This week’s content for my Emerging Tech class is about professional development. I’m really excited to get started on this because all semester, I’ve been chomping at the bit to do something cross-curricular. I figured this is the assignment to really jump on that ship.

Now, to start, I want to mention that I’ve sat through MANY a professional development seminar and most of them lacked literally everything we tell teachers to do when creating a dynamic lesson. I wanted to ensure that I didn’t fall into that trap and that I’d be able to harness my intensity so not to scare off any colleagues before they had the pleasure of actually conversing with me. I also didn’t want to annoy people to the point that drove them leave the PD and grab drinks at the bar down the street…

My main focus and idea centers on doing a PD session with teachers for integrating the library classroom into their content areas through using a presentation tool and offering each of the main content areas a specific suggestion as to an additional application/site to use. It may not be fully integrated co-curricular but it touches on it in a way that I am comfortable and would feel competent enough to run.

Largely, for me, all of this is basically playing pretend because as you’ve likely gathered, I’ve worked with significantly under-funded schools. My strengths are around literacy and learning development which I think can make me a great resource to school staff. For this reason, I wanted to be deliberate around such a task. (I feel like making this known will depend on the school and reading the situation; I certainly wouldn’t want teachers feeling like I was trying to overtake their classrooms but also want them to know that I’m a valuable resource for them, so I’ll have to play the scene that is handed to me in my future school here…)

When I start to plan anything, I think about my end goals and then have about 46 simultaneous ideas surging through my mind (which is great when you’re trying to focus and/or tell a story). Over the years, I’ve learned to go with it — sometimes I process in rapid speed and other times, not so much. For this assignment, I took an entire day to just let my brain sit with my thoughts as I sorted out my vision.

Then, I read the assigned texts. One, in particular, resonated with me: The Many Faces of School Library Leadership by Sharon Coatney (2010). This article focused on school library media specialists serving the school community as ‘experts’ and ‘leaders’ — from this course, I’ve definitely gathered that we are the experts in the school and should really be viewed as an asset but I never made the connection between school leadership and the library.

In the last several years, my consulting has taken me all over the world, delivering American education, training, and curriculum each step of the way. I recognized that I was hired for my leadership skills but for some reason, the thought hadn’t yet transferred to my (theoretical) role in the school library. This adds a lot of pressure to the library media position but also, for me, helps to build confidence in that someone will hire me recognizing that I’m capable and competent enough to lead school staff in educational technology and other facets housed in the library media center.

I used this idea to develop my PD plan for teachers by offering a full agenda and breakout sessions that all culminate to a shared presentation at the end of the of the session. To me, this is something that I could pilot in either a before-the school year begins capacity or at an early professional development meeting whereby I introduce the library media center and then demonstrate some of my tech competencies to fellow staff and administrators.

This assignment was interesting to put together because I think it served to prepare me for how overwhelming and intense my immediate responses to things that excite me. In order to be an effective leader of the library media center, I’ll need to reign things in so that colleagues find me approachable (and relatively sane). I think that utilizing technology helps me maintain organization and structure for things like this and I like that I can use technology to serve dual purposes like teaching teachers and then giving them examples of how to teach students. I am really looking forward to putting these mock tasks into action in a library classroom.

Programs I used for this assignment are listed below:

Screencast-O-Matic — I used this to create a ‘mock’ lesson/demonstration of Prezi

Sutori & MathTalk — These were used for the Maths breakout

Prezi & Peergrade — These were used for the ELA breakout

LiveBinders & iCell — These were used for the Science breakout

Padlet & iCivics — These were used for the Social Studies breakout

Plus, Musilla Music School, HeadSpace, iDraw, Quizlet, and VidCode, which are used for specials/electives and their correlating breakouts.