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Right now, all of my focus is on the new dyslexia mandates being rolled out by ODE. It's going to be our responsibility to roll this out to teachers in a way that is mangeable and, frankly, tolerable. Though this professional development is required by the educators, I found these questions very powerful when thinking of the dyslexia training; I hope it is appropriate. 

• What Is the Community’s Purpose?  The problem the community is trying to solve is the deficit in literacy and how our current instructional practices contribute to it. It is important because many students are not where they need to be and continue to stay off track which limits their opportunities later in school and in life. 
• Who Is the Core Audience?  The educators involved in this next year will be K-1 teachers. 
• How Will Users Participate?  This is where it gets a little hairy. They are required to do 18 hours of online modules. We, as facilitators, are encouraged to conduct 36 total hours of professional development to make the 18 online hours meaningful. We have been brainstorming ways to do this that will reach out teachers without overwhelming them. 
• What Value Does Your Community Add to Educators’ Practices?  The improvement of student literacy across the board will (hopefully) be what motivates educators to actively participate in this community. This is a big ask of them, however. Many of them will be reforming the way they currently teacher, and there are some components of the instruction that may even be completely opposite of the way they were taught or currently teach. 
• Who Are the Community’s Leaders?  Though the ODE is the one rolling this out, ESCs and ISSTs will be leading this community as facilitators. Eventually, however, as we build capacity, teachers (members of the community) will become leaders in their districts and buildings. 
• What Role Will Resources Play in Your Community? How we roll this out as facilitators will determine if the resources are actually useful for our educators. If we can successfully build this as a true community, hopefully, teachers will be able to share best practice and learn from each other as we navigate through this training and transition. 
• How Will Resources Align With Your Community’s Focus?  As facilitators, our supplementation will be crucial. The online modules in and of themselves will likely be more of a frustration than a tool for the educators. The resources we pull, possibly from INFOhio and other areas, will hopefully serve as a means to making the content rolled out be ODE more accessible to our educators. 
• How Can Technology Be Leveraged to Support Your Vision?  Teachers will be able to work on this training on their own time which will help with accessibility. As we build a cohort of teachers working through this together, we hope to establish a community where teachers feel as if they can bounce ideas off of each other and collaborate, and we will need to create a virtual space where they can do that. 
• How Do You Encourage Members to Participate?  Teachers have to participate in the 18 hours online; however, they do not have to participate in the additional supplemental hours we provide as facilitators. These extra hours, however, will likely be where the most meaningful professional development happens, so it will be imperative that we have resources and accessibility that encourages members to participate. We have considered offering the same session multiple times to help accommodate different teachers. Something as simple as this communicates to the members that their time matters, and we want to do what we can to accommodate that. 
• How Do You Sustain Engagement? We plan to hold enrichment activities that allow teachers to continue to grow their craft. These sessions will allow the teacher to leave with tools and resources they can use to implement the new strategies they will take from the initial trainings. This will help support the teachers as well as inform them on best practices. 
• How Do You Support Members in Achieving the Community’s Goals?  We need to provide them with access to quality resources. We need to provide them with support and understanding. What they are being asked to do is quite significant in the amount of time they are being given to do it, so it is crucial that the support and resources we offer are of high quality. 
• How Do You Engage Users Who Vary Widely in the Time Available to Commit?  I alluded to this in an earlier question, but we will offer the same session multiple times. We will hold open office hours for people who may not be able to attend sessions. We will create a virtual community where educators can share their ideas and resources. 

I will be focusing on professional development pertaining to high quality instructional materials. 

• What Is the Community’s Purpose? The purpose of this community is to facilitate teacher use of HQIM. The use of high quality materials across the districts we service is important because it provides equitable access to quality materials and instruction which will inevitably create a more high quality education for local students. 
• Who Is the Core Audience?  All educators will be involved in this community. It will span different content areas and age levels. 
• How Will Users Participate?  This professional development will be in-person with an online padlet of resources educators will have access to. Users will be able to engage with each other in real time which is important because they will be able to discuss questions and concerns immediately. This will help alleviate some of the skepticism educators may have regarding the content. 
• What Value Does Your Community Add to Educators’ Practices?  In a recent professional development, we learned that teacher actions are what need to be changed first. Once their actions are changed, their attitudes will change, and eventually, student performance will as well. Therefore, we need the educators to find enough value in aligning high quality instruction with high quality materials. Once they at least agree to change their actions, they will begin to change their beliefs as they become more confident in what they are doing. 
• Who Are the Community’s Leaders?  We, as ESC leaders, will lead the teachers. The ultimate goal, however, is to build capacity within districts to have teacher leaders. 
• What Role Will Resources Play in Your Community? Resources are one of the most significant components of this professional development. The padlet will contain links to INFOhio resources and Edreports. There will also be a space for educators to share what is working for them in their classroom, so they are able to learn from each other. 
• How Will Resources Align With Your Community’s Focus?  Edreports aligns with the community focus because it gives educators a space where they can see objective analysis of different resources. The Instructional Materials Rubric from INFOhio will also be an important resource because it gives teachers a guide to help them discover HQIM for their own classroom. 
• How Can Technology Be Leveraged to Support Your Vision?  Technology will be extremely important for this community. Educators will need a platform to share resources they use and whether or not they were effective and accessible. INFOhio will be a great place for educators to not only find resources, but to evaluate them as well. 
• How Do You Encourage Members to Participate?  The support we provide after the professional development is how we hope to encourage members to participate. Sometimes it feels as if we're asking a lot of our educators to modify or adapt what we're doing, so frequently updating the padlet and being availble for support will be imperative to facilitate engagement within the community. 
• How Do You Sustain Engagement? I kind of alluded to this above. Keeping the community active virtually will hopefully sustain engagement. As teachers are using resources and are encouraged to share them, it will hopefully become a cyclical process: teacher tries resource, teacher shares resource, another teacher tries resource, repeat. 
• How Do You Support Members in Achieving the Community’s Goals?  Providing a space educators can share their progress, glows, and grows will be our way of supporting the members achieving the goal. Being honest and truly reflective will be important because educators value the opinion of other educators most. Therefore, providing a platform where educators can share with each other will help bolster everyone towards that goal of use high quality insturction and materials in their course. 
• How Do You Engage Users Who Vary Widely in the Time Available to Commit?  In a perfect world, every educator would be able to meet with us in an in-person session. However, if they are unable to attend, the online platform and padlet will provide plenty of information to facilitate growth. 

The biggest initiative that my work centers on currently is the Ohio Learning Community which is a Future Forward Ohio-funded project.  The OLC is the creation of a number of online courses that will be free and available to all educators in the state of Ohio.  The OLC by definition is a community that will grow and expand throughout Ohio, and as I inform stakeholders and share this platform of courses, I want to also share other free and useful resources available in the state including INFOhio.  

• What Is the Community’s Purpose?  The purpose of this community is to solve the need for high-quality professional development and access to resources in all parts of the state.   This is significant because all parts of the state do not have the same level of access to either of these so the OLC and INFOhio provide every part of the state with high-quality PD and access to high-quality and professionally vetted resources. 

• Who Is the Core Audience?  All K-12 educators in the state of Ohio.  Other job titles may find some benefits as well, but K-12 educators are the target audience.  

• How Will Users Participate?  Participation is simple.  Enroll in a course and take advantage of either a self-paced or facilitated experience in a topic area that interests you.  Speaking to INFOhio, it is even easier as these resources are always available. 

• What Value Does Your Community Add to Educators’ Practices?  The community of learners created by and around the OLC will create an interactive space where educators can share ideas, best practices, successes, and failures, and they learn about topics that both interest them and will be beneficial to their growth in the classroom, and subsequent interactions with students.  PD opportunities that may not have been available in their part of the state can be immediately accessed on the online platform, and ultimately students throughout the state will benefit from the professional growth of their teachers. 

• Who Are the Community’s Leaders?  The community leaders will be a  combination of the course creators, ESCs, ITCs, ODE, and potentially INFOhio. Ultimately, students in the courses will be encouraged to join larger, related communities at the conclusion of their course or courses. 

• What Role Will Resources Play in Your Community? The community will be constantly reminded of the available resources, especially those that are free of charge throughout the duration of the course, and in the interaction among the members of the community. Also, depending on the subject matter of the course, the resources available through INFOhio may be specifically mentioned. 

• How Will Resources Align With Your Community’s Focus?  Once again, depending on the content of the course there may be direct alignment with the resources available through INFOhio, and other courses may have a more indirect connection. Courses that are facilitated will have a greater opportunity for the sharing possibilities and the connections between the courses and the resources available through INFOhio. 

• How Can Technology Be Leveraged to Support Your Vision?  Most if not all of the training will occur virtually so technology will make supporting this vision possible through virtual presentations, onboarding, and continuing training and support for course creators, learners, and site administrators.  This virtual model, most importantly will allow teachers to move at their own pace, and interact with other learners from throughout the state.  This will be the foundation of the learner communities that will grow out of these courses.  Our hope is that everyone will feel very safe interacting in these communities.   

• How Do You Encourage Members to Participate?  Participation will be encouraged and promoted in a number of ways.  First, we will be conducting Zoom meetings in conjunction with the release of new courses in the OLC.  These meetings will be recorded and segments of them shared on social media for further exposure.  We will also promote the training through social media, in addition to presentations at local curriculum group meetings, and state-level conferences and events.  The promotion of the OLC will indirectly be promoting many of the resources housed by INFOhio. 

• How Do You Sustain Engagement? That will definitely be a challenge, but we hope to sustain engagement by adding additional courses over the next two years that will appeal to educators throughout the state.  We also plan to have different agencies around the state have their own tenanted spaces where they can share online courses that they have created or developed with our support and guidance.  In addition, we will continue to promote all courses through social media as we share learner experiences and promote each new course as it is released. 

• How Do You Support Members in Achieving the Community’s Goals?  We will constantly iterate to provide easily accessible, high-quality free professional development for educators in Ohio, along with connecting them to the wide variety of free resources available to teachers, students, and families with an emphasis on the resources provided by INFOhio. 

How Do You Engage Users Who Vary Widely in the Time Available to Commit? This will be addressed by the self-paced aspect of most courses offered through the OLC.  Even in courses that are facilitated, there will be flexible and extended timelines for work completion to allow learners as much time as possible to complete their professional learning and growth. The 24/7 access to the courses will be a welcome benefit to educators that already have very busy schedules, and often struggle to find time to commit to continuing education.

Like Dave, I am also primarily focused on the Ohio Learning Community, part of a Future Forward Ohio-funded project. Our e-learning courses will provide many freely available courses to Ohio educators with a focus on high-quality professional learning opportunities aligned with the Ohio Department of Education, educator interests and needs, and the growth of online learning communities. In the creation of these courses, INFOhio resources were integrated where they best fit the topics and strategies covered in the courses.

Since Dave answered the questions provided for this section succinctly, I will elaborate a little more on the nature of the course design that leverages community support. Many courses feature a learner reflection journal where most tasks and reflections take place from learner to self. There are several community engagement opportunities within the course where the learner is asked to contribute a portion of their reflection, completed product, or newly discovered resource in a manner that is consistent with the OLC’s value-add component of professional learning communities. Learners will have the opportunity to engage in discussions in a way that is meaningful to them. 

Contributing to the discussion in many cases can include making a post or responding to another member in the course learning community. The learner journal provides a focus on practicing and applying the knowledge, skills, and behaviors that are aligned to the course learning outcomes. The learning community provides a way to sustain engagement based on the individual’s needs and desires to share or reflect on information posted in the group. Additionally, learners have access to post or respond to other questions or related inquiries in a general space within the community that encourage conversation beyond the content and learning outcomes for the course.

An upcoming training I am hosting is on how to use various data sources for evidence of HQSD during the OPES evaluation.

• What Is the Community’s Purpose?  Learners will be reading reports and analyzing them to help make building-wide decisions to improve student learning
• Who Is the Core Audience?  Principals and Assistant Principals
• How Will Users Participate?  Zoom sessions with whole group opportunities for participation and breakout rooms, as well as time for individual building work to and support from me as the trainer
• What Value Does Your Community Add to Educators’ Practices? Data is an essential component of decision-making. Using all data to build a story that impacts student learning is key to growing teachers and students.
• Who Are the Community’s Leaders?  Leaders will emerge as data conversations occur; those who are able to read and analyze data will lead
• What Role Will Resources Play in Your Community? Each session focuses on a different resource. Each participant will have access to the resources suggested at his/her building level.
• How Will Resources Align With Your Community’s Focus?  Not only will participants be able to read data from the source, but they will receive an interactive slide deck with navigation tips, conversation starters, etc.
• How Can Technology Be Leveraged to Support Your Vision?  Almost all data is secured on an online platform. This training will be provided via Zoom.
• How Do You Encourage Members to Participate?  Participants who attend the initial OPES credentialing courses are invited to attend this course as a means of extending learning.
• How Do You Sustain Engagement? The sessions are quick-paced but allow time for rich discussion
• How Do You Support Members in Achieving the Community’s Goals?  These trainings are only 2-hours. However, I make myself available for support and assistance at any time after the course ends.
• How Do You Engage Users Who Vary Widely in the Time Available to Commit?  The sessions have been offered a total of 4 times in the past year to allow for those with other commitments a session that meets their needs.

The community that WOSU/SOITA/CET has been working on for over a year is the Teacher Campus platform

• What Is the Community’s Purpose?  

To provide quality professional development for PreK-12 educators in Ohio

• Who Is the Core Audience? 

Teachers Prek-12 in WOSU/SOITA/CET service regions

• How Will Users Participate?  

They can go to teachercampus.org and sign up for a Free Annual Subscription

• What Value Does Your Community Add to Educators’ Practices?  

With over 60 courses from educators across Ohio share their expertise so that others may benefit

• Who Are the Community’s Leaders? 

Staff members at WOSU Classroom and SOITA

• How Do You Encourage Members to Participate?  

 By asking that school districts that join Teacher Campus commit to sharing some of their local experts on teaching/technology/ and curriculum to add classes to Teacher Campus

• How Do You Sustain Engagement? 

Continuing to offer new classes

• How Do You Engage Users Who Vary Widely in the Time Available to Commit?  

Most PD courses are self-paced and can be accessed whenever is convenient for users.

My focus for the community are the understanding and use of Social Emotional resources, I feel this is a growing area of need for all educators. To be able to share resources that have been determined to be high quality and are developed with educators and students in mind. The core audience will be all educators across different content and grade levels. This professional development will be in-person with a presentation and live interaction with the participants. Participants will be provided opportunities to explore the available resources and collaborate about how they could be utilized in their schools and areas. This community will add value to educators’ practices by helping them better understand how to meet the growing and diverse needs of their students and their social emotional needs. The community leaders will first be the ESC staff providing the professional development, after the presentation the leaders will then be the participants to take back and share with their leaders and staff. The resources are the most important part of the professional development, as the presentation is about how to interact and use the provided resources through INFOhio. Technology will be leverage in that with this professional development, we will create a “group” on Open Space to provide further collaboration of participants and sustain engagement in the use of the materials. This Open Space will be used to keep the conversation going about how to use the materials, open conversations among participants to share challenges and accomplishments. This space will also allow ESC leaders to be able to post updates or additional materials that may be added and available through INFOhio. Given the high demand for student overall mental health and teachers being the forefront of providing this support, I believe there will be a large interest in learning more about the available resources. This professional development will be in person but will also be video taped to be shared with those who may not be able to attend in person.