Challenge Boards

The Concern

This school year optional PD attendance has been down...way down...as in practically nonexistent.  It was time to put on my thinking cap and focus on solutions instead of roadblocks.  I knew whatever I came up with needed to be of benefit and interest to both our techie and not as techie teachers and that time (or the lack there of) would be a huge factor in both participation and my ability to manage it.  Optional PD attendance might be down, but my calendar stays full.  Unfortunately, all I seemed able to do was scratch my head and think in circles.

The Epiphany

The light bulb finally popped on while attending a session at our state technology conference about school based PD.  Scott Rhymer, the principal of Mauldin High School, shared how he and his team transformed PD at their school.  During his presentation the idea of sponsoring challenge boards began to take shape.

The Outcome

I created three boards focused on assessment and reflection.  Dig Deeper lists challenges that encourage teachers to use familiar tools in new ways.  Ready, Set, Grow challenges not as techie teachers to observe a techie peer effectively integrate technology AND challenges techie teachers to reach out and mentor not as techie peers.  Try Something New includes challenges that encourage teachers to employ a new strategy or tool.  I marked the challenges with gold, silver, and bronze medals to make it easy for teachers to find challenges that matched their beginning of the year self assessment results.  The competition ran for a nine weeks and teachers were placed on teams by departments.  Participants completed an exit ticket for each challenge to earn points for their teams.  My incredibly supportive principals bought breakfast biscuits for the winning team and the person with the highest score.  I plan to create new challenge boards for this quarter.

*My fellow tech coach, Lindsey Insalaco, customized the boards for her elementary teachers and used the SAMR swimming pool theme instead of the Olympics.  Her challenge boards look great!

End of the Year Tech PD Iron Chef Style

A twenty-five minute tech "moment" this spring led to some harsh self reflection.  I was dissatisfied with the PD session and disappointed with myself.  Nothing went horribly wrong. The delivery was just entirely "sit and get".  I made time to sit in a quiet room and really think about what I could do differently within the timeframe.  I wanted to construct something that was hands-on and focused on instruction.  I felt the need to challenge all participants (eager and hesitant) to think and get creative.  Out of all this self imposed agony came a PD activity that is a little Iron Chef, a little TPACK, and  wholly hands-on.  I call it Iron Chef Technology.

 Iron Chef Technology challenges participants to create a plan for addressing a given instructional strategy using at least one low tech tool and one high tech tool.   I purchased take out boxes from a local craft store and stuffed a card with directions, a card with a list of tech tools, and one randomly selected card with a low tech tool in each box. I used Google Slides to make the cards and added several slides with various instructional strategies to give myself lots of choices for what to reveal as the featured ingredient.  I thought if things went well there would be value in repeating this activity featuring a different instructional strategy each time.

Thanks to scheduling conflicts I found myself up to present during the end of school year madness that comes with testing followed by still more testing.  The timing was perfect to feature review as the instructional strategy to be addressed.

Iron Chef Technology was a success!  Several participants tracked me down to share how beneficial they found the activity.  One teacher even emailed to share how she implemented the plan she made during the session.  She included a link to the review game she made from the clue cards students created with the motivational posters tool on Big Huge Labs.