Alternative Professional Learning Contribution Reflection

This Developing Effective Professional Learning class was my first one with the EdTech focus. This is my sixth class in the Master of Educational Technology Leadership program at Lamar University. My first five classes focused on leadership. I enjoyed the shift to the EdTech classes as I am currently a Technology Integration Specialist in my district. This is my first year in this role and it is also a new role so I am able to "create" it as I go. This class has allowed me to slow down and really look at professional learning development.

In our first Zoom session for class, our instructor informed us that we would have to create a group of 3-5 members to work with throughout this course. My course started with one big group and then broke out into smaller groups. My smaller group consisted of Cari, Katie, Kelly, and Michelle. Our group created a text message group and communicated throughout the course. We also met once via Zoom at the beginning of the class to help get us started with our first assignment, all communication after that was via text. This was the first class I had with a group and it was nice to have people to reach out to with simple questions and have quick responses. We shared our ePortfolios and gave feedback.

Our discussion questions for this class were beneficial. I enjoyed watching the videos and reading the articles. I learned more about professional learning and new ideas to try. I struggled at the beginning making sure I had my initial posts completed as there were no real due dates which was something different from my past classes. However, it didn't take but a couple weeks for me to start making sure I had each question answered by Sunday each week. These topics were easy to interact with and comment on. I found that I actually replied to more comments in this class than I have in previous ones. The feedback from my peers was helpful as well.

The Call to Action, the first part, of our project was beneficial and allowed me to do some research. Our district is still doing the "sit and get" model of PD and we are going through some changes in our administration which will allow me to maybe encourage some changes. This part of the project helped me create some beneficial material that I can take to our admin as we progress in our transition at the district.

Planning the new PL, the second part of the project, took me the longest I believe. I foudn myself digging out all of my books that I had and researching different ideas and plans. I was able to take what I learned and make my own plan that could customize to what our district currently needs. Due to the fact that my overall PL plan consists of two parts I was able to look into how I would do things differently in the mandatory vs. optional PL sections.

The final part of my project required me to develop just a portion of what my overall plan would need. I created the slidedeck and resources that would be needed for the first training session and the smaller follow up one over the couple weeks following. Due to the fact that I am the only Technology Integration Specialist for the district I decided to introduce the new PL to the entire district at once and then break into small groups over the next 2 weeks with their PLCs. This allowed me to introduce it once but then break up into the smaller groups. We will not meet again as a large group this year for this PL, it will all be small group either in PLC meetings or through Google Classroom, which has only their PLC members in it.

I believe that with my participation in this course that I have earned a 90. I will admit, I could have done better and won't make excuses for why I didn't. However, I did meet all deadlines and did my best to make sure I hit all main points of each assignment. Not only did I participate in all of the discussion posts, but I participated more than I have in the past. I also made sure to be available to my group members if they reached out if I was able to be of any assistance. I used feedback from my peers, as well as my instructors, to make any alterations to my work going forward.