Educators continually improve their practice by learning from and with others and exploring proven and promising practices that leverage technology to improve student learning. Educators:

 

1a)  Set professional learning goals to explore and apply pedagogical approaches made possible by technology and reflect on their effectiveness.

 

I was able to do this for the first time through my action research plan created in my Technology Action Research class.  The research plan my groupmates and I created detailed if flipping a classroom actually benefits students' motivation and engagement in the lessons.  Flipping the classroom is when teachers assign short videos--YouTube, Khan Academy, or ones created by the teacher--for homework, and then do the bookwork, activities, discussions, etc in the classroom the next day when the teacher is there to guide them.  Together, our group determined, based on data that flipping a classroom can range anywhere from having no effect to a positive effect if done correctly.  Each of us then was able to reflect on how we would flip our classrooms.  I have taken this back to my department and we are currently working on flipping a couple of units within the curriculum to test it out ourselves.

 

1b)  Pursue professional interests by creating and actively participating in local and global learning networks.

 

Over the past 5 years, I have been an active member of the Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics organization, as well as attended a couple IXL webinars to better learn how to utilize the IXL program within our classes.  As a member of ICTM, I have access to many different lesson plans and activities that I frequently reference and consider while planning for my own lessons.  I also have done many twitter chats and am recently started following Ditch That Textbook for ways to get away from being so textbook focused and incorporate more activities and technology into my students' learning. 

 

1c)  Stay current with research that supports improved student learning outcomes, including findings from the learning sciences.

 

I am on the email list for the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and receive emails weekly about the newest findings and techniques.  I also had begun to hear a lot about flipped classrooms within the past few years and thus, decided to do my research project on that for the Technology Action Research project as listed above.