get teachers comfortable with their iPads so that they could become more confident and start experimenting with them in their classrooms. Because we know our teachers are not all at the same place, we created 3 levels of the training. We are offering the sessions on three consecutive Mondays and you can read more about the planning process here.

The three of us split up the presentations…and I was the lucky one selected to do level 3. Although I was not confident to begin with (I don’t have nearly as much experience with iPads as my two colleagues), I’m glad that I had the opportunity to take on the challenge. I learned a lot in the process and even found the Reflector App…which just might be my new favorite discovery. A few notes about the creation of the presentation:

*I took a lot of screen shots on the iPad and edited them with ArtStudio before uploading them to Google Drive using the iPad app.
*I made all the videos using Reflector.
*I used Google Drive & a Presentation to store the pictures and create the presentation.
*I used a Google Form to collect feedback from the staff that attended my session.

Voilà my level 3 iPad Tips & Tricks! Would love any feedback 🙂