INFOhio ICoach

After reading Key Questions for Community Designers from the U.S. Department of Education I couldn't stop applying the concepts that were discussed to my own experiences with a Google Group in Ohio that I joined last year and I have found a new level of repsect for those that began this important forum towards my professional development. 

• The professional develpment that we have all experienced in the ICoach training will go on to serve it's purpose as well.  Personally for me, my hopes would be to implement an Open Space Community that will begin to solve our district's challenge of communicating the benefits of INFOhio resources.  Through this community there would be discussions about completion of Learning Pathways and professional development opportunities. This is significant because progress has to start with identifying the need and being willing to discuss it!
• The Core Audience will be our district administrators and staff with a focus on ELA and Science/SS teachers. 
• I envision a forum to share success stories on professional development, as well as lessons designed with INFOhio tools.  Users could participate by adding to the column then making sure the connection is happening at TBT meetings.
• The area of practice that would be addressed is cohesive communication between grade-levels, as well as, grade level subject areas.  Peer motivation and student engagement would be key to the initial active participation.
• The Community Leaders would be our curriculum director, IPartners, as well as, ICoaches transitioning into community member leaders.
• I believe in the initial phase of a Professional Learning Community the role of resources would be to learn from one another leaning on the Curriculum Director, IPartner, and ICoach for a modeled approach.
• The community's objectives would be to further professional development and implement research based practices through INFOhio resources. INFOhio Learning Pathways and webinar recordings would align to our objectives, be useful for our audience and digital professional development would be most accessible due to time constraints.
• Technology leverages the need for immediate feedback and quick exchange of information.  Communication builds upon cohesiveness.  A school prospers when everyone is on the same page instantaneously.
• Helpful resources are incentives all in themselves! Teachers are constantly looking for ways to improve.  I love the idea of a visual "Spotlight on Education" board.  This might encourage those a little less willing to jump into the tech community to be inspired and for those participating to have peer acknowledgement.  I am a believer in the push for badges.  Everyone likes to have a sense of accomplishment!  Another form of encouragement would be our LPDC credit.
•  Positive feedback and sharing of experiences utilizing INFOhio resources will help to sustain engagement across time. Making use of our Morning Announcement staff page to share some of these positive activities would encourage other teachers to join our initiative.
• Initially staff need to be given some bait to hook them!  I need to provide them with clear step-by-step instructions on accessing INFOhio resources by giving them the Teach & Learn Flyer and be willing to spend some individualized attention for support, perhaps installing the INFOhio button onto the student Chromebooks would be a great place to start.  Modifications will need to be made by listening to the community's needs over time. 
• Reasonable expectations initially for me would be quarterly updates.  I would love to see users overtime to trust the Professional Development Community for support to go to monthly forums then establish an open posting platform for inspiration and support for specific curriculum needs.  As our community's professional development grows, the creative ideas will flourish ensuring a high-value-to-time ratio!

This sounds great! Keep us posted as the group develops. I think your thoughtful consideration to the questions has given you a great start!

I will analyze the questions through the lens of helping my colleagues learn more about high-quality instruction. 

• The problem trying to be solved is finding high-quality lessons/strategies quickly. Teachers will have the opportunity to learn and use Educator Tools to quickly find high-quality lessons and strategies. This is significant because Teachers Pay Teachers has become an overused resource teachers use that lacks the rigor/standards of high-quality curriculum that can be found through Educator Tools. 
• The core audience is classroom teachers
• I envision having teachers come to our meeting with a couple of topics for their grade level they would like more resources for. I will present the slideshow that shows users around using Educator Tools. I envision having a collaborative slideshow for teachers to reflect on the resources they found for the topics they were looking for. At a future meeting, share and discuss their findings. 
• I envision myself and possibly our curriculum director leading/facilitating this session. I would like to turn the teachers into leaders for each grade level to help lead and model for fellow teachers. 
• Teachers can learn from each other and from the resource themselves. 
• The "how-to" video about using Educator tools is impotant to present to fellow educators, teachers will need their chromebooks to access the Educator tools and to start exploring resources
• Technology uses- email to build interest and support, projection screen/computer to show how to utilize Educator Tools and google slides to help with collaboration
• Incentives for participation would be sharing and celebrating another teachers work
• Since high-quality instructional materials are such an important topic and should be discussed and built upon, I think at the very least time should be set aside to discuss during professional development days or a monthly meeing. 

This stands out, "I would like to turn the teachers into leaders for each grade level to help lead and model for fellow teachers." Great way to encourage ownership of the learning and promote the resource!

Wow. These are all questions I have had floating through my brain for the past 5 years or so. I moved into my current role of Technology Integration Specialist in October of that year and was only halftime (the following year I became a full-time integration specialist). I still taught the other half of the day. I took on 2 new-to-me buildings. Both were elementary and I was a middle school teacher. A very large portion of my job has been working with, supporting, and providing Professional Learning for teachers.

I could write a LOT on each of these bullet-point questions, but what I see as most valuable to note is the fact that every district, every building, every team, and every teacher is unique. There is NOT a one-size fits all. Whether you are talking about programs, methods, resources, time, technology, etc, there is no "perfect" thing. Keeping your audience in mind - whether it's an entire district, grade level, or individual teacher - will go a long way in deciding which resources to share/utilize/work with. Building a relationship is key in every single one of these questions. No community of learners will be sustainable if there is no relationship that goes along with it.

Creating a community of learners amongst teachers is not too different from creating a community of learners as a teacher in a classroom. Using a variety of resources - INFOhio is a fabulous starting point for this - and learning about them, but also understanding that there is no perfect tool will assist with this. I have learned - through many trials and failures - that teachers WILL learn and often WANT to learn, but as mentioned here, I have to provide a variety of means to do so. 

Creating a community of learners will take time. I have focused on creating relationships with teachers as the foundation to my job. I provide large group instruction (often when it's a required professional learning) as well as small group or even individual instruction. (Quick story - I had a teacher, who was initially told I HAD to work with them on a project, ultimately tell me he was willing to learn "anything", but he didn't want to do it in a group. I have been meeting with him for 3 years on most every Friday since and he has made great progress in trying new tech integrated activities.) I involve the admin with the needs & wants that are brought to my attention and work to make the logical ones happen. I also make myself available - both in person and digitally - so teachers feel I can be a resource as well as partner in their learning. Being in multiple buildings, I am also able to see how various tools work with different age groups or classrooms and I can (& do!) spread the word, to connect our teachers to each other. 

Through these iCoach modules, I see a great value in all the resources curated and supported. While we have had access to INFOhio for as long as I can remember, there hasn't been a true facilitator to spreading the word about these resources. I feel much better equipped to work on sharing them with the teachers in my district. And the fact that there are several other teachers from my district working through this, I really feel we will go a long way in working together to build a stronger learning community. I can't do it alone and I'm grateful I won't have to. 

Purpose: Finding opportunities for professional growth and worthwhile professional development. Locating high-quality resources and lessons.
The core audience: Classroom teachers, specialists, and building administrators.
I would like to present materials that kick-start PD in person during weekly PLC meetings or through PLC Leader meetings. 
Educators will actively participate in professional development if they feel their contribution is valued and their voices are heard.
School PLC Leaders will serve as learners in this community. They can take what they learn and share it with the members of their team. 
INFOhio is the resource for this community. Teachers will learn about the resources available through INFOhio with me as the facilitator. They can use the information presented, ask questions then discuss it amongst themselves. The expectation is they will continue learning through the INFOhio Pathways, investigating the resources available, and sharing with co-teachers and students. 
Technology: We are a Google district. All teachers have a laptop and all students have Chromebooks. The creation of websites, slides, blogs, and videos will be used to share information, resources, lessons, and ideas. 
As an incentive to participate, I have been thinking about creating digital stickers for teachers to earn.
Support tools: as the teacher-librarian, my school community is familiar with the tools that I create for 
student and staff projects. I will create resources for this ongoing professional development that encourage
collaboration, promote and explain resources and provide the opportunity for further learning. Through these resources, I intend to share my excitement for the learning that is to come!
 

Key Questions for Community Designers from the U.S. Department of Education is an excellent resource and I have shared it with our school's administrative team. I love that it incorporates questioning in the design and also that it can fit on one page!

• What Is the Community’s Purpose? What problem is it trying to solve? What opportunity is it intended to take advantage of? Why is this significant? Our community is significant because it is a community of learners: teachers and parents. We seek, as a school community, to embrace our identity in our mission and vision in such a way that our school community "enters to learn and exits to serve." Given this, we want to create an equitable and safe environment that is innovative in approach enabling students to be autonomous agents of change.
• Who Is the Core Audience? Which educators will need to become active in the community for it to achieve its purpose? Will the focus be on a role-alike group or a more heterogeneous collection of educators? I believe the core audience will be our educators however, I do hope to expand to parents/families in other ways given the vast potential uses of the resources INFOhio has. While certainly the entire faculty will be exposed to some of the introductory lessons, the coaching and facilitation will be according to a variety of professional learning teams across domains, grade levels, and leadership teams. I also hope to scaffold along the way.
• How Will Users Participate? What kinds of activities and interactions do you envision? Where, when, and by what means will members connect with each other? I am hoping to provide multiple means for this such as Open Space groups; regularly scheduled common planning time (this has been implemented); on-request one-to-one or whole groups; faculty meetings; and in-service days.
• What Value Does Your Community Add to Educators’ Practices? What will motivate educators to participate actively in the community? What areas of their practices that they are motivated to improve will it address and how? Motivation is key here- I believe the core value is customizable and needs-based PD. The resources and tools can be scaffolded and educators are able to form professional learning communities (with as little or much guidance as needed) per interest, need, reinforcement, deeper learning, etc.
• Who Are the Community’s Leaders? Will the staff of the sponsoring organization lead the community? Will members of the community itself serve as leaders? The community leaders will include our administrative team, our leadership team, our advisory committee, McKeon Education Group, and hopefully INFOhio staff.
• What Role Will Resources Play in Your Community? Are they a means for members to learn from each other or is access to or the production of resources an end in itself? Learning from each other is the goal enable a sense of leadership for all. We want to embrace ongoing learning both in and out of the classroom and provide opportunities for our students to be lifelong learners and as such, we need to practice, participate in opportunities utilizing this idea, and ultimately model it for our students. 
• How Will Resources Align With Your Community’s Focus? What kinds of resources align with the community’s objectives and values? Which are likely to be useful to the community’s intended audience? What genres and media are likely to be most accessible? The resources provided via INFOhio vary for all levels of learning from early and emerging readers through to adulthood. The pathways for learning are in place making the resources less cumbersome to dive into and the Educator Tools permits users to search in many ways to as specific or broad as necessary. I am unable to list all of the kinds of resources that will align however, I do anticipate educators using the tools, the upper elementary embracing Go, Ask, Act, Achieve, the middle grades implementing Bookflix, and the early grades implementing Highlights Library, to name a few.
• How Can Technology Be Leveraged to Support Your Vision? What needs for communication, resource exchange, collaboration, and relationship-building can technology help fulfill? Technology will be helpful in a variety of ways: learning stations and learning centers; building collaborative PBL teams in the classroom (not so much 1-1 tech, but a team having access to a computer); instant feedback and research in order to focus on solutions; out of class collaboration and on-demand collaboration as well. It also may provide means of curating and threading resources as well as sharing information.
• How Do You Encourage Members to Participate? What kinds of communication will you continue beyond initial recruitment? What incentives for participation can you offer? I had not thought of incentives - I need to think more about this! I will say that our administrative team is open to helping award contact hours for documented time on professional learning opportunities and this no doubt is a motivator. I think experiencing a lesson that showcases resources and tools can be an excellent motivator for developing and sustaining participation. Recruitment beyond the initial recruitment: I would highlight and share success stories; post and share flyers of drop-in sessions; use questions that are engaging to create excitement, and will continue to explore other means.
• How Do You Sustain Engagement? What will motivate members to participate regularly across time? How can activities be designed to encourage regular and substantive contributions from members? Sustaining engagement - honestly, I believe many of the ways I listed above for recruitment will apply here. Additionally, INFOhio continues to grow and add resources and tips, and a "What's New" bulletin would be great let alone sharing directly from INFOhio. The Monday Mini-Lessons can be excellent as well- a regular update, along with the blog posts. Finally, I would be sure to keep on top of our collective goal as well as level goals and literature in line with these.
• How Do You Support Members in Achieving the Community’s Goals? What tools and services do you need to provide to members to enable their collaborations to bear fruit? How will you work to clarify and modify the community’s purpose across time? Tools and services I need include openness, adaptability, communication, and leadership. I will not work in a silo but will work directly with the teams who are themselves the stakeholders so that across time the purpose is aligned with the needs and changing circumstances which may arise.
• How Do You Engage Users Who Vary Widely in the Time Available to Commit? What are reasonable expectations about how often and for how long members will be able to participate? How do you ensure a high-value-to-time ratio for that participation? In terms of reasonable expectations, I am hoping to implement monthly reflections via a Google Form which is a nice balance of needs for responders, measures of successes, and progress professionally. Because common planning time has been implemented, twice a month we will meet as PLCs and have an open learning forum. I am going to meet with the administrative team, leadership team, and level coordinators to implement these practices with valid input and co-direction.

Since I am a Media Manager, I see my role as working with the teachers in my building to see how they can best utilize all of the amazing resources that INFOhio has to offer---let them know that they don't have to endlessly search on the internet and try and piece a lesson together.  Stop here first!  There is so much here!  I, also, introduce the students to Bookflix, World Book Learning, and World Book Kids through short lessons during their media time.  I can build on those lessons by collaborating with the teachers and focus the lessons to specific units the students are taught.  

I'd like to see what units they already have in place so that I can best guide them to the most helpful areas on INFOhio.  After graduating from college, I taught 7th grade for 8 years.  Finding and creating meaningful and challenging lessons that allign with Ohio's state standards was the daily goal in my classroom.  After exploring all INFOhio has to offer, I view it as such a reliable tool that teacher's can use to find those meaning and challenging lessons and be confident that they have found a quality lesson for their students.

While exploring and learning more about INFOhio, I found myself looking at the Educator Tools sections through my teacher lens.  I kept thinking, "I would love to teach that lesson!   And the kids would love it, too!"  My focus during my presentaion would be how to find and best utilize the Educator Tools feature.  I know that many teachers at my elementary use the different areas on the site, but I don't know if anyone has ever instructed them on any of the deeper layers of each program (ex. lessons plan, WebQuests, compare/contrast tool).  I think knowing this would generate a lot of excitement and interest in exploring all of those options and using INFOhio as an extention to exsisting lessons the teachers have already created.  

I am lucky that I have other educators in my district and building currently working through this ICoach process, too.  I look forward to working with them and sharing what we have learned through this process.      

The problem this community is trying to address is the superficial use of BookFlix as a digital resource. Our core audience is K-3 teachers in our school building. Participation will begin with professional development on the resources available through INFOhio and continue throughout the year with lesson sharing during team meetings. In introducing specific lessons on the use of high quality instructional materials the goal is to motic=vate teachers to seek out more instructional content from INFOhio.

I will be the initial community leader, but as the year moves forward and the staff becomes more comfortable with the resources and lessons, they will take on the leadership of this community.

The resources play a main role in providing teachers with instructional materials and providing a springboard for producing their own lessons.  Using the multitude of resources available within the INFOhio website will keep classroom instruction aligned with our State Standards. Technology will pay a large role in resource sharing for the teachers and the students, as we can use Open Space for each grade level to share resources and lessons and teachers can use Google Classroom to share our resources with students.

I will begin by providing PD for each grade level with a particular tool in INFOhio and a lesson directly connected to their curriculum. The incentive is lessons with vetted resources ready to be used in their classrooms. I will also ask for topics or lessons they would be interested in for future PDs.To help support my communities, I will continually ask what curriculum is upcoming and offer resources to support that area.

I think that using Open Space as our central discussion/collaboration place will help to keep community members connected and involved as our culture moves more toward communicating digitally than face to face conversations. Community members may not have time for even a 10-15 minute discussion during their work day, but can find a little time to check the group discussion for any new resources.

1. What Is the Community’s Purpose?
   An important need in my building is teacher access to high-quality instructional materials to supplement our adopted curriculum.  The purpose will be to provide professional development on Educator Tools which will provide access to high quality instructional materials.
2. Who Is the Core Audience?
   The core audience will be all teachers in my building for grades 7-12.
3. How Will Users Participate?
   I envision whole-group instruction to introduce the use of Educator Tools.  Then, small-group investigation with groups being aligned by their content areas (based on their TBTs). The small-groups will begin searching for instructional resources they may use to supplement lessons and share through EdTools capabilities.
4. What Value Does Your Community Add to Educators’ Practices?
   Teachers currently have an internal motivation to integrate activities into instruction using iPad compatible resources.  The vast majority of our middle school and many of our high school teachers are anxious to have access to materials they can include in instruction via their learning manangement system.
5. Who Are the Community’s Leaders?
   The community leaders will be the Instructional Coach, the Technology Resource Coach, and the ICoach,   To some extent, the building principals will be a leader as they participate in TBTs.
6. What Role Will Resources Play in Your Community?
   Initially, I expect teachers to learn from each other as they become comfortable with Educator Tools.  However, as teachers delve into the wealth of materials available, I expect teachers to learn from the use of resources in the production of lessons.
7. How Will Resources Align With Your Community’s Focus? 
   With our Instructional Coach's professional development of teacher's understanding of best practices and the Technology Coach's continued mentoring of INFOhio tools, our teachers will continue to refine their use of high-quality instrucitonal materials for using in student instruction.  Our staff have a wealth of "old school" instructional materials.  The aim for this tool is to help teachers develop a wealth of digital instructional tools to aid student learning.
8. How Can Technology Be Leveraged to Support Your Vision?
   At this point, I would like to introduce Open Space as a tool teachers may use to communicate and exchange resources.  Open Space is a great tool to record the learning process and provide a chronology of growth within a group of teachers.
9. How Do You Encourage Members to Participate?
   For some teachers, the intrinsic desire to improve in their profession is sufficient.   For other teachers, it may require one-on-one mentoring from the Instructional Coach and/or Technology Coach to help move them along.  But, in all cases, it is imperative that the Community Leaders are seen as working shoulder to shoulder with teacher.   The "we are all in it together" mentality will help move teachers toward our goal.  Using our Weekly Update as a way to spotlight the efforts of teachers and the progress they are making in transforming their instruction.
10. How Do You Sustain Engagement?
    It is imperative that the Community Leadership maintains a consistent message focusing on our goals and progress.  We can never assume that once we have the ball rolling, that it will continue to roll.  Continued messaging and branding in our building focusing on the successes of students through the use of these high-quality instructional materials.
11. How Do You Support Members in Achieving the Community’s Goals?
    Although teachers' efforts are what causes the goals to be achieved, their continued progress takes a village. It is imperative that the Community Leaders are seen as working shoulder to shoulder with teacher.   The "we are all in it together" mentality will help move teachers toward our goal. 
12. How Do You Engage Users Who Vary Widely in the Time Available to Commit?
    With my approach, using our TBT time for this effort should help eliminate much of the "time available" obstacle.  Initially, I anticipate asking teachers to focus on lessons in one unit for them to research.  Find one or 2 new instructional materials for them to integrate into lessons.   Ideally, use of data to evaluate instructional changes.  Evaluating data to see if the changes helped or hendered.  Then, as our teacher's skills develop, I would expect to ask for more in future units.

• What Is the Community’s Purpose? 
  • Our purposed is to provide all of our students equitable access to a high quality education and real world opportunities in our school district. By doing so, we will prepare our students to compete for any opportunity to achieve their goals and become functioning members of society. 
• Who Is the Core Audience? 
  • All stakeholders in our district play a role in molding our students to achieve at high levels. Particularly classroom teachers have the greatest impact in exposing students to high level instruction and real world learning opportunities. It's important to best prepare our teachers with a plethroa of resources to provide our students with the best opportunities. Teachers will engage in groups based on content. 
• How Will Users Participate?
  • Actitvities that I envision are:
    • PD guided work sessions for departments - would occur periodically throughout the year
    • TBT mini sessions of lession planning - would occur on a weekly basis
    • One on one sessions for modeling - would occur at teacher request
• What Value Does Your Community Add to Educators’ Practices? 
  • Educators are motivated by their student success. We will work to support teachers with resources, activities and content to help engage students in setting and reaching goals in the class. 
• Who Are the Community’s Leaders? 
  • ICoaches in our district, administation and curriculum department
• What Role Will Resources Play in Your Community? 
  • Resources will be used to provide educators with tools to design lessons that engage students and provide equitable access to content. Teachers will collaborate together and rely on ICoaches and instructional support staff in implementation. 
• How Will Resources Align With Your Community’s Focus? 
  • Three of the resources I have discussed: Educator Tools, Science Online and World Book Students, will be types of resources aligning to our values. These resources provide tools for students to engage with content through technology, translation for ELL, scaffolded content and activities to engage students in learning opportunities. 
• How Can Technology Be Leveraged to Support Your Vision?
  • ​​​​​​​Our district is 1-1 with iPads and technology will be leveraged as a primary instructional tool in every classroom. BY utilizing INFOhio, teachers will be able to keep technology as a required forefront for engaging with content. 
• How Do You Encourage Members to Participate? 
  • Through district PD, department chairs (BLT meetings), TBT meetings and providing opportunities to request one on one meetings. 
• How Do You Sustain Engagement?
  • ​​​​​​​Through consistent implementation and support. 
• How Do You Support Members in Achieving the Community’s Goals? 
  • Sharing district vision and goals. Allowing teachers to express their specific goals. Providing resources and modeling that align to their goals. Ensuring there is consistent implement and support of the implementation. 
• How Do You Engage Users Who Vary Widely in the Time Available to Commit?
  • ​​​​​​​Implementation and use of the resources should not feeling as "extra" work. These resources should provide support in our instruction and should become nature through our lesson planning. Its important to provide consistent support and ample time to collaborate through TBT and department meetings. 

• What Is the Community’s Purpose?  Our teaching community at McKinley High School is trying to reach the learners in our buildings and help them become creative, confident, and open-minded learners using technology infused, high quality learning materials.
• Who Is the Core Audience?  The core audience is our teaching staff, who will take these high quality materials to our students.
• How Will Users Participate? Teachers will participate in staff PD sessions, and ensure that the work continues in teacher based teams.
• What Value Does Your Community Add to Educators’ Practices? The biggest issue that will be addressed is relevance and student engagement.  We are working daily to develop relevant, high quailty materials, and we seek to engage students in their learning and make the experience meaningful.  The teachers understand the value of this, and are motivated to improve in this way. 
• Who Are the Community’s Leaders? The leaders of this instructional community include the media specialist, instructional coach, technology coach, and curriculum specialist.
• What Role Will Resources Play in Your Community? We know that high quaility teaching materials are key, and the instructional leaders in the district will seek to ensure that teachers are provided with awareness and access to everything they need to allow stuidents to succeed.
• How Will Resources Align With Your Community’s Focus? Our district mission is to develop creative, confident, and open-minded learners.  We will seek to provide materials that focus on inquiry based and project based learning.
• How Can Technology Be Leveraged to Support Your Vision? Technology is key to this process, because it enhances the teaching and learning process, pictures become high resolution images, video clips go from being played on screen to embedded, and documents go from paper to collaborative workspaces.  We will seek to enhance the confidence and creativity of all of our learners.
• How Do You Encourage Members to Participate? By working on content specific sessions during teacher based teams, we will ensure that teachers are working with individuals who have similar goals and focus.  By having frequent and relevant conversations, we will encourage participation.
• How Do You Sustain Engagement? By having building goals monitored by administration, and keeping the discussion and work relevant to teacher's classroom needs, we will ensure that teachers stay engaged.
• How Do You Support Members in Achieving the Community’s Goals? As an instructional leader in the buidling, I am part of the team who will support, encourage, and mentor teachers who are working toward goals.  By keeping communication and support frequent, everyone will continue to progress. 
• How Do You Engage Users Who Vary Widely in the Time Available to Commit? By building in time to work in teams, teachers will have more opportunity to engage.  When teachers are left to work on their own, intiatives often fall by the wayside.  We will make sure that goals are set so that teams and departments have time to focus on these goals during school hours.  This will prevent the pattern of an initial surge, followed by a regression where the new material falls by the wayside.

• What Is the Community’s Purpose?  Currently the problem of focus is ACHIEVEMENT (isn't it always? If you teach a tested area . . . ) We've made a lot of head way in data collection and finding relevent data tools, using that data to create intervention groups at varying levels. Now I think our core questions is: Now that we know, how can we impact those learners for improvement?   
• Who Is the Core Audience?  The audiance for this presentation will be primarily 9-11 teachers of tested areas (Algebra, Geometry, Biology, American History, Government, and ELA). It would also be a plus to get an administrator as well. In HS, subject areas are very specialized and diverse, but this groups uniting feature is data-driven improvements for all groups of students. 
• How Will Users Participate? I'd like to start by collecting some "pre-assessment" data from the group on their curricular needs and what they currenlty use. This will probably be done through a simple Google Forms. During the presentation, I would like to encourage discussion and plan to share some of the "discussion" items prior so that members can have time to think things through. I would like to encourage some individual exploration of the Educator Tools in the week or so after the presentation and gather some feedback. This might be able to turn into an on-going part of our quarterly meetings!
• What Value Does Your Community Add to Educators’ Practices? Biggest motivator for these teachers will be improved data (i.e. test scores). Having the opportunity to add depth to their materials selection and curriculum will be an avenue toward that goal. 
• Who Are the Community’s Leaders? The leaders will primarily be the teachers themselves with some input from building administrator. 
• What Role Will Resources Play in Your Community? Initially, providing information on access to the various Educator Tools and INFOhio in general is the the goal. Long-term, though, I would love to see this to be a recurring theme and for teachers in this group to connect to others in the buiding to share what they have learned thereby improving the overall education our students recieve.  
• How Will Resources Align With Your Community’s Focus? Each member of the group has very different needs as far as the tools that will be most beneficial to his or her classroom. I plan on showing how to filter resources by grade and subject and highlight a tool or two that seem most useful to each. For instance, I think the government teacher will LOVE Points of View Reference Center. I also want to make a special effort highlight tools for math and science. Our school is also trying to re-establish a library and literacy is at the top of everyone's agenda. I will probably point out EBSCO e-Books as well. 
• How Can Technology Be Leveraged to Support Your Vision? Although we will be meeting in person quarterly and all work in a very small building, technology like OpenSpaces can be easily used to share resources. I might also consider using a Google Classroom because everyone is already very familiar with that platform and using it daily. Maybe they would be more likely to check-in with something that is up and running on their desktops daily? 
• How Do You Encourage Members to Participate? The only incintive that can be offered is the joy of learning and increasing self-efficacy as on educator- which is under continual, yearly demoralization. This group, however, is pretty motivated toward their goals (individually and as a group) and tend to "dig" in to things they see as beneficial to the goal. Making that apparent with respects to my presentation will be the key objective. 
• How Do You Sustain Engagement? I plan to offer "reminders" of various tools a week or so prior to quarterly meetings and share Monday Mini Lessons with the group. 
• How Do You Support Members in Achieving the Community’s Goals? I need to show that using and accessing the various Educator Tools is easy and useful. I plan to ask everyone to bring their school-issussed Ipads and have them create the bookmark. 
• How Do You Engage Users Who Vary Widely in the Time Available to Commit? Teachers are very busy people! In proportion, we are given very little time to plan and learn on our own, yet that is a critical piece to education. Beyond the intial presentation, using the quartely meetings as a focus time should be beneficial to all members of the group.

• What Is the Community’s Purpose? One of my biggest professional goals is to provide access to resources for staff as well as students. Through this professional development, I hope to offer teachers the knowledge and skills to access resources and support to implement immediately into their classroom instruction. 
• Who Is the Core Audience? My audience will be the teachers and staff I collaborate with in my building. I would also like to conduct some professional development in my library department as well for them to engage with their staff. 
• How Will Users Participate? I envision offering in-person PD on designated days in our district as well as some on-demand tutorials.
• What Value Does Your Community Add to Educators’ Practices? Teachers will be able to immediately access the content offered by INFOhio as it is already in our district's learning portal. Teachers will be motivated to use high-quality content that is aligned with state standards and is engaging to students. 
• Who Are the Community’s Leaders? I hope to see staff members who are benefiting from the resources and content to share their teams. 
• What Role Will Resources Play in Your Community? Because INFOhio offers such a variety of resources, I believe students and staff can learn from the resources but can also create new content using web tools. 
• How Will Resources Align With Your Community’s Focus? Our curriculum is aligned with the Ohio learning standards, so the resources offered in ONFOhio support our learning objectives. Information is presented in a multimedia format and also offers opportunities for students to directly engage with the content making it appealing for educators and students. 
• How Can Technology Be Leveraged to Support Your Vision? A lot of our standards call for collaboration and sharing products with an authentic audience. I see products such as Book Nook filling that need. 
• How Do You Encourage Members to Participate? I will encourage staff to pursue the professional development by being flexible and offering multiple opportunities for learning, such as video tutorials, small and large group presentations to staff, as well as teaching classroom lessons for students. 
• How Do You Sustain Engagement? Teachers want and need high-quality resources and support to help students achieve their learning goals. Once teachers see the existing content and support along with student engagement, I believe the buy-in will be easy.  
• How Do You Support Members in Achieving the Community’s Goals? I feel like this professional developmet will be an ongoing process to meet the needs of teachers and students throughout the school year. For example, ebook resources such as Highlights and Storia will be a solid resource to be introduced at the beginning of the year. Research resources and databases such as World Book and PebbleGo Next will be helpful to support particular units of study and research. 
• How Do You Engage Users Who Vary Widely in the Time Available to Commit? Educators are busy and often overwhelmed. It's difficult to focus on resources at the beginning of the year for something you're not going to teach until the second half of the year. I want to make staff aware of what's available and then give them the opportunity for direct PD on a particular resource when their need for it arises. 

Our community of practice would be the teachers and administrators in our school building. By including all teachers in an open space community, we will be able to take advantage of the opportunity to collaborate and build work that is continuous and cohesive throughout the school. This is significant to set up sucess not just for a single school year, but for a student's entire academic career. All educators will need to be involved, not just classroom specific teachers, but any adult who works with students throughout the school day. Teachers will be motivated to participate to improve student performance and testing results.

Resources will be a way to for staff to learn from each other, as well as communicate and solve problems for each individual staff members. Continuing communicating in the community and providing resources within the community will motivate members to continue to participate over time. We will be able to use Open Space to provide these resources and enable their collaboration. There is no identifiable end to how long members will be able to communicate in this way.

Our school's community purpose is we are trying to become a STREAM school. Core Audience would be staff, students, parents, family and community. How will users participate would be getting involved in design and research for STREAM lessons and activities. Value of the community is parents, family and businesses that support the ideas of a STREAM education. Community leaders would be principal, teachers, school board, PTU and possibly small businesses. Resources will be based on need, for example, what kind of STREAM activities will be planned and what materials and research will be used in regards to research, and execution of the lessons planned. How will INFOhio help with this planning and implementation and how to support the goals of the community and engage users would be to provide them with the tools that will help with research and brianstorming process. ISearch, World Book and other library digital databases could help staff and students explore areas of interest that can be used to help with research process. Finding highly quality materials that are researched based and have interact funtions would be extremely helpful as well as students are trying to problem solve and find solutions to challenges posed with STREAM education. 

Purpose: The purpose of the PD I would like to provide is to share and educate the teachers about what resources are available and how to effectively use them in order to increase student achievement with digital reading and research.

Audience: Teachers and other staff members. I would also like to offer a parent/family class, but I think I need to get teachers using the resources first.

Participate: I have talked to my instructional coach about presenting during one of our district pd times. I would also like to create an online discussion space, either in Open Space or Google Classroom (our district uses this a lot).

Value: I have had many teachers in grades 2 - 5 ask me to help their students research, and ask for books to use for research projects in their classrooms. Knowing about INFOhio and the resources would allow them to uitilize these within their classrooms. I think they would find great value in this.

Community Leaders: I would begin as the leader, but would like to share that role with all participants as everyone "oens" their own learning.

Resources: Learning about the resources would be my goal, and also finding way to utilize the resources in their current lessons.

Resources Align: Ultimately, I think World Book Early Learning and Kids and Gale in Context are the ones I would start with. These seem to be good research tools for grades 2 - 5. I might also show 5th grade iSearch. I also really like PebbleGo Next and Capstone, but they do not have the breadth of topics.

Technology: I think a Google Classroom would be the best for our staff to share ideas. We already use Google Classroom extensively, so everyone is familiar with it and receives frequent updates from it.

Encourage Participation: In addition to an initial PD, I would liek to record or share quick videos about different resources. I was thinking about a monthly email newsletter to staff, highlighting one resource or web tool each time. I could also offer a monthly after school drop in session to practice learning that resource.

Sustain Engagement: I would like to believe that once teachers experience the resources and use them with their classes that they will continue to use them.

Support Members: Continued support from me would look like a monthly newsletter with support links, and with helping teachers incorporate the resources with their lessons. I can meet with them during thier planning time to discuss how INFOhio resources could be used with their upcoming units.

Engage Users: The intial meeting would be during scheduled PD. Additional meetings would be optional, based on interest. I would also like to meet during their planning time to allow them to immediately see how these resourcea can bevefit their lessons.

What Is the Community’s Purpose? 

The purpose of this community of practice will be to empower students with resources and skills necessary to access credible information to inform their research questions. The problem we are trying to solve stems from students’ exposure to misinformation at a state in their lives when discernment is difficult. Their curiosity, especially when it comes to topics they care about passionately, paired with their energy when pursuing a project of their own design and choosing, presents an opportunity to seize.

What opportunity is it intended to take advantage of? Why is this significant?

This is significant because, not only are discourse and discernment incredibly important the continuation of their academic careers, these are vital.to the support of American democracy.
 

Who Is the Core Audience? This will be a role-SEMI-alike group of ELA and Social Studies teachers who will explore current INFOhio resources for their grade levels and work together to develop assignments that wrap key research tools and instruction on concomitant processes into their lessons. 

How Will Users Participate? The teachers will have mini-sessions  on a set schedule embedded during  their daily common planning time, starting in the first quarter, work toward planning the unit/assignment during the second quarter, and delivering this learning to students in the third quarter. 

What Value Does Your Community Add to Educators’ Practices? This community’s members will be deeply embedded in the Grade Level Teams 6-9 and the GLTs will overlap with the content area/department teams for 6-12. 

Who Are the Community’s Leaders? The GLT Teacher Leaders and also the Content Area/Department Chairs. The district’s Director of Teaching and Learning will work with the Library Technician to facilitate the learning series. 

What Role Will Resources Play in Your Community? The hope is that, if we can stage a research exhibition/celebration  as well as publish what student work products can be posted to their portfolios. 

How Will Resources Align With Your Community’s Focus? We have a future-ready focus on personalized, project based learning. “Learn Differently, Care Deeply.”  “High Tech, High Touch.” These resources will facilitate our students' production of research driven by their own interests and passions. These resources will help our students achieve and document their achievement in response to the elements of our Graduate Profile. https://www.fairviewparkschools.org/domain/10 

How Can Technology Be Leveraged to Support Your Vision? Our students have the hardware and software to construct meaning. They need assets like INFOhio’s databases and skills like those that are part of R4S. 

How Do You Encourage Members to Participate? As this PD will be embedded in the teachers’ day and prep time provided to develop understanding of resources that will facilitate their students’ achievement--the hope is that they will engage with each other and the learning. 

How Do You Sustain Engagement? Again, building this PD into the teachers’ work and linking the activities to student outcomes and school/district wide exhibitions/celebrations should help legitimize the enterprise. 

How Do You Support Members in Achieving the Community’s Goals? Buy-in, support, and affirmation from the principals will be critical to sustaining the project and bringing efforts to fruition.  Hopefully, as instructional leaders within their schools, they will join the learning and attempt to familiarize themselves with the tools and processes along with their teachers. 

How Do You Engage Users Who Vary Widely in the Time Available to Commit? This PD avoids the time crunch dilemma as it will be situated in established team time and focused on bringing building/district goals to completion through creation of work products to publish in portfolios and beyond  and to the point where the community can disseminate achievement to a wider circle and celebrate together.