Engage in professional growth and leadership. Teachers continuously improve their professional practice, model lifelong learning, and exhibit leadership in their school and professional community by promoting and demonstrating the effective use of digital tools and resources. a. Participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning b. Exhibit leadership by demonstrating a vision of technology infusion, participating in shared decision making and community building, and developing the leadership and technology skills of others c. Evaluate and reflect on current research and professional practice on a regular basis to make effective use of existing and emerging digital tools and resources in support of student learning d. Contribute to the effectiveness, vitality, and self-renewal of the teaching profession and of their school and community
I would consider the service-learning project I helped create in W200, as mentioned in ISTE Standard #2, one of the most immersive learning experiences I've had this semester because it really made me feel like I was a teacher. Having to come up with not only a basic lesson plan and activities to cover the the standard, but also having to keep in mind our partner teacher's actual students and their capabilites as well has made me grow in my professionalism. Getting to collaborate with a real elementary teacher, Mrs. Johnson, was also very enhancing because we got to hear her input and advice from her experiences teaching the same standard in her class. This evidence satisfies 5a, 5b, 5c, and 5d.
Creating the problem-based learning lesson plan also helped to boost my professional growth. Part of the assignment was to post the lesson plan to OER Commons for other teachers' potential use and feedback. Making this resource available as a potential lesson plan for other teachers through online collaboration is a great example of how my W200 class has taught me about the importance of leadership in the professional world and the benefits of teacher collaboration. This evidence satisfies 5a and 5b.
Another one of the Technology Integrated Practices we created in W200 was our own personal learning network using Storify.com. Storify allows the user to tailor the search engine more specfically to what they want to see. For example, I searched classroom management. Storify then searches the internet and compiles a long list of articles, websites, tweets, TEDTalks, etc all pertaining to classroom management. I can save the ones that are helpful and interesting to my network so that I can go back and access them whenever. The purpose of a personal learning network correlates with this standard because the idea is that we, teachers, are accessing and reading about new information, strategies, and are up to date about what is going on in the education field so that we can make an even bigger difference in our students' lives. This tool satisfies 5a, 5c, and 5d.