Micro-credentials

I think that using micro-credentials in the place of traditional professional development is a fabulous idea.  What are micro-credentials? Micro-credentials are credentials that represent skills, interests and achievements earned by an individual through specific projects, programs, courses or other activities. Instead of requiring individuals complete an entire college-level course, for instance, micro-credentials could be awarded for mastery of particular skills.  Why is this better than traditional professional development? 1. Teacher earn credential is area that interest them (say in learning). 2. Teacher earn credentials in areas that will help them (need to learn). 3. Credentials can be earned at anytime and at their own pace. 4. It is more interactive than normal professional development. I tried out earning some of the Apple Teacher credential and I found it to be both very easy and interactive.  In traditional professional development someone stands up and lectures everyone about something and everyone just sits and listens. With micro credentials not only do you get a say in what you are learning but it is also interactive. Teacher can earn micro credentials that will help them build skills that will help them in the classroom to be more effective teachers. There are many options to choose from. To be a Google Certified Teacher the course is free, but there is a charge for the exam that would be required to demonstrate completion. (Level 1-$10, Level 2- $35).  For Apple Teacher the course is free but the components are skill based and include iPad, Mac, Swift Playgrounds, imovie, numbers, Keynote, and Pages. Microsoft Teaching offers a free course and you may select this course or any other course (or combination of courses) that earns points in the educator community. Bloomboard offers dozens of credentials on many different education-related topics and the course is free. Participate Learning offers a variety of courses, many of which come from various organizations. Some are free; some have a cost associated with them. With so many options to choose from any teacher could find something that would really help them become a better teacher.

Instructional Coaching Model

Travis Bender, a fellow teacher at Oak Mountain, asked me to aid him in the instruction of his students in using Google Forms to make self and class quizzes as well as studyguides that students can use to prepare for tests.  The first thing that I told him to do as a pre assessment was to have the students each make a 5 question quiz on their own on the material that they were currently covering in class. We would then look at the quizzes that they had created and talk about the good, the bad and the ugly and discuss what kind of improvements they would like to make to their quizzes.  Next we would make some goals that we wanted to achieve in the next few days including making a good 10 question quiz that is about the material that the class is covering at the time and using all of these quizzes to compile a class studyguide. Then Mr. Bender and I would make preparation as to how to best achieve this goal and reserve the chromebook carts so that we know we have enough devices in the classroom for each student.  Next we would for the next few days implement our plan that we had come up with and help the students along the way. At the end of each day we would reflect on how our progress and see if there are any changes that need to be made. We would make our adjustments and then help students improve their quizzes. When we had a good bank of quizzes we would then compile the quizzes into a studyguide for the class to use. Finally once we were done with the instruction Mr. Bender and I would sit down to talk about we had done and see if there where any changes that would need to be made if we did it again.

What are the most important aspects of designing professional learning activities that are meaningful to the teachers but also aligned to standards?

The most important aspects of designing professional learning activities for teachers is to make sure that it is something that the teacher can actually use in the classroom to help student learning and understanding.  I can’t tell you how many learning activities or professional development hours I’ve had to sit through that in no was helped me improve my teaching or benefited my students in any way. It was just done so that people could check the box that it was done.  For this last year with the Alabama Quality Teaching Standards we can 3 of the standards that we focused on for the year. One was chosen by the district, one was chosen by the school, and the last we got to chose. I would saw that the one that I chose what probably benefited me the most because it was something that I wanted to grow in.   I chose 2.8 Uses formative assessments to provide specific and timely feedback to assist learners in meeting learning targets and to adjust instruction. It's not that I did do this at all before, it is just that it was somewhere where I felt I could improve on and I know that there were some professional development opportunities that were available to me over the course of the school year.  Since this was something that I wanted to learn and I knew that it was going to positively affect both my teaching and my students learning I felt like it was a great learning activity that was aligned to standards. The school chose the standard of 2.5 Engages learners in developing and monitoring goals for their own learning and behavior. They chose this standard because we started a new class that was called Soar60 in which the students had 60 minutes to have lunch and do whatever they needed 4 days a week and one day a week they would go to an advisory where the teacher would monitor students grades and mentor students.  We had professional development on this and while I do think it had a positive impact on the student learning I don’t think it was quite as effective a learning activity and the one that i selected mostly because it wasn’t as relevant to my teaching or content.