Good Things Take Time
ART OF THE TITLE
Back in the summer of 2016, I began my journey in the Lamar Digital Learning and Leadership program with the creation of something that was a new concept to me: an ePortfolio. Because it was a fairly new experience for me, it took some work to learn how to design and manipulate things on the web. I had taken two web design courses while completing my undergraduate coursework, but that had been quite a few years prior, and technology has changed so much. Throughout the process of trying to find a platform that worked well for me, I experimented with Weebly, WordPress, and Wix. Although the three different sites had their individual redeeming qualities, I chose to go with Wix since it had so many built-in design features, and I felt I would need that support along the way since I hadn’t worked with coding in many years.
As I moved forward into the fall semester of 2016, I completed a course by the name of Disruptive Innovations in Technology (Lamar University, 2018). The goal of this course was to identify a problem in my organization that could benefit from a disruptive innovation strategy and create a plan to implement it in my organization. After careful consideration, I decided that the ePortfolio process we had been working through in the DLL program (Lamar University, 2018) might be a good fit for students in a high school English classroom since it would fuse writing practice with technology fluency applications. I also had a vision that the plan might eventually evolve into a school-wide writing initiative since an ePortfolio allows for students to store multiple writings, projects, and blog entries in one convenient location. It seemed like the initiative could potentially be a huge win for all teachers and students across my Campus, and I immediately drafted a proposal to put my idea in writing (See #1 in the Thinglink diagram below).
Although the idea seemed promising, I knew there would be a long road of trial and error ahead of me, and I needed to see the potential problems that could arise. This prompted me to complete detailed research on the implementation of ePortfolios in the classroom, and I consulted fourteen different resources to explore and document. The specifics of my findings can be read below (See #2 below), and overall I found that there were many benefits to the innovation plan I had selected for my Campus. Later, when I moved further into the planning phase, I went back and expanded on my research to help me understand the finer points of the implementation process (See #10 below).
As with any important task you set out to achieve, you must have a plan of action in mind in order to avoid stumbling aimlessly through the implementation of change. This prompted me to create an outline (See #3 below) to help me begin with the end in mind as I embarked on my journey into the implementation of ePortfolios. After completing my outline, I could see that my innovation plan wasn’t going to be easy to pull off, and this prompted me to contemplate my “why” for attempting such a feat. After establishing this rationale in my mind, I took some time to sit down and record my thoughts in writing (See #4 below) as I knew it would help to keep me grounded on the days I wanted to give up. Some of those days will most likely be the ones where I try to convince others to follow my lead.
As I reached the most difficult part of planning to implement change within an organization, the part where you have to encourage others to jump on the bandwagon, I knew that the investigation of leadership and influencer strategies was imperative. This led me to writings such as Influencer: the Science of Leading Change (Grenny, 2013), The Four Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals (McChesney, Covey, & Huling, 2012), and Crucial Conversations (Patterson, 2012). While studying each of these writings, I took the time to document and align the recommendations found in each of them with my innovation plan (See #5, #6, & #7 below). The wealth of knowledge I acquired during these book studies has helped me to feel more confident in convincing others to follow my lead.
When I was feeling ready to take on the difficult task of training educators, I created a comprehensive staff development plan (See #9 below) to push my innovation plan out to my entire District. Since I knew that innovative teaching practices should model the active learning process, I leaned on Gulamhussein’ s Teaching the Teachers Effective Professional Development in an Era of High Stakes Accountability (2013). After studying her report extensively, I was able to put together a training plan that I thought would be both beneficial and enjoyable for my peers. At the completion of this phase of the planning, it was time to create a vehicle for pushing the initiative out to my most important customers: the students.
During the summer of 2017, I completed a course in Instructional Design in Online Learning (Lamar University, 2018). As I worked through this session, I designed and staged an instructional unit (See #8 below) for implementing ePortfolios in my own classroom using the Schoology platform. I found that structuring an online course is very similar to the planning that I do using textbooks and handouts with the difference being the need to include all lesson materials in an electronic format. Another element that needed further elaboration during the planning phase was the instructions for each module since an online course is typically self-directed in nature. Upon completing this instructional plan, it was time to get serious about moving forward with my plan, so I began experimenting with my first platform: Weebly.
After a semester-long trial run with Weebly at the end of 2017 school year, my innovation plan is currently on round two as I have changed platforms from Weebly to Edublogs. A visit to a neighboring District who has been using ePortfolios for ten years prompted my administration to allocate some funding for my classes to try Edublogs. It was such a relief to get some buy-in from my curriculum department, but I feel like the implementation has been chaotic thus far. My struggle has been one that is typical of a teacher trying to implement technology in the classroom. My students need guidance in both the instructional focus areas along with training to learn the logistics of the platform. I am not sure how to do both at the same time since the number of instructional hours in a day is so limited. Additionally, there isn’t much support from others since we are piloting a new type of software. I know I can train my students; it is only a matter of finding time to sit down and learn it myself.
Since I am still figuring things out, I am not in a position to pitch my ideas to other members of my department and staff on my Campus. My focus this summer will be aligning the COVA approach (Harapnuik, 2018) to the units of instruction we are teaching during the junior year of high school English. This may not sound like much, but literature lends itself to so many different types of analysis that I will need to identify the reading selections that will be used for specific areas of instructional focus and decide how that will look with COVA (Harapnuik, 2018) in mind. This will be a huge undertaking.
When thinking back on the process of implementing my innovation project, I feel it would have been more effective had I begun with targeted instruction in mind. I need to start small with one carefully planned unit, and pitch the results to other stakeholders once I have documented results and findings to present. It is not enough to announce that my plan is to implement a campus-wide ePortfolio project. I must provide evidence of successful implementation along with work samples and examples of curriculum documents I used to guide the process. As my administration says all the time, if it isn’t documented, it never happened, and educators must see how the new technology connects to what we are already doing in order to make informed decisions.
Moving forward, I will work to compile a unit-specific ePortfolio plan that will be rooted in the three-column table Lamar has successfully used to outline our DLL program (2018). Everything I completed thus far has been a fabulous big picture plan for what I will do when I have had a few successful trial runs, but now I must slow down and fine-tune the curriculum side of the equation in order to have documented success and evidence to provide those who will be asked to implement my innovation plan in their classrooms. I realize that teachers do not want to be told what to teach and how to teach it, so a few solid examples and a series of curriculum writing meetings conducted with our vertical ELAR team should get us going in the right direction…fingers crossed!
References
Geralt. (2018, March 20). [Innovation]. Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/en/motivation-strategy-arrows-building-3242296/
Grenny, J. (2013). Influencer: The new science of leading change. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the Teachers Effective Professional Development in an Era of High Stakes Accountability. Center for Public Education. Retrieved from
Harapnuik, D. (2018, March 22). COVA model. Retrieved from http://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=6615
Lamar University. (2018). Online M.Ed. in Digital Learning and Leading. Retrieved from https://degree.lamar.edu/programs/master-of-education-in-digital-learning-and-leading.aspx
McChesney, C., Covey, S., & Huling, J. (2016). The 4 disciplines of execution achieving your wildly important goals. New York: Free Press.
Patterson, K., Grenny, J., & Switzler, A. (2012). Crucial conversations. New York: McGraw-Hill.