Feeling stuck in my career in education and wanting more, I signed up for the Applied Digital Learning Master’s program at Lamar University with my coworkers Veronica Balli and Ileana Reyna. As I am nearing the end of my ADL journey, I can’t help but reflect on my transformation as a learner and educator and the amount of growth I made in just one year.
In my first set of courses, Disruptive Innovation 5305 and Applying Educational Technology 5303, I was not only challenged to disrupt everything I knew about education, but I was also challenged to create a shared innovation project with my coworkers that would disrupt the current educational model at our campus while creating an e-portfolio that showcased our progress. Initially, I knew that I wanted to learn more about and implement a blended learning environment but everything at that point was very surface level. As I progressed through the first semester, I began to internalize my learning, really seeing it and feeling it. I remember the day when my new learning began to affect me at work. I was planning for yet another week of instruction and I began to implement small changes that brought about a big impact in my classroom. Unknowingly, I began to give students choice, ownership, and voice, through authentic learning opportunities (COVA), by giving my students choices, allowing them to personalize their learning by being able to choose their own path, and by also integrating more blended learning opportunities where students could pause, rewind, and learn at their own pace. Then our first literature review took place and I was hooked. I absolutely fell in love with researching blended learning, COVA, and progressive education and slowly made those changes to my teaching practices, along the way. We not only created an innovation proposal and a call to action video that we quickly showed our principal, but we also gathered literature to create our literature review, and came up with an implementation outline that guided the implementation of our innovation project: Blended Learning: Personalizing the Future of Education.
As I began my next set of classes, Leading Organizational Change 5304 and Concepts of Educational Technology 5302, our shared innovation project evolved. I began to look into how to bring about change from our innovation project to our campus. I learned about hooking our stakeholders with our WHY, while learning about and applying the Influencer Model, the 4 Disciplines of Execution, and Crucial Conversations to bring about organizational change. I also, not only began to learn about bringing about change in my organization, but I also changed as a learner and educator by creating a Growth Mindset Plan and reflecting on my learning in my Learning Manifesto. These assignments helped me gain valuable insight in how to grow my learners into becoming self-directed life long learners, which I have implemented in my own class ever since.
My third set of classes, Developing Effective Professional Learning 5389 and CSLE 5313 further aided the evolution of my shared innovation project. 5389 helped me learn how to develop effective professional learning that will help bring about change on a grander scale within my organization. In order to continue to implement our innovation project, I created a way to promote, plan, and implement effective professional learning that will guide my fellow colleagues into implementing change in their own classrooms. CSLE 5313 also helped grow my innovation project by helping me learn how to create a significant learning environment that gives students choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities. I learned about a New Culture of Learning, reflected on My Learning Philosophy, learned about Aligning Objectives, Activities, and Assessments, and how to Understand by Design. All these assignments added value to me as a learner and to my innovation project.
Resources and Digital Environments 5317 and Assessing Digital Learning 5315, my fourth set of classes in the ADL program, added another layer of knowledge to the implementation and longevity of my innovation project. In 5317, we took our innovation project to the next level and learned how to create a publication to order to share our knowledge and increase our impact on education, tenfold. My publication, Blended Learning: Closing Gaps with Adaptive Digital Programs, took a look at how adaptive digital programs within my current blended learning environment helped close gaps. In 5315, I learned about how to conduct action research that allows me to continuously reflect on, adapt, and grow my innovation project in order to better suit my students’ needs.
While completing these four sets of classes, my innovation project evolved from just a simple plan into a full active project. Each set of classes has helped me grow as an educator and a learner which has only deepened my understanding of blended learning, CSLE + COVA, and creating long-lasting change.
Reflection on the Implementation of my Innovation Project:
Blended Learning: Personalizing the Future of Education
So where is my project now? As soon as Veronica Balli, Ileana Reyna, and I began our innovation plan, we began implementing facets of our project in our own classrooms. Almost immediately, I began a blended learning station rotation model that implemented the adaptive digital platform, i-Ready, had 2 teacher-led small group intervention stations, and had several “free choice stations” where students could choose to work collaboratively or independently on certain tasks. Of course, there were bumps along the road, such as students not bringing their devices charged, or students playing instead of on task, but with clear expectations, continuous practice, and by living and modeling a growth mindset, students began to grow as self-directed learners. By the end of the 2021-2022 school year, my students had seen tremendous growth as indicated in my publication. My next step is to continue to grow our Blended Learning Innovation Project within our campus. As mentioned above, we quickly showed our Principal our Call to Action Video and expressed our interest in growing our innovation project within our school. As soon as we are given the green light, we will use all the tools and resources we learned in Leading Organization Change and Developing Effective Professional Learning to ensure long-lasting change at our campus. In the meantime, I will continue to learn more about and teach others about the power of blended learning and COVA as I did with my co-teacher and student teacher last year and I will continue to do with my current student teacher this year.
Through this whole process, I have learned and grown tremendously as a learner and educator. I have learned the importance of COVA and being a guide, mentor, and facilitator in my students' learning journey as mentioned in my Learning Philosophy in order to prepare them for their future.
References
Horn, M., Staker, H. (2015). Blended: Using disruptive innovation to improve schools.
Jossey-Bass A Wiley Brand.
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