INFOhio ICoach

A way that I could use Open Space is to connect with other teachers in the same grade level and share resources for teaching third grade standards. I also like the idea of connecting and communicating about the curriculum within our district. I think this would be helpful to streamline ideas and expectations across the district. I hope that this resource provides ways for Ohio educators to connect in a meaningful way. 

Tara this is a great idea! It would be an awesome way for the teachers in both of our elementary buildings work together to support and share resources and activities. 

Open Space Groups would be an excellent place to share resources in a place that group members could return to when needed. Folders and handouts often get lost in the shuffle, but this is a place teachers could return to and develop or deepen their understanding of a professional development topic. 

The discussion threads are also useful if a group cannot meet together. It is also a way to extend thoughfulness and keep a professional development ongoing. 

Open Space makes it so easy to share thoughts and ideas with collegues.  Many of my co-workers do not utalize INFOhio and giving specific examples from other classrooms have made encouraging them to give it a try a little easier.

I think many of our staff and teachers know about Info ohio, but not how to use it well. I will be able to use Open Space as easy and organized access to collaborate with individual teachers and groups to better use InfoOhio.

Courtney - would you want to try this out with a grade level or 2 next year? I agree - our staff doesn't really now how to use it well ... I think they think it's far easier to just do a Google search, but then they are unhappy with the students picking the first or second result. I'd be happy to help with this.

I am excited to review the existing Open Space Groups to find groups that I can join to share and colaborate in to discover new ways of teaching certain subjects.  It is sometimes hard to find time to sit down with teachers and share the resouces available in INFOhio, but I envision creating a Group Resource Guide for my 2nd grade teachers for use when they do their Biography unit, or 1st grade and their animal unit.  If I can present "one spot shopping" for them, easily accessable online, I can move them towards using other INFOhio resources .

Diana this is perfect! And how cool would it be for you & Shelley to share in this together? Making collections of resources for the topics you know your teachers research can really go a long way when they want to do research with our littlest ones. 

I love the idea of using Open Space groups to share quality resources with TBTs! With so many Ross educators in the training, there are many opportunities to build Communities of Practice!

Reposting from 5/8/22 to Reply thread....I love the possibilities that Open Space Groups provides for future professional development. I believe Open Space Groups would be valuable in our District Leadership Team meetings (BLT and TBT).  

Open Space Groups would allow for an open communication with team members to understand all of the specific committees and their focus for the school year.  From an administrative view this resource would would be impactful to allow easy access for accountability and organization of needed resources for implementation.

I just started the process of what an ICoach does and what are the expectations, but I would assume that teaching Open Space Groups would allow better communication between colleagues about INFOhio resources and be used as a professional tool for open questions and discussions verse sending emails or text messages. My only concern is that I find teachers want information that is meaningful, but they want information quickly and easy to access without having to remember additional passwords. If it is too difficult to navigate, teachers may lose interest and not be as excited to learn the information.  

New posts and responses to your posts can be set up to arrive via email. Group members can read the posts directly from email. That can be helpful for those short on time.

I just realized that as I too just checked my email and saw your email with the link to the Open Space page to comment back to you. 

Everyone know that time is precious and it's no different in the teaching world.  It takes time to navigate through new resources.  I envision using OpenSpace as a way to communicate with teachers and share easy, reliable, and quality resources with them and making it an easy resource to use.  

I look forward to using the different groups in OpenSpace to find teaching ideas regarding technology and library lessons to  help me discover new ways of teaching such lessons.

Shelley - I think you and Diana can really use OpenSpace to collaborate and keep ideas/resources together for both buildings. 

I love the way Open Space groups feels a lot like Schoology discussions. Being able to have conversations around the topic in the same place you are collecting and housing and sharing resources is a great way to keep "it all" together. I've already poked around and joined a few groups. I also noticed there are several people I am already familiar with in these groups. 

I like the comparision between OS discussions and Schoology's. What's great about Open Space groups is that you can also connect with other like-minded educators around the state. I am excited to see how this can grow!

I can anticipate using OPen Space Groups within high school departments to provide a forum for discussion and resource sharing. I seek to spread knowledge cross-curricularly from this point once high yield strategies and resources have been identified within departments. 

I find the option of Open Space Groups a fantasitc tool to provide staff with topical depositories of information.  My first forey into Groups will be to mentor teachers on using INFOhio and Groups.   However, I am brainstorming more practical uses for developing "living" archives of instuctional guidance which will be available for existing teachers to refer to as well as new teachers can access.

Love this idea, Paul!

I am hoping to network more and share ideas of best practices specific to learning domains. Additionally, I want to create groups within our building as teams develop transdisciplinary learning experiences or even for professional learning goals. The impact this will have on professional learning will be to make it ongoing, transformational, and collaborative. Rather than a one-day in-service, it would be a best practice of education in that it will be ongoing via which new ideas, cultural relevance, and more could be applied.

Love this, Anne -  ongoing, transformational, and collaborative. Rather than a one-day in-service, it would be a best practice of education in that it will be ongoing via which new ideas, cultural relevance, and more could be applied.

That is high-quality PD!

One of my goals is to employ Open Space with teachers in a couple of ways: I wish to help support them with group recommendations that support their professional learning goals so as to network with like-minded educators with shared goals. I also hope to develop groups for teams of teachers, for example, I am currently with a team to develop and enrich their stewardship unit. A one-stop collaborative space will be excellent for this as we compile resources and share ideas. Finally, I would also love to support teachers in their specific domains for best practices and trends not to mention methods and ways to even dig deeper to build extensions into other domains via groups in Open Space.

The last time I heard much about OPEN SPACE was at OETC 2019.  (The pandemic proved to be a huge distraction--so sorry.) Seeing how the asset has materialized according to plans discussed then is just amazing.  

One thing we are really trying to do better with here in Fairview is sharing and publishing student work.  Portfolio development and exhibitions really took hard hits starting Spring 2020. We are going to try to rejuvenate this work.  I will be tapping the Grade Level and High School Content Team Leaders to spearhead efforts.  Open Space may prove an effective platform for them to preview approaches and selected formats/projects before these would be subjected to wider scrutiny via the district website. 

Another, more selfish use--I might tap Open Space as a means of getting into touch with teacher leaders across the state--those who may be at the forefront of actually implementing OTES 2.0 as this iteration was meant to be, collaborating with professional peers to understanding "high quality student data" and deploy it in service of instruction. Such an enterprise could be hugely influential by increasing teachers' understanding of how this new evaluation process is SUPPOSED to but isn't working. 

Melanie - what a great way to connect with other ed leaders across the state to understand HQ student data. There are many ways this platform can solve some of the problems in multiple districts with a shared space!

I plan to use the Open Space Groups to create grade level/departmental resources groups - such as 8th Grade ELA or 7th Grade Science. These groups can collaborate and share InfOhio resources with each other. This would be a great way to introduce InfOhio to my staff and create buy in.

I would love to share Open Space with the other media specialists in my district. This is an excellent place to share lesson plan ideas and ask questions of other media specialists in the state. Since there is only one media specialist per building, this would be a great place to connect and share ideas. 

Open Space would be a great place to share resources with others outside of my district, and to get ideas and inspiration from others. Many of the groups that I looked at had great discussions and contain a wealth of information and expertise that can benefit me in this new position, and I look forward to joining and participating in those groups. However, I am trying to decide why I would use it for my district or building team instead of a shared Google Drive or a Google Classroom... What would be the benefit of our team using it instead of our established Google spaces? If we were not a Google district I could see it being a great place to collaborate.

Courtney wrote above how teachers seem familiar with INFOhio, but not how to use it - I would agree with that. Students seem to think research involves running a Google search and clicking on the first result. I think a way I could use Open Space would be to help our staff better understand how to use INFOhio and, in turn, how our students can utilize it.

I didn't remember that I had already created an Open Space account. When I was required to join the iCoach group, I investigated the other groups available...and I joined a few already. I am looking forward to checking out this and other groups to learn and share information. I use social media as my PLN, I will add Open Space to my collection!

This will be a great place to create groups for our teacher based teams to share information and resources.  I can envision creating groups for specific PD sessions, and then having teachers join during the PD.  At this point, they can then browse what has been posted, contribute their own resources, and participate in discussions.

I am looking forward to using Open Space for professional development with teachers in my building as we collaborate on projects and activities to do with their students. As a school librarian, I'm always trying to find ways to apply my lessons to standards and lessons they are working on in the classroom. I will be able to more clearly communicate with the teachers about what resources are available and how we can implement them in lessons for the classroom and library. This will make things simpler for myself and the teachers and remove the stress of miscommunication and misunderstanding from our planning and communications.

Open Space would be great to use in our district. We have 14 buildings 6 of which are elementary buildings that I work at consistently. Open Space would help keep professional development going throughout the whole school year. It would give the teachers an opportunity to come back to what they were doing and more time for them to complete tasks. It would also give them the chance to work with teachers in other elementary buildings so they can share ideas and work collaboratively. I would like to use Open Space to make a more collaborative professional development across our district. 

In the school district where I work, I am an intervention specialist. I coteach with one and sometimes more teachers during any given day or week. Having this resource under my belt, I will be able to provide training and information to not only them, but to other teachers during our teacher-based team meetings. The impact of providing my peers with information about INFOhio could be shared exponentially, especially when we meet district wide and report out about new information.