I got a call yesterday from a friend who just began coaching in January. Preparing for #ISTE17, she was concerned that she was loosing her relevance and that teachers wouldn’t listen to what she had to offer since she was no longer in a classroom. She’s been helping teachers learn new strategies both formally and informally […]
Being in Charge Doesn’t Make You a Leader
I had the chance to talk with a friend about leadership the other day. We both struggle to walk the balance between being in charge and leading. While the dictionary seems to equate the two, they are very different. We came up with a short list to keep in mind so that we could stay […]
Gamify Literacy – Part 1
One of the greatest benefits of membership in ISTE is the professional development offered to members. The webinars and book studies are really pretty good if you are trying to keep up with the myriad of technology applications that are possible in education. Last week ISTE’s Literacy PLN started a book study on the book […]
#2techtruths
In our city, the Technology Resource Teachers (TRTs) send out an annual email to introduce themselves. I wanted to do something different this year, and have created a SMORE Flyer with all of the information that I usually send in the email. The link to the flyer is here: https://www.smore.com/bbntc A good friend and great […]
Lessons from #Ferguson
I’ve been watching the posts etc. coming out of Ferguson, MO as I’m sure all of you have. Yesterday my professional reading had two links to information about #Ferguson: Larry Ferlazzo’s curated posts and a Post on the Center for Teaching Quality blog. It struck me – as I looked at one particular tweet – […]
Coaching Millennials
Last week I went to a workshop on Supervision. From time to time I have to coordinate a team of coaches to get a project done, so I thought I might get a few additional resources from this session. We spent a portion of the session discussing the needs and expectations of employees of different […]
Flipped Classroom – Elementary Style
One of my schools is working on flipping the classroom. With that in mind, I was asked to represent the school division at a forum that our local PBS station WHRO. We had started talking about flipping the classroom towards the end of the year. When I went to the ISTE conference in the summer […]
Email Coaching
Email is one of the hardest things to try to coach teachers about. Most have had personal email accounts for years. So they think they know how to use email. Try to suggest that folks sit down with you to learn to use Outlook (the program our school division uses for email), and they look […]
Differentiated Coaching
Last month our team was given an assignment: Prepare a ten-minute presentation on coaching. We’ve studied tech coaching over the last year – read about a few models, watched a few video archives etc. So I wanted to bring something new to the discussion. Amazon had a number of books on coaching, so I decided […]
What is Tech Coach Chat?
Dr. Ruth and I started this blog for all the Instructional Technology Coaches out there. Some of you were hired for the role and some of you were voluntold (because it fits under the “all other duties as assigned” clause in your contract). You are not alone. There are Instructional Technology Coaches all around the world. […]