Rationale
Professional learning is vital to the success of my innovation plan as well as any initiatives we are implementing in our district. It is imperative to fully understand and embrace what it takes to intentionally plan and facilitate effective professional learning to achieve desired outcomes. I am passionate about providing meaningful professional learning, and have personally grown in my ability to do so over the past six years through trial and error as well as through my studies at Lamar Universtiy. The learning I am doing in the Applied Digital Learning Program at Lamar University is validating my professional learning approach and providing many sources to confirm what I had organically learned over the past 7 years, and has helped me develop a robust professional learning plan to implement blended learning in our district. I now have reliable sources to share as I call to action some very important changes necessary to ensure adult learning is effective in our district. We currently don’t see the initiatives we have launched in our district, such as blended learning and Profile of a graduate, implemented regularly. I believe we can change this will more effective professional learning. We need to change how we are providing professional learning to truly impact the learning that occurs on all levels, including educators and scholars. I am excited to share this information in a more formal way to the individuals that can make districtwide decisions and shifts for greater impact.
I decided to take my learning and create a short call to action pitch video to convince our district chiefs that we need to do things differently when it comes to professional learning. I have learned that combining visuals with audio, in a short video format, will keep the human brain engaged, will reach all learners, and I can convince them to join me on my call to action. This is an opportunity for me to move from my grassroots slow but steady impact to district level impact by sharing the 5 Principles of Professional Learning as it relates to our district’s current structures and practices for professional learning. As a district, we are still doing mostly sit and get days of professional learning, with little follow up and little to no support during the implementation process. We need to be mindful about the needs of our educators, and how knowledge is gained, retained, and applied. We must Intentionally plan for active learning experiences, specific to content and grade level. We need to plan to provide professional learning over ample time, and provide supports when educators are trying something new. If we can model this type of learning environment for our educators, then they can make sense of the strategies and use them with our scholars.
Another component of professional learning we learned about was how to create effective presentations to respect the audience, reach multiple learning modalities, and keep the message clear and engaging. During the development of my pitch video, I was mindful about keeping the slides focused with minimal words, and utilized moving visuals to keep the attention of my intended audience. Pre-pandemic, I was honored to work on an action research project with Apple and had the opportunity to learn from some of their content designers to learn the psychology that goes into a memorable and impactful visual presentation. The information I learned in Cuppertino with Apple was reinforced with some resources shared in this course, including the video, Five Simple Rules for Creating World Changing Presentations (YouTube, 2010). In this video, it reminded me to treat my audience as royalty and really think about what and how I am sharing my message to address their needs. I have to be clear and concise and let the audience know what, why, and how the learning will impact and work. The video also reminded me to convey meaning with powerful imagery, especially moving imagery. It is important to combine visuals with audio to meet both auditory and visual learners. To attract the audience to my message, it is important to keep the slides simple and decluttered. In my video, you will notice one word appearing at a time, and at times, only images on the page. The voice over goes with the images for impact. The “slideshow” presentations that we are used to seeing of cluttered words on pages and stagnant images are the norm in our district. I am daring to be different and bring powerful impact to the professional learning process in hopes to better our schools (YouTube, 2010). My tools of choice for creating presentations are Apple Keynote combined with iMovie.
Using Apple Keynote to build my storyboard with transitions to enhance my visual story with shapes, movement, and draw attention to key details, I am able to easily adjust timing and go back in and edit my project, with no need to worry about copyright issues. I always choose a simple theme and add the main idea to each slide to start out. This way I know I don’t leave any vital pieces out, and can go through and add, edit, and perfect until it is just right. Once I have the gist of my narrative, I add it to the slide and create another slide that illustrates my words, and “hide” my narration slide by selecting “skip slide”, which allows me to keep my thoughts but not see it on the final movie export. Keynote is an easy platform to build in and add text and images, edit colors, font, size, and more. To get the visual story into movie format, I simply export the presentation into a movie and save it to my photo album. The final product is produced and edited in Apple iMovie. When opening iMovie, it will prompt the user to choose movie or trailer. I usually choose movie because the options for editing and creating are much greater. Once in iMovie, I add the video that was exported from Keynote and then add audio. To do this, I record what I want to say from my “skipped” Keynote slides and add it to my movie. I usually do this in sections for more flexibility in editing. Lastly, I add an audio soundtrack from the iMovie audio library to set the tone to the video and a few sound effects to draw extra attention to key information. Once finished, the video gets exported to my photos and then uploaded to my YouTube channel. I have found that sharing a YouTube link or even embedding web videos into documents to be the most efficient workflow for me.
References:
Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the Teachers Effective Professional Development in an Era of
High Stakes Accountability. Center for Public Education. Retrieved February 5, 2023 from
http:// www.centerforpubliceducation.org/system/files/2013-
176_ProfessionalDevelopment.pdf
Heather Hill. (2015). Review of The Mirage: Confronting the Hard Truth about Our Quest for
Teacher Development. Harvard Graduate School of Education. Retrieved February 5, 2023
from http://www.greatlakescenter.org/docs/Think_Twice/TT-Hill-TNTP.pdf
Duarte, Nancy (2010). Duarte design’s five rules for presentations. YouTube. Retrieved March 3,
2023 from https://youtu.be/hT9GGmundag.
Standards for Professional Learning. (2019). Retrieved February 5, 2023 from
https://learningforward.org/standards/
Standards for Professional Learning: Quick Reference Guide. (2019). Retrieved February 5, 2023
from https://learningforward.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/standards-reference-
guide.pdf
TNTP. (2015). The Mirage: Confronting the Hard Truth About Our Quest for Teacher
Development. Retrieved February 5, 2023 from http://tntp.org/publications/view/evaluation-
and-development/the-mirage-confronting-the-truth-about-our- quest-for-teacher-
development