PLN/PLC

"If a teacher is not connected, it is by choice not by circumstance."

This quote struck me as being a perceptive examination of todays educators. Seriously, with so much access to resources through online platforms there is little excuse for not being connected professionally. 

Viki Davis contributed a journal article to Edutopia to discuss what a Professional Learning Network/Community is and its value in education.

Torrey Trust defines the PLN (PDF) as "a system of interpersonal connections and resources that support informal learning." The PLN is a cornerstone of modern connectivist theories of learning as advocated by George Siemens and Stephen Downes.

Some of my favorite PLN's are Google+ Communities like: Connected Classrooms, and Instructional Technology Integrators and Coaches. In addition to those, I have found tremendous value in Twitter and twitter chats. My handle is @erod129 (please follow and I will be glad to follow back), and I take part in chats like: #personalizedPD, #edtechchat, #haysedchat. Through these chats, not only do I gain valuable insights through experts and specialist in the field, I make connections that I can rely on for ideas and advise. Here is a directory that lists chats and when they are scheduled.

I think the last way that I try to stay connected is by using an app called feedly. This is a way for me to curate journals and articles that are of interest to me. You can bet that Edutopia is at the top of my list of RSS feeds. Using Feedly I do not miss any post from my favorite online journals. When you find a great online journal, you can search for it in feedly and add it to your list. Feedly will keep track of new posts and add them automatically. There is an option to share your feeds with others, but it is an option when you upgrade from the free version.

I would love to know how you stay connected. Please feel free to share your experience and ideas on how to grow your PLN/C

Hays CISD Digital Learning Team

I would like to give a shout out to my director, Jamie Locklin for his skill in forming and maintaining a cohesive and supportive Digital Learning Team. If you are interested in great ideas and ways to integrate technology into your school/classroom, he is the Jedi Master, which, I guess would make me his Padawan (I'm good with that). I am honored to be given the opportunity to learn and to help my district become more tech integrated.

When I applied for this position I was sure that there would be many more other highly qualified people that would be considered. I was shocked when I was contacted for an interview, and then truly humbled when I was offered the position. Jamie told me that the committee was looking for a veteran teacher that had strong background in pedagogy and content; someone that was familiar with technology but eager to learn more and easily trainable. Also, someone that people could easily relate to others, and someone that was personable. I was very honored that I fit those descriptions.

It was not an easy decision to give up 13 years in the classroom, leave comfort of familiarity, and begin in a new direction. Jamie made it easy. He is one of the most patient, and supportive supervisors I have ever worked with.

One of my favorite aspects to the work environment that I am in is the collaborative aspect that we have. When we meet, we bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table. I am unceasingly impressed with the quality of interactions that we have. We learn from each other, and we are able to create products that help to support the learning of our teachers and students. I can witness the difference that we make to teachers and I know that translates into student success.

So, if you are an administrator, and you are hoping to build a team, please make sure that you consider the personalities of those you seek to hire. You may have the most skilled person in front of you, but if they can not take a joke then you have undermined your teams cohesiveness and therefore their productivity.

I can not over emphasize the importance of a teams interdependence and cohesiveness. This was never more evident to me when we planned PD for all administration in our district. Our Superintendent and all principals were in attendance. As a team we joined together to support the learning of all those in the room. Not one of us were experts in everything presented, but together there were at least one or two that could address any question about the technology that was being used that day. I am proud to be part of the team, not only because it went very well, and we received lots of positive feedback, but because I knew that I was not alone. I knew that I could rely on my team mates and my director to support me if a question or problem arose that I was not able to address.

I am excited to see our team grow and experience more success as we support the needs of teachers and students in Hays CISD. 

Digital Badges

My team is interested in creating and implementing digital badging under the guise of gamification. A team mate sent out a request for information to the Google+ community:  Instructional Technology Integrators & Coaches. I would like to thank him and the people that responded to the post. We have been able to compile a list of resources and considerations based in large part to this thread. Here is a link to the discussion thread, which is still growing. I am excited to delve into this and begin creating our own system of digital badges.

Here is what I have been able to discern what might suit our needs and options that might work for us:

1) We can create our badges in Google Draw. This is a simple and easy process, very user friendly.
2) We want the badging system to be visible and readily accessible so we might create badges that can be displayed outside each teachers classroom.
3) We are going to find out if the badges we create can be managed in our Learning Management System (LMS)
4) We need to decide how these badges are going to be issued, and if we can issue and kind of transferrable PD credit.

We were also referred to a Google+ Badging Community that has a great amount of resources for those seeking more information and resources.

I think we have a great start, and I look forward to how this might provide recognition for teachers that go above and beyond, and hopefully instill a little internal motivation for those who might be on the fence about trying something new.

TED Talks

A friend of mine told me a story about the response to a question asked during an interview. He asked the interviewees, "What is your favorite TED talk? Some knew what he was referring to others said that they really enjoyed Ted, and all of what he spoke about. If you do not know about TED talks and podcasts, don't be embarrassed. I had no idea a couple of years ago, but now that I do, I am hooked and love the thought provoking talks that I listen to from insightful minds!

TED, stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful, talks in about 18 minutes or less. TED began in 1984 and as a conference where Technology, Entertainment, and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics- from science to business to global issues - in more than 100 languages. I have listened to many talks. The one characteristic that I enjoy about TED talks is the level of thought provocation. The talks focus on topics that are engaging and the speakers are authorities in their fields. I highly recommend TED talks if you are interested in listening to some of the most cutting edge perspectives on global issues.

For me, the educational talks are of most interest. Here is a link to the educational talks that are listed on the page.

By the way, in my interview, I mentioned that my favorite TED talk was from Sir Ken Robinson, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"

I hope you enjoy and I hope you learn something that will make you think about something more deeply.

App Smashing "Cam Scanner" with "Show Me"

A teacher wants her students to be able to take a picture of a historical figure and discuss letters that they wrote or literature that they are directly tied to. Her class is composed of mostly English Language Learners (ELL's) so there is great value in her students reading about the historical figure, writing a script to be read, and the actual voice recording of them reading so they can hear what they sound like. This was a GREAT opportunity to put together some apps that would suit the goals of her project perfectly. I decided to show her "Show Me" (Here is the link to the apple app store). The reason I chose this presentation app as opposed to all others is because it is free, and can house multiple drafts at once. This was important because she has about 16 students that will work in partners. So, we needed to be able to begin at least 9 drafts at one time. It was just what we needed, especially since there was a build in voice recorder and ability to take pictures and add them to the document.

As they continued to work I noticed that there were aspects of the picture taking that I would not want in a presentation. I showed them an app called Cam Scanner. This app is amazing for enhancing photos that are taken and making the presentation quality better. For instance, if there is a glare it will remove it. If the picture was taken at a skewed angle and has some extraneous background then it will attempt to correct it and eliminate the undesired background. You can turn a quick snap of a document into presentation grade images. I highly recommend that if you do not have the pdf. of or digital form of a file and only have the physical version and do not have time or the desire to reproduce it then Cam Scanner is your "go to". Needless to say, the kids were pretty impressed.

Twitter Chats

#PersonalizedPD, #edtech, #edtechchat, #haysedchat.... ever wonder, "What's with the hashtags?" There is a good reason other than people trying to be trendy (what is what I always thought).

Not until recently did I understand that power of twitter as a professional. As I slowly began immersing myself in this virtual world of tweets and twitter chats, I finally realized that there is a world of resources and minds that are ripe for the picking. You can find some of the most prominent people in a field on twitter. They are sharing their insights to anyone willing to read 140 characters or less. These "tweets", in and of themselves can be profound, but they can also lead to other great resources and other communities. For example, I began on twitter, which let me to Google+ communities, which also led me to Podcast channels, which encouraged me to register on feedly and begin my own blog which you are reading right now!

I was very fortunate to come across this calendar and chat list managed by:

@cybraryman1

@conniehamilton

@thomascmurray

@cevans5095

@jrochelle

https://sites.google.com/site/twittereducationchats/education-chat-calendar

This page give the time and date of the educational chats registered, as well as a brief description and possible link to a home page for more information. 

Here is a youtube video clip (less than 2 minutes) of how twitter can work for you- the educator.

This clip discussed the value of a PLN formed on Twitter.

Here are a few tips if you decide to participate in a twitter chat.

1) to find a chat, use the search option and enter the #......

2) usually there will be a moderator and they will post questions in the format of Q1 for question one.

3) if you want to respond use the notation: A1 for an answer to question 1, and don't forget to include the hashtag of the chat so your comment will be included in the discussion.

4) have fun, follow and be followed!

I hope that you seriously consider joining twitter and engaging in a twitter chat some time. Being a connected educator is a priceless commodity these day that will inevitably benefit your students in a tremendous way! 

Google Drive

If you are using Google Apps for Education (GAFE) in your school you have surely recognized the power of Google Drive. If you have not had a chance to work with it let me give you a little information as to why you should save your files in your very own Google Drive.

Here is a brief youtube clip that will help you better see how you can use Google Drive and what it can do for you. Also, here is a link to a document that was produced by Google to help you with the basic options and features.

When I was introduced to GAFE, it was the first thing that was taught. Rightly so, Google Drive is one of the main selling points for any teacher or school that is considering the implementation of GAFE. Google Drive in a school district allows for unlimited storage capacity. In my district, we have personal drives housed on a server that we could save files. We have limited access to these files through software called stoneware. There were limitations associated with this access. With Google Drive, you can access your files from any computer or any devise with ease.

One of the most powerful tools that is provided to you with Google Drive is the sharing option. If you want to share a document or file with someone the process is instantaneous. There is no need to use email as a means to share files. There are also options with the way that you want to collaborate with the person that you are sharing with. For instance, if you only want the person to be able to view your document, change the share settings. Google Drives inside a district account can also be protected by establishing limitations for who has access to the files in yours or your students drive.

Google Drive is a very powerful tool to help improve work flow, collaboration, and organization. I highly recommend it to any educator!

This is a snapshot of the Google Dive Administrative Options Tool Bar. It enables you to generate a link to a file/folder, view share options, preview the document, remove file, and more actions. You can customize how the file/folders are displayed, organized, and view the actions history, as well as settings of your drive.

  Your Google Drive will have a navigation panel where you can select which part of your drive you want to display. There is a section where you can view all document that have been shared with you, all your photos that are uploaded to your drive, the recent documents that have been uploaded, favorited docs, and trash. Documents are not completely eliminated until you remove them completely from your drive via your trash folder.

Share options are an important consideration because there are times that you may want someone to be able to collaborate and edit the document that you share, and sometimes you do not want them to alter the file. For example, you can share a document with your class and not allow them to edit it. They can make their own copy instead. This link can be used to imbed the URL of the document located on the drive.

There are additional options that you can use to move a file, rename, view details, manage the various versions of a file or document, make a copy, or download to your hard drive.

Todaysmeet

Students work at different paces. Sometimes it is good practice to allow them the ability to answer in their own time. You might want to try Todaysmeet

If there are 23 students and 1 teacher in the classroom there is a potential to have 24 teachers! If you are interested in empowering your students to ask and potentially answer a classmates question you might want to try todaysmeet.

Want to quickly pose a question and check for understanding for all of your students at relatively the same time, you might want to try Todaysmeet.

A student has a question but you can not get to them right away. You want a way for them to post a question, not forget it, and get back to them when you have a chance. Todaysmeet is a great tool for you.

Want to have a remote study session/question and answer session for 30 minutes from the comfort of your living room- without having all your students there with you. You might want to try Todaysmeet.

Todaysmeet can do all these things. The beauty is the simplicity and ease of use of this program. Not only that, the teacher is in control. You can create a "room" that lasts for minutes, days, or up to a year. You decide the lifespan of the meeting room and you can moderate the conversation. Simply invite your students to participate via link or QR code that is generated from the page itself. Here is a peek at some of the setting options:

Once your conversation has ended you can generate a transcript and save it for suture reference.

There is one MAJOR consideration that you need to address if you are going to use this site. Students have the ability to join without a user name, or any name for that matter.

I enjoy using this tool, and I think there is a tremendous value in it for any class! 

iOS Apps for Demonstration

If you are looking for great apps to use in your class right away for demonstration purposes, I highly recommend trying one of these:



Educreations: This app in its free version is great for basic demonstration of processes and ideas. There is a recoding option where you can save a presentation and replay it at any time. The free version will not allow you to share the file. This is an option in the upgrade however. There are options to choose typewritten text, upload pictures, take pictures, customize the the background. You are limited in color options to the basic primary colors (black, blue, red, yellow, and green).












Showme: is another free app that allows you to create presentations using similar features as Educreations. There are a few differences. Showme creates a community and adds your presentation to it. I enjoy the organization aspect of Showme. You have the option to create courses and follow other members.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/showme-interactive-whiteboard/id445066279?mt=8

Explain Everything: has yet even more user options for your demonstrations. I enjoyed being able to zoom in and out as you are viewing your pdf or in app doc. The laser dot option is a great feature to use while a teacher or student is showing their process. Explain Everything give you insert options to add a photo, video or file, existing sound file, math equation, or web page/browser page. What is cools is that you can resize and change the orientation of any of these insertions. The upload option allows for quick access to various locations such as: photos, iMessage, dropbox, Youtube, Google Drive, OneDrive, Evernote, Vimeo, and Mail. You can export as PDF, video, Image, and Project. 

EdcampATX

I would like to recommend to all who are interested in personalized PD to attend an Edcamp! This past Saturday was my first experience, and I highly recommend it to any professional interested in new ideas, collaborating with other professionals, and having fun learning about what YOU want to learn about!

I would like to give a big shout out to Tracy Clark (@TracyClark08), Brian Hill(@BrianPaulHill), and Adam Holman (@AGHolman) for hosting this. The phrase, "Be the change you want to see" kept coming to mind. If we as educators want to change the system for the better, then we need to take responsibility for bettering ourselves. How better than to reach out and have those important conversation addressing how we can implement best practice and innovate together. I look forward to attending more in the future, and I was very happy when my boss suggested the likelihood of us hosting one of our very own in the near future!

When you attend an edcamp, have your thought and questions ready. Tracy and I spoke about the nature of edcamps and she and I agreed that the best way to put it is, "what you put in is what you will get out." We wrote down some of the topics that we were most interested in discussing and those were organized into the sessions that would be available to attend. Here is what our session board looked like:

Educators were free to come and go to any of these sessions.

I attended Digital Badges. My team and I want to see if we can create a system where we can recognize teachers efforts to implement technology into their instruction. We want this to be visible and something that teachers are proud of. The ideas that we heard from other districts were to use credly- a badge builder page. Some other great ideas were to use Google Drawings. I was also happy to hear the suggestion that some of the badging systems also incorporated incentives like a jeans pass, or get your duty covered after a certain number of badges were accumulated. A few considerations were also addressed: how long do the badges last (one year, indefinitely...), who manages the system, how is evidence submitted?

The second session I attended was Digital Portfolios. Since I had just built a system for 1200 middle school students, I thought I could potentially contribute. My system basically entails creating folders for every student in google drive. I shared the three grade level folders containing all the students with administrators and coaches. Then they shared the appropriate folder with the corresponding grade level teacher, who then shared the folders to the students in their advisory class. Once students have access to their folder then can save evidence of learning in various forms into the appropriate content folder. They will have access to this folder throughout their time in public education. 

The third session I attended was about Graphic Tools. I learned about Spruce. This web based program allows you to send tweets with your customized background and superimposed text. I tried it out and I like it!

The final session I attended was "Code Stuff". This session gave me ideas from teachers who teach coding on some free software that I can look into for when I try to support and encourage "Hour of Code" throughout my district. Thimble, Scratch, and Tuxpaint were recommendations I received. I will be busy looking into them this week for sure.

I highly recommend Edcamps to administrators, teachers, and anyone interested in learning!

Digital Learning Coach vs. Traditional Instructional Coach

Today I attended Part 1 of professional development called "Curriculum Boot Camp". This PD is intended to give us, instructional support personnel, tools and understanding to better serve as instructional leaders. I love this and was very happy that our presenter made discussions and dialogue interesting and engaging. He challenged us to take a deeper look into what we perceive as analyzation of standards. Here is a copy of my sketch notes that I wrote using notability.

I have a question that I would love some insight on from others in a similar position as mine. How does your school/district define your role? What is your position description? I would really like to know specifically, how you are involved in the academic side of curriculum. The "Boot Camp" that I am attending has brought this to the forefront of my thoughts lately.

Thank you in advance for your response.

Projecting your iPad

My district has been piloting software called Mirroring360. This software allows the iPad to connect to a teachers PC through the WiFi network. If the PC is wired to a projector then essentially you can move about your class using apps that the entire class will be able to see and interact with from any part of the classroom. This is a very exciting prospect since every teacher now has at least one iPad in the classroom. I was fortunate to be among the first to be able to use this software. I enjoyed downloading a pdf and using apps like notability, showme, or educreations to demonstrate processes and verbalize their understanding. Not only that, but I could record the audio and visual for other classes to see, and then even post the file to my web page so that parents and students could reference the information later.

Some classes/schools will use apple TV, which some of our schools do as well. I have been told that the Mirroring360 software license is a less expensive option compared to outfitting every teachers classroom with an Apple TV. Both work about the same, with about the same functionality. Apple TV will allow the user streaming options which our tech department has completely disabled.

In preparation for this massive roll out of the mirroring software, a colleague of mine and I created this instructional video for teachers to use so they can connect iPad to PC.

Here is a video clip of an art teacher using her iPad to demonstrate how to mold clay to her entire class.

Mirroring360 has greatly expanded possibilities for deeper student engagement and interaction. I am very excited to see what kinds of ideas teachers will create for more dynamic tech integration this year once every class is outfitted with this software.

iBooks Author

First, I would like to give mad props to the Apple Store for having the Hays CISD Digital Learning Team over this morning for a tutorial on iBooks Author. If you would like to set something up for your team or school, contact your districts Apple representative. If you do not have a representative, then I would suggest just contacting your local store and see what they would be willing to do for you. Apple is giving back the (educational) community, and we are very grateful! We worked with Kerry, and he was able to lay the mental foundation for some of the possible uses of iBooks Author.

The team is compiling images and screenshots to write an iBook: "MacBooks for Your Classroom
" for teachers to access as a reference for using Mac carts that will be rolled out soon! So far we have quite a few topics including: "Basics of Macbook Air", "Macbook Air Tips and Tricks", "Tutorials and More". I am very excited to create this for our district. Not only will we have a great resource for our teachers, but I will have more experience with iBooks Authors!

It was recommended that you download the iBooks Author Starter Kit as a guide to get you started. I did and will be reviewing it this evening. Here is the link to our Apple Store's page to get more information about the app. iBooks Author Apple Page



A personal project I am working on is to create an iBook for teachers and students to introduce them to the major Google Apps for Education. So far I have created the cover and a short video to give a brief description of each of the apps. Here is the cover for your perusal. Let me know what you think, and if you have suggestions to make it better!

Google Forms

If you are in education then you have to check out Google Forms!

When you hear the words formative assessment, then Google Forms should be one of the things you think about. It may take a little time in prep, but what you spend in preparation you will save on the back end on getting a good idea about who you need focus your intervention on.

What I love about Forms is that you can create an assessment of various questions types, and varying rigor. This can be a test which tests an entire unit, or a quick exit ticket that you use to see who was able to understand your lesson that day.

I created an intro to Forms using Smore. I love some and will definitely write an entry here about the awesome power of Smore. I have attached the link here: Intro to Google Forms Smore

If you have used Forms before I would love to read your success stories. Please feel free to comment!

p.s. there is an extension called flubaroo that will help you grade all that assessments that your students submit through Google Forms. I will give you the link to my Introduction to Flubaroo here, and make sure that I create a blog entry about it later too! I hope you enjoy!! Let me know how it goes!

Voicethread

A colleague of mine showed me the power of voicethread. Not only does it have amazing power and potential for teachers and students learning a language, but also for students that would appreciate a different media for story telling. Voicethread is a great app that both teachers and students can use to tell a story or to collaborate asynchronously on a project or documents.

As soon as I saw what could be done with this app, I was very excited to create something for my son. He is almost 5, and loves for me to read to him. One of his favorite books it "Goodnight, Construction Site". I want to be able for him to listen to me read this to him long after I am gone. With the help of voicethread, this is definitely a possibility. The dynamics of voicethread allow you to import pictires and annotate them with a voice recording. So, I was able to take photos of the pages of the book and then record myself reading the book.

Imagine the power of this as a differentiated station for ELL students who struggle reading. You could have voicethread ready with a book or chapter of a book so that all your students can interact with the literature you are using.

Here are some great examples of how teachers are using voicethread.

Wooclap

I had a Google hangouts conference call with a representative from the developers of a web based program called Wooclap. The intent of this program is to increase the level of engagement of your audience. This has amazing potential and great implications for teachers and presenters alike. Needless to say, I was intrigued at the prospect that I could engage my audience in a more deeply and personalized manor than before.

Wooclap is a platform that uses online and text capabilities of your audience members coupled with multiple choice, polling, picture recognition, pick a number, and short answer format response type questions. At any point in a presentation you can insert a question which has been created beforehand using specified graphics and text of your choosing. The applications in all grade levels and content areas are endless. I am very excited to use this some time in a presentation soon!

Twitter Chats

#haysedchat

We had our second Twitter Chat yesterday. The topic was Classroom Management. If you have never been in a twitter chat, I have to tell you that it is kind of fun! The pace can be fast, and there is a lot of information that is presented in a relatively short period of time depending on the format of the chat.

The idea behind a twitter chat is that a group of people that have similar interests, for instance, Ed Tech, or just education in general, can be addressed and discussed. What is exciting is that you can synchronously network with other professionals from all over the world and simultaneously garner resources, ideas, and make contacts that you can keep for the future networking. Typically, some of the people that participate in these chats have been doing so for a long time, and have great insight. What I like to do is to check out who they follow and follow those people. This is a great way to grow your Professional Learning Network (PLN). If you participate in these chats enough people will request to follow you.

It is important to note the format of the chat structure:

Questions posed by the moderator will be given like this:

Note that Q5 means question 5, and the hashtag is #haysedchat. You have to include the hashtag for your comment to be included in the overall chat discussion.

To respond to a question, a format typically used is:

I highly recommend the use of tweet deck. What is beneficial about this program is that you can monitor several different aspects of your account that you can not otherwise. Let me show you what I mean. 

Get Tested

Not that kind of test...

Google Certification is a great way to learn, and to increase your "street cred." I will caution you now that I have taken and passed Part 1, it is not for the faint of heart. I have not been stressed like that in a long time and I remember now, why I avoided taking the GRE when I was trying to find a Grad. program that did not require it. Needless to say, historically, I have not been a good test taker. This test has a limit of 3 hours and tests your ability and knowledge of using Google Apps for Education: Google Docs, Calendar, Mail, Youtube, Sheets, Forms, Classroom, Slides, Search, and Sites.

Google gives you a pretty good idea about what kind of information will be tested. I studied all the information that they provided, but really, unless you have actually interacted with the apps themselves they preparation materials they provide is not going to help you. Here is the training page for the Google Certification Exam. When you are preparing for the exam, make sure that you have a block of time, no less than 3 hours, and that you are in a place free from distractions. You will take a test that has 20 multiple choice questions, and 11 tasks with 2-5 parts to each task. Your knowledge of the apps and the application of each will be evaluated.

The questions and tasks themselves were not difficult. Actually, they were quite basic i.e. part 1 exam is actually called "the basics". What was challenging about the whole thing was that you had to be efficient in the demonstration of your knowledge and understanding.

I finished my test with about 10 minutes left of the 3 hours that are given. If you do not submit your test within three hours then you automatically fail. So, my advise to you is use your time wisely.

First days of Digital Coaching

Hello and welcome to what I hope will become a vehicle that can be used as a resource for those who are also coaches, for teachers to generate ideas and thoughtful discussion, and for any curious administrators on how you might be able to support your Digital Learning Coaches and teachers.

As I began this digital journey my supervisor, Jamie Locklin, responded to a question about what a typical day would look like. He replied, "Every day will different, one day will not look like the other." I could not imagine what that would actually be like, and I am happy to say now that he was not exaggerating. There was really no preparation that I could have made that would have allowed me to be ready for the demands of this new position.

In my mind, I would dream of presentations and ideas that could be implemented into schools that would improve student achievement and teacher productivity. I began to read anything that I could get my hands on and I asked lots of questions. I had to remind myself though that I needed to be patient. I had to make sure that I met the needs of my teachers and my district. These needs took precedence over all my ideas and desires. I was consoled by the inspired vision that my director has. I knew that he had a plan, and that our effectiveness would be tied to the efficient allocation of our time and attention, especially since we are a team of 5 serving a district with 22 schools and over 1300 teachers with almost 20,000 students.

For those just getting started, here is what I would recommend:

1) Get into twitter and build your Professional Learning Network (PLN)

2) Get Feedly or a curator of RSS feeds and begin amassing resources that have the potential to enlighten your teachers or team. Read all you can to learn the new trends and tools that are being developed.

3) Start a blog so you can simultaneously reflect on your growth and practice and also build a portfolio, a central place that you might be able to keep all your inspirations and ideas.

4) Build contacts within your campuses. Talk to teachers and other instructional coaches so you can open the doors to collaborate.

5) Learn basic video editing; making instructional video will help you to help your teachers.