Connected Educators

First quarter is in the books and Connected Educator month has come to a close. Department, building and personal goals for the year are done, and one of my personal goals is to commit to one blog post per week. That has been a goal since I started this blog in December of 2012, but as you can see this is only my fifth post. It would be easy for me to say that I have not had the time, but the truth is, I have not made the time. I think that happens often with our professional development and technology integration efforts. It is very easy to get caught up in our day to day responsibilities, and before you know it another school year has passed. 

When I first read the CEM Starter Kit put out by the Department of Education, I loved the idea of a technology challenge per day, but looking at the challenges, I realized they would take a significant amount of time to complete. For most teachers they would take more time than they could make each day. That was one reason I came up with the shorter challenges meant to introduce different technologies and spark interest. None of the challenges should take more than 15 minutes to complete. Currently only 20% of teachers have completed at least one challenge, and I know that we can do better.

I am committing to take ownership of my own professional learning opportunities and will use this forum to reflect on those discoveries. So my final challenge question for the month of October is this,  "what did you do first quarter to make yourself more effective at delivering quality instruction?" Or to use Dr. Koch's analogy, have you devoted anytime yet this year to practicing free throws?