Theme+6+-+Engaging+in+Ongoing+Professional+Growth+and+Leadership

Goal 6

Professional growth is something that takes place every day that I enter the classroom. I learn more about my students and how to teach them effectively, Beyond every day activities. taking classes (such as this masters program) also contributes to my professional growth. These classes will show me new techniques and ideas that can be implemented in my classroom and school. Professional conferences and workshops will also help me to improve my effectiveness in the classroom.

Beyond my own personal growth, I also hope to become a leader in my school. I want to be someone that other faculty and staff look to for guidance in implementing new ideas and technologies. I can also lead workshops for my faculty. These things are a little bit out of my comfort zone, but I hope to become more comfortable with them as I gain more experience.

Artifact 1: BYOD Policy (Level 3) In this project, I conducted a wide variety of research as I explored the options of BYOD vs school owned technology. I shared this information with my school, principal, parents, and students. Their input was used to create a final policy for St. Peter. This policy and the research was shared with the Board of Christian Education, and upon their approval, was implemented at St. Peter.

Artifact 2: Participated in President's Convocation FL-GA District- Sept 29-Oct 1 2015 (Level 2) I attended this conference with my staff. While there, I was able to engage in discussion with other science teachers about how they use technology in their classrooms. This took place at a sectional B33, which was focused on hands-on science activities in the classroom. As we discussed, the topic of Discovery Education Techbook came up. I relayed my thoughts about its effectiveness with my students. I also attended a session presented by Greg Cecil, who is a former NASA Space Shuttle Thermal Heat Engineer. He talked about how he uses mini-cubes, which are flown to the edge of space to conduct a scientific experiment. Some examples include "how do seeds exposed to radiation grow differently from those that aren't exposed?" and "how does the temperature change affect magnetism?". I have not been able to do this yet, but it is on my list of things to do in the next few years. It is a great way to get students to take ownership of their learning and allow them to explore something that they are passionate about.

Artifact 3: NSTA influenced project on the water cycle (level 1) www.nsta.org I joined the NSTA this past year in an effort to become more in touch with the best practices of science teachers. As I read, I am given ideas about how to implement more inquiry based learning into my room. The concept that I focused on was how we filter water. Students were challenged to design a water filtration device out of recycled materials that they could use to water a garden or perhaps feed animals on their farm.

Artifact 4: Google Hangout on Air " Curriculum Planning on Chromebooks"- Dec 14, 2012 (level 2) Steven Butschi, Tom Gierke, and Mike Schwab of the Google in Education, along with Andy Chlup, shared information about how to use web-based texts to meet your curriculum standards. I was interested in this before I got to a school that had Chromebooks. Now that I am using them, I have gone back to review some of the things that they addressed.

Artifact 5: Google Hangout on Air "Chrome Apps and Extensions" - April 15, 2013 (Level 2) Molly Schroeder presented a variety of apps that can be used in classroom that has access to Chrome. In my school, we are currently using Chromebooks, so the lessons that were presented were especially useful. I currently us Flubaroo and Doctopus frequently.

Artifact 6: Augmented Reality (Level 3) After attending a technology conference and learning about augmented reality, I came back to my school and shared this powerpoint with my staff. We had a discussion on how it could be used in the classroom and what age groups it would be appropriate for.

Artifact 7: NSTA Position statement (level 1) http://www.nsta.org/about/positions/middlelevel.aspx media type="file" key="KGB8 Weather.mp4" width="300" height="300" The main point presented by NSTA is that science should be hands-on and applicable to the real world. As I continue to design projects around this, students are more engaged than ever. This artifact shows one of the projects that was created by my students in our weather unit. This idea for creating a video came www.discoveryeducation.com

Artifact 8:#EdTechChat on Twitter (Level 1) https://twitter.com/search?q=%23edtechchat&src=tyah I follow this hashtag, as it contains many great resources for education in the classroom, as well as discussion on topics that are pertinent to my field.

Artifact 9: #ScienceEducation on Twitter (Level 1) https://twitter.com/hashtag/scienceeducation?src=hash I follow this hashtag because it deals with STEM ideas and great classroom ideas. It also includes some discussion on how to implement STEM into the classroom without it being entirely STEM.