Spring DL Conference #birdvillelearns

Sunday, April 2, 2017


 This past Saturday, I teamed up with my colleague and friend, Mollie Sheridan, to present about digital goal setting and the impact it has had on the success of our learners, as well as our growth as educators.
Some background information on Mollie and I and how we got to where we are today....both of us were teaching 7th Accelerated math in GCISD, as well as implementing a digital classroom.  Because neither of us had a teacher to PLC with on our home campuses, we decided to create our own PLC.  We met several times throughout the year, as well as compiled our files on Google drive.  We too were digital citizens in the 21st century of education!

As our paths took different directions, I found myself teaching math in Birdville ISD and Mollie transferred to Grapevine Middle, as the Algebra STEM teacher.  With Mollie's transfer came the implementation of 1:1 at the middle school level.  I, in turn, was working with a classroom set of chromebooks.

Just as we stressed during our Saturday morning of learning, never let the number of devices determine the implementation and success of technology within your classrooms!

When I asked Mollie to present with me, of course she said yes!  That's how we operate, always sharing our experiences and learning from others :)

As I was setting up our Google classroom, I found myself refreshing my mind on various formative assessment tools I had previously used.  One of my favorites is Padlet!  After spending some time playing around with it, I found that I remembered why I liked it.  I began to using this tool as a digital form of 4 corners.  For Saturday's presentation, we started with the sentence stem, "Goal setting is like..."  Participants had to choose from a soccer ball, a pair of glasses, a mirror and a stoplight.

As we began planning our presentation and determining how we would go about reaching our ultimate goal of implementing digital goal setting, we realized we needed a platform to share our ideas.  Unanimously, we decided Google Classroom would be the tool we used, as we both use this on a daily basis within our own classrooms.  This would also allow participants to see Google Classroom from the student's perspective!



Facebook Live Footage:  Implementing Digital Goal Setting

Announcements and Assignments were posted as far as our TEKS Mastery Charts in Google Sheets, Goal Setting Conference Sign Ups & Written Reflections in Google Docs.  While making our presentation, I used the option to create a question for the first time.  Again, another example of how we are all lifelong learners!

As participants answered the question, "How are you tracking student success?" we showed the teacher view on the board.  Again, we wanted our learners to be able to see both sides of this learning opportunity!  I shared with our participants that the answer choices were actually based on the current practices that the learners of room 27 encounter.  Thankfully, nobody chose the last option of we don't have time to track student success!


As we moved throughout our time together, we had a special member of our team, share her experiences with digital goal setting.  Audrey, a learner of Room 27, explained how she was scared at first with the digital part of tracking her success, but now uses the tools in her other classes.  Audrey has taken goal setting to a new level, by changing her second semester classes to better utilize her time as she prepares to determine her field of study in college!  

To close out our morning of learning, we had the participants complete a questionnaire made with 
Go Formative  Again this was something new I learned and can't wait to implement it into our classroom!  


We encouraged our participants to follow us on Twitter and share their implementation of goal setting, as trying something new can be challenging, yet so rewarding!  One of our participants, Lindsey Barber, an English I teacher, gave us some Twitter love and reminded us both that we love growing with other educators!

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