North Carolina Digital Leaders Coaching Network, session one

This year I have the honor of being one of twenty media coordinators in North Carolina to participate in the North Carolina Digital Leaders Coaching Network.  We had our first session last week at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation in Raleigh.  On my application I had put that I wanted to learn how to help the teachers in my building integrate digital tools in their classrooms in order to make their jobs easier.  The two-day session last week was one of four we will have this year and I have already learned quite a bit towards that goal.  

Everyone has a strength; several in fact.  People do their best when allowed to play to their strengths.  Even Barty Crouch Jr. disguised as Mad-Eyed Moody understood this when he told Harry to get the egg from the Hungarian Horntail using his broom.  (If you have not read this series, stop what you are doing right now, the Kindle editions are available from Pottermore for $57 for the entire set.)  I have thought about how important it is for me for my supervisors to recognize the areas at which I am good, even while pointing out the areas where I need to improve.  It is also important when delegating or asking people to volunteer, to ask them to do a job at which they are strong.  It takes some ability to read people and understand what makes them tick, so we talked about listening skills as well.

Comfort with technology can be explained with a swimming pool analogy, in which some people are comfortable doing flip-turns in 12 feet of water but some are still in the shallow end hoping their feet touch the ground.  And throwing someone in the deep end to teach them how to swim has been proven mostly ineffective.

We were asked to give examples of times when we had failed.  I felt better about my own failures when taught to view them as learning experiences, ways to grow, ways to commiserate, or even something that just happens to people.

Two technology tools that I have passed along to teachers are the GooseChase app, useful on field trips for older students who have devices (even among the poorer kids in my school, that is quite a few of them), and the Sphero.  The Sphero is controlled by a tablet or phone, can be coded or driven directly, and is useful for teaching geometry as well as coding skills.  I want a BB-8 Sphero of my own but I hear they are sold out and back ordered.

Great lessons in "unlearning what you have learned" came from riding a bike that had been revamped to steer backwards (I never got my feet off the ground onto the pedals, and I've done two sprint triathlons) as well as cutting an index card to fit around a body in a continuous circle.  I loved this insight into the learning and analyzing process.

Looking forward to lesson two in January.