How do you create a district-wide vision for Digital Learning?

Welcome to "Ask the Tech Coach," a podcast for Instructional Coaches and Technology Integration Specialists. In this episode of “Ask the Tech Coach,” Jeff and Nick discuss how a school district can set a vision for digital learning in the classrooms and how you can start that conversation with your administrative team and instructional coaching department. If you would like to be a part of future podcasts and share your thoughts, please contact the podcast.  We would love to have you join the show. Question of the Week Our favorite part of recording a live podcast each week is participating in the great conversations that happen on our live chat, on social media, and in our comments section. This week’s question is: Question Topic: How can we get the entire school district on the same page when it comes to defining what digital learning looks like in the classroom? Weekly Topic

• Developing a Shared Vision and Goals
  • How do you create a shared vision?
    • Asking … “what’s the purpose?”
    • Where is the target?
    • What is the objective?
    • What do we want our staff to get out of the training … and why?
    • How can we provide the training and experiences to get staff able to meet the goals
    
    
  • Who is included in this conversation?
    • Superintendent
    • Cabinet
    • District / Building Leaders
    • Teachers
    • Students
    • Parents / Community Members
    
    
  • Ways to ask the important questions
    • Google Form
    • Conversations
    • Quick Survey’s
      • What has or is working well?
      • Have your goals/objectives been meet?
      
      
    
    
  • Using the Summertime to ask questions of district leaders
    • Map out and Diagram a full year program
    • How do you build a catalogue to support the goals and objectives of the district and building leaders
    
    
  
  
• Prioritizing Professional Learning in and out of your district
  • Creating a Professional Development Yearly Overview
    • Send out a document to the staff so they are on the same page
      • Here are the goals that we are looking to progress
      
      
    • Create a catalogue of professional learning opportunities
      • Internal
        • Meeting Speakers
        • Consultants
        
        
      • External
        • Conferences
        • EdCamps
        • Thrive
        • Sage
        • Health Organizations / Hospitals often run sessions
        
        
      
      
    • Using a Newsletter to support professional Learning
      • Work with your building administrators to put professional development information in THEIR newsletters
      
      
    
    
  
  
• Creating a digital learning evaluation method that is flexible yet effective
  • Have a variety of evaluation methods … not just the mid-year and end of year evaluations
    • Keep evaluation more informal and collegial so that it’s not a “gotcha”
    
    
  • Using a Staff Survey (Self-Assessment) to allow teachers to share what they know and what they would like to learn during the year
  • Use some type of “artifact creation” when it comes to digital learning so that teachers can showcase what they are learning throughout the professional development process
    • At the end of the day, the teacher is going to have to show that they know how to use the tool or that they understand the concept.
    • Allow for feedback and professional conversations around the topic and concept that is backed up by Instructional Coaches
    • Create an online discussion board so that staff members can collaborate and learn from each other
    
    
  
  
• Providing constant support for students, teachers, and community members
  • Creating a Student led “genius bar” or Tech Team
  • Invite the students to run their own professional learning sessions for teachers (Students teaching teachers)
    • How to use specific apps
    • How to create projects that students already love doing and share it with more teachers
    • Students teaching Board of Education members how to use Google Apps (sharing, formatting, etc)
    
    
  
  
• Protecting student privacy and promoting digital safety
  • Digital Citizenship: Create a unified and tiered curriculum that supports the knowledge of but, also includes resources to support parents so that they are understanding what students are learning in school.
  • Create a Dashboard in a Google Site that has a spreadsheet of all of the district used tools so that parents know what programs are holding content about their students.
    • Include the privacy policy
    • Include the paid/free status
    • Include how to remove student information if parents are not interested in having student information available.
    
    
  
  
• Working together with parents so students learn both in and out of the classroom
  • Parent Nights
    • Short form
    • Single subject events
    
    
  • Parent University
    • Build a curriculum of learning that follows a theme
    
    
  
  
• Embracing and Celebrating the Impact Digital Learning has on students, teachers, and community.
  • Share the “wins” of staff and students
  • Success breeds success
    • If people see that it’s working for others, they might believe they can do it too
    
    
  • Post in newsletters, and (maybe) social media examples of what is happening in the classroom and share it with others
  • Get your staff to present their win’s to other staff members
  • Ask “how does this information get back to the students and their successes?”
  
  
• Next Episode
  • Standards
  
  

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