Giving back to my PLN!

Picture at awards

2015 Minnesota Technology Leader Award. December 14, 2015

On Monday, December 14, I  received the 2015  Minnesota Technology Leader award at the TIES technology conference in Minneapolis.  Its  a very humbling and exciting experience to be recognized for my accomplishments with Byron Public Schools.   So many congratulations from district members. So many congratulations from my peers and PLN via social media!  Words can not express the gratitude I feel to all who have influenced me and supported me through my journey.  (And I have so much more to do!)

One of my recent accomplishments is to be working with Winona State University (WSU)  in the development of the Innovative Instructional Leadership Certificate Program.  This is a graduate level certificate and can be an “emphasis” area in WSU’s M.S. Education Leadership Program.

Visit COURSE OVERVIEW - http://bit.ly/IILCert

Innovative Instructional Leadership Certification – COURSE OVERVIEW – http://bit.ly/IILCert

Throughout this process,  I always had the intent of putting an creative commons license on my work.  Many districts across our state do not have the resources to develop these types of courses or the resources to pay for this type of training.   Other entities, like higher ed teacher prep programs, regional trainers, ect are also free to use however little or much they need from my course.  My goal, develop the courses, have a cohort go through them, and then publish the courses for others to use, adapt, and share alike!

What better time, than the day I received my award, to give the 1st course away.

I just finished course 1 of 5  and I am extremely happy with the outcome!  You can check out my learner’s ePortfolios to see some of the paths they chose to take.

If you want to take a look at the course (or download), Blended Learning Environments, please visit by going to bit.ly/BLE-CC.  Use the guest login to access.   Any questions? Feel free to reach me at @jenhegna!

 

Model, Model, Model!

Second take away from #TIES15 this year.  Model, Model, Model.  Too often, there are expectations for educators to accomplish things in their classrooms, when they have yet to experiences them as learners!

I was VERY fortunate to be on a team with Matt Hillman (@mahillman), Michelle Ament (@mlament) and Rachel Gorton (@raztech ) for a session called Pathway to Personalized Professional Development.   One of the things we decided to do, as a team, was to provide participants choice in what they would learn.  So, upon coming into the session, participants would make a choice, based on a 1 minute or less pitch by us – the facilitators. We would then take our groups and split up.  After about 20 minutes of showcasing our ideas, we did a jigsaw so members of our groups had an opportunity to learn from members of other groups.   We brought the group together for a whole group conversation – and follow up with a call to action Flipgrid. (I believe we ran out of time for this activity feel free to add your ideas now!)

Group Picture

Pathways to Personalized Professional Development Team!

While I have much to share about my topic – Differentiating PD (future post) – the point I want to make is the way we rolled with this session. I have participated in Jigsaw activities, but I have never facilitated PD like this.    What a great way to model good learning strategies.  I will certainly take this back to my district and use it with my own staff when the opportunity arises.

In November, at the New Prague Blended Learning Conference – I decided to do something a little different with one of my sessions. I BLENDED it.  Yes, it was a f2f session, but at the last minute – I decided to do a blended lesson using this presentation http://bit.ly/MindsetNP.  At the very beginning, I shared with the audience, I had never done this before.  This was true.  I also shared I had my own thoughts this would crash and burn.  Also true – my fixed mindset nagging at me!  (also incredibly important to model!)

At first, the majority of the participants were not excited about this idea.  I shared – I am here to push you out of your comfort zones and besides this is the Blended Learning conference!  And then….it was MAGIC!  The participants really got into it. My only request – they had to complete Module 1, and then they could choose what module interest them next.  They had choice in where (location) they participated.  My only request,  I wanted to be in eyeshot.   They were in the classroom, out in the halls, sitting on the floor, or sitting on the stairs.  As they went through the lessons, discussions, I walked around, monitored, answering questions.  I had a chance to talk with EVERYONE!  I also wanted to get their feedback – thoughts beyond the formative assessments I had built into the lessons?  From my observation, the engagement was very high and the hour seemed like minutes! We finalized our session with an big group discussion.

Photo collage

Pictures from my Blended Session

So that brings me to today.   The last week or so, I have been running sessions around formative assessment tools with teachers.  Its been quite successful as we have conversations about opportunities the tools have to better inform instruction.  But, how often,do  we, as technology directors, model good use of technology with our leadership teams?   Formative assessment tools can be incredible to help differentiate and bring discussions deeper within our meetings.  Many times in large group staff meetings, only a few will speak up (or monopolize) the discussions.  These tools can provide everyone a voice.

So, today I introduced AND had our team do a Socrative Quiz (around a topic relevant to us) and demonstrated the opportunity of Edpuzzle as a flipped meeting tool.    The dialog was rich and hopefully the tools were seen as helpful for them to use with staff to better differentiate their own staff meetings.  (I should have done an exit ticket!)

The point is this.  Talking the talk is fine, but we ALL need to experiences how technology can be meaningful and drive deeper learning/discussion.  If we expect our classrooms to be using the tools, we should also be modeling the effective use at technology (as well as good learning design) at the school/district level too.

And so, #mnlead!  This CTA is accomplished!  (I hope to do this in future meetings as well)

CTA

My call to action after participating in #mnlead chat at #ties15

 

 

 

 

 

 

#Mindblown 3D printing – One of many TIES takeaways

Here is an  email I wrote to staff today about something I saw at our Ties 2015 Conference.  After I did it, I felt it was a good artifact to post on my blog too!  How do you share what you are learning?  In doing this again, I probably wont write what I learned in an email – and instead write and direct them to my blog.  No need to copy/paste then and I know our email boxes are inundated with tons of things. But, I also want to use email to spark interest from those who might not usually click that next link.  🙂

Warning – I was blown away when seeing this. Wanted to give you an opportunity to see what is “out there”.  Feel free to ignore from this point on if your not interested!
Staff,
Ok – I may have sparked some curiosity.  Good!
I wanted to share one of my learning experiences from the TIES conference around 3D printing this past weekend.
I took this video in one of my Makerspace sessions. It is a scanner, attached to an IPad that will make help make things we see into 3D objects.  Its short and sweet – but you can see how easy it is.

Below is the replica of what Tami  (@brasst) created this morning.  While this is cool….it even gets more awesome  – so keep reading after the picture!
Inline image 1
So why does this matter?
As we think of engineering opportunities for kids to re-engineer objects we use every day is amazing.  I also learned from our keynote presenter Sylvia Martinez (@smartinez) that museums, across the globe,  are doing 3D scans of their artifacts – so schools could literally download and print a bone from a tyrannosaurus rex, or download and print the primitive tools created by Neanderthals, or sculptures carved by Michalengeo, You can also “print” and blow up micro tiny things – like molecules.  Talk about hands on access to primary materials!
But what is even more heart felt is opportunities for people to print Prosthetics for those who have lost a limb, an arm, ect.  http://enablingthefuture.org/tag/3d-printed-prosthetics/  for a much reduced cost.
Check out this ted talk describing the project!
So there you have it!  I wanted to share one of my earning experience with you!
Just to let you know we ARE exploring 3D printers right now as we begin to design our MakerSpace space type concepts in each of our buildings.