A Journey of a Thousand Miles...
Begins with a single step. That is how the quote generally goes and in this case it feels exactly like that. We took our “first step” in providing teachers with the material necessary to start their digital citizenship journey. It was amazing how much more intimidating this forum was for me as a presenter. I have had the privilege of speaking at numerous events. I’ve guest lectured for a college class, I’ve presented at ISTE, and I’ve presented at PETE&C. With all of those presentations, I was able to interact with the audience and feed off their comments, and facial cues. In this presentation, I wasn’t able to see the teacher’s faces and for much of the presentation there was very little to almost no feedback. I was able to present the information in the exact manner and using the examples that we had talked about. Overall, I thought the preparation and the planning for the PLC allowed me to succeed in presenting all of the information needed. However, what I was not prepared for was the interactions and work load that followed the PLC Meeting itself.
The teachers I presented to were fantastic. They asked thoughtful questions and they seemed to understand each answer they were given to those questions. Additionally, there weren’t that many questions which makes me think that we did a good job setting very clear guidelines and expectations. I did not receive a single question when it came to our WHY. All teachers seemed to understand why we were taking on this challenge and understanding the purpose and need for this education. My fear in the presentation itself was that it was almost too quiet. I was surprised there weren’t more questions about how to set up accounts, how to access the material, how the data that was collected would be shared out, etc. It led to me creating many additional materials to show teachers how to do the things that I thought some may need additional help with. At the end of the presentation, (WHICH YOU CAN ACCESS HERE) teachers were given clear guidelines for the things they needed to have by the time of the next PLC meeting. These things included four major steps (Access Checklist Provided to Teachers Here):
Create an account on Common Sense Media as an educator
Access and teach the first lesson in your grade level
Have students take the end of lesson quiz.
Create a Flip Grid that shares the teacher’s opinions of the lesson and identifies any issues.
Once we created the checklist for the teachers we were able to allow them the freedom to teach and respond to lessons as they saw fit. However, I found myself wondering if there was a more effective way to measure the usefulness of our PLC. I started reading an article titled “Evaluating Professional Development”. (Click Here to access the article) I found myself really liking the two questions they asked of their teachers. First, they asked how the learning impacted the teachers, and how the learning impacted the students. After considering this, they asked how the learning impacted the attitude of the teachers, and how the learning impacted the attitude of the students. I like this thought of how the learning affects the attitudes of both teachers and students. I think that this would greatly change the attitude of teachers especially once they realize how much media is involved in our students’ day to day lives.
Nevertheless, as I was looking inward trying to find ways to evaluate the effectiveness of our PLC, we were hit with the inevitable negative feedback rumors. As any good presenter would do, we started some reconnaissance and asked our peers how the PLC went at different buildings, and almost all of the feedback was positive. There was one building though, that did share that they believed there was no way this initiative could be enforced, that no one was collecting the data, so they weren’t going to worry about it. This was extremely frustrating to me, because I personally believe in everything we are presenting. Our kids NEED this desperately, because if we don’t teach them how to interact with technology then they will only receive that education from their peers, and from people who aren’t necessarily capable of understanding how to be an effective digital citizen. So of course, I started reading about ways to handle negative feedback. One article especially helped to put together a plan for addressing this issue. I read a piece titled, “What to do when you get Negative Feedback at Work” and I really liked three of their suggestions. (Access that article by clicking here) The most important thing to remember is not to take it personally. Teachers have a million things to do so when something gets added to their plate it can be very overwhelming. The second suggestion was to make sure we were very clear with what we were asking. Our follow up email was sent to ensure that we were as clear as possible with the expectations. The final and most important suggestion was to show initiative as soon as possible. We were quick to act in sending out the email and offered the opportunity to send an email from our administrators so all staff could see how valued this digital citizenship initiative is. I will be creating the additional quizzes, a team drive, and compiling results from our quizzes over the next few weeks to see how effective our PLC was, and how effective our lessons were.
