 The process of building my Capstone has been very rewarding, but also very tedious. Just when I feel like I have made some progress I find some buttons that aren't linked, or a font that is not the right color. That said, I feel like I am finally getting there.
I have a few more pages left to spend some time refining. Those ones being the Learn More, How To, and Assessment page. The MEAT, that is why I feel like they have to the best. I also feel like perfect is the enemy of done, so trying to get it to a good place to house my ideas and research from the past year. With all the work we have been putting into these Capstone websites I really do hope we can share them with teachers. Currently it seems very "clunky" to find the resources that others have created. I hope that this will be a functional website soon, and if not, I have talked with a few other cohort members about just making it available for teachers if interested. I am in a unique position working with District leadership to determine how to support Professional Learning with next to no man-power, We are utilizing our blending learning platform, Edivate, which is proving to be a bit arduous, but are hopeful we can move as a district to the flipped classroom model for Professional Learning. Teachers, PLCs, staff meetings can explore and utilize resources and then collaborate around those. Lastly I wanted to reflect on Weebly as a tool. I had worked with Weebly only briefly for a Teacher Leadership Cohort I was apart of, but after spending the amount of time working with it that I have I look forward to creating another website that can house resources. It is easy to use, relatively simple and allows for some creative outlets. I hope to use this, iMovie, Powtoons, Go Animate, Screencast-omatic and others with my work in the coming year. It has been so helpful to not only try them out, but to spend some time to know what they are truly capable of doing.
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 I first heard of Critical Friends at my first foray into Project Based Learning with Buck Institute 6 years ago. I thought what a cool process, and I also thought we have been doing a version of this for years just without the catchy name and process pieces.
As a learner I am a collaborator, there really is nothing better than having some feedback from multiple people throughout a process like we are going through. We are bringing together a large amount of research, information, lessons, and resources. This is no easy task and it is so helpful to have another set of eyes not only for the big broad sweeping, "does this make sense here" kind of comments, but for the critical eye noticing that fonts aren't matching. If there is one thing that was reinforced for me through this program and working with my cohort was that we all learn and process in different ways. I have spent a large part of my last three years in my work better understanding adult learning theory. And the net of it is, we are not that different than the students in our classroom, just a touch more cynical and a lot more guarded. When I reached out to two people in my cohort to ask them to be my Critical Friend I thought about two different learners that would give me two different perspectives, that is the best! I appreciate the level of detail both of these people bring and their perspectives. I appreciated that they both wanted to review our pages ahead of time and write up some notes so as to make our time productive. This was a huge help for me and I am not sure I would have done that if it hadn't been mentioned. Going through this process is so vital. If I think about PBL and the Critical Friends process, like many key components in PBL we often don't have time to truly follow this process. I got so much out of the time I have done a proper Critical Friends with my project. One of the biggest for me is not necessarily the feedback and perspective (although those are key!), but having the chance to step into someone else's work and see how they structured it and thought about it. This to me is the silver lining or hidden gem of this process. Many times we are rushing through, and taking time to look at someone else's work seems like one more thing. I got a lot out of this process, and it reminds me the importance of stopping and taking time for these reflections.  NVUSD's Forward Thinking
This quote that resides on the NVUSD Technology landing page truly epitomizes the innovation that we as a district are aiming for: "The new mission of schools is to prepare students to work at jobs that do not yet exist, creating ideas and solutions for products and problems that have not yet been identified, using technologies that have not yet been invented." Linda Darling-Hammond, (2010). The flat world and education: How America’s commitment to equity will determine our future. NVUSD Mission Transforming lives by instilling 21st Century skills and inspiring lifelong learning in every student. NVUSD Priorities I love that we have a level of detail that truly addresses how we are going to prioritize our initiatives to focus on 3 simple goals: 1. Increase Rates of College and Career Readiness
NVUSD, My Personal Practice and Capstone Vision Given my current position as a District level TOSA, I have included the District Mission statement and priorities. I feel very strongly about these priorities, and appreciate as I mentioned above that they are very specific in what we are doing to obtain the larger goals that support the mission. I have underlined in the priorities above where technology, and in a larger extent 21 Century Skills, is specifically noted. It is very evident that these are built on foundations that focus on creating learners that can live and thrive in the 21st century. As these priorities have been refined I personally felt more and more compelled to learn how I could better understand these skills, how to teach them, and eventually measure them. This was a large impetus for why I chose the TU Masters in Innovative Learning program. It is providing me with a deeper dive into how TPACK can be effective in supporting the goals and priorities outlined above. The learning I have been able to bring to my daily work has been very powerful. I am in a unique situation where I am focused on supporting teachers with Professional Learning for ELA/ELD. With that I feel a daily responsibility to connect the dots and bring together all of the different initiatives and resources we have in our district. With my understanding of TPACK, SAMR and some the Instructional Design work of Clark and Dervin, I feel like I am better prepared to support in connecting these dots. As I think about 21st Century Skills and the 6 Cs, I go to how that fits into what I was describing above. I spent some time this year facilitating the Elementary Grading Summit, where all teachers at each grade-level developed rubrics for Collaboration and Critical Thinking. As we think about what a proficient collaborator and critical thinker looks like at each grade-level it gives us the opportunity to really think about what we are doing to teach these "soft skills". I learned a lot through this process, and look forward to working next year to round out the reaming 4 of the 6 Cs with rubrics to support teachers in not only how to teach these skills, but what they can do to measure them. Now, how does this support my Capstone vision? I began with my Driving Question being more focused on language acquisition, and how we could support struggling readers and language learners in better reading and understanding complex text. Through this program I have narrowed it, specifically researching how we could use technology and different realms of feedback for students. Beyond just the teacher, what are the tools we have that can support this? Where I am currently really supports all three of the priorities listed, and it feels good to connect my OWN dots and know that I am heading in the right direction.  I appreciated spending some time this week reviewing other capstones, specifically looking at who their audience was. Of the three we looked at Preview & Critique of 3 Capstone Projects, it make me think more thoughtfully about how I will include my audience on each page.
I am currently in a more unique position, primarily supporting teachers in their learning. Daily I am asking myself the question, so what do I get out of this? What does this mean for my classroom practice, and how might I use this in my classroom tomorrow? Having these questions in the forefront of my daily work will help me as I craft this capstone site. I think you have to intentionally speak to your audience. My audience will be teachers, teacher leaders, and Academic Specialist. When working with a group of ELA/ELD Lead teachers this year I worked to support them in being able to share the information they learn in digestible chunks. If you have 10 minutes at a staff meeting or PLC, if you have 20 minutes with your PLC, or if you have a more dedicated professional learning time where you can share 30-45 minutes worth of content and processing. I would like to utilize this somewhere within my capstone page, likely it will live on the Learn More page. That is the MEAT of the capstone, and I want it to be clear, concise and easy to navigate for resources. As I think about the Learn More pages, I want to break it down to the following:
If there is one thing I have learned in the past few years in working with my audience, teachers, is that less is more and we need to make the most of our learning. We as teachers have such limited time, so when we encounter new knowledge it it is important that we provide small amounts of content, and ample amount of processing and application time. How might I build in processing and application time within my capstone site? I can't necessarily, however, I can use the resources and provide reflection questions and bread crumbs to what that looks like from an application standpoint.  I came into this masters program with a tight vision of what I wanted to achieve. I have since been open to so many new learnings and experiences, and many of those have come from my fellow teachers in my cohort.
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