One of my goals as Technology Integrationist is to organize and lead a team of teachers that will help personalize learning in our district. The team is made up of 13 people from four buildings and our early childhood center. Not thinking about educational acronyms, I started off on the wrong foot but naming the team – Technology Integration Team! There were several teachers in our community that wanted us to have shirts printed up with our new acronym.
After overcoming that obstacle with a clever new name we have set out on our journey to embed 21st Century Skills into the curriculum we teach using technology as the vehicle. We remind ourselves often that Will Richardson told us to take what we currently teach and make adjustments to embed the skills. We shouldn’t start with the technology and then figure out what to teach.
We are a diverse group of educators. We are new teachers and experienced teachers. We teach Kindergarten through 12th grade. We teach core subjects and electives. We meet once a month to share ideas, frustrations and hang out with other teachers that are passionate about educating our students for the 21st Century. We energize one another. We are part of each other’s Personal Learning Network (PLN). We tweet and encourage one another.
I am always open to the team’s suggestions. I encourage them to share the tools and ideas they use. I learn from them, they learn from me – we all grow in the process and the students grow in the end. I know where I want to go on this journey, but I also know that I can’t get there without this powerful team. There has been talk about actually making t-shirts for the team because we are proud of what we are doing, we are proud of our journey, we are proud to be making a difference in our students’ future.
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