Project #4 C4T - #3 Commenting on Liz B. Davis' Blog: The Power of Educational Technology

The third teacher I had to comment on was Liz B. Davis. Her blog is  The Power of Educational Technology. 

The first post of hers I commented on was,  Using Design Thinking to Reimagine Back to School Night. In this she explains how they tried to incorporate the Design Thinking model mentioned in Tom and David Kelly's book "Creative Confidence." To do this, they broke into groups.

In their process, they conducted interviews to understand am "empathize" with teacher and parent experiences. After that, they "defined." This means that they came up "with an actionable problem statement." The next step was to "ideate," or to create ideas. This involved brainstorming, choosing the favorite ideas, and as groups refining the idea they wish to move forward with. After that, the groups were to create a "prototype". It was now time to create their idea. "Prototypes can be anything that takes a physical form." The final step was to "test," this concluded with making their solution better.

After the process, the groups share their information with each other and fill out evaluations of the different ideas presented to provide feedback.

My comment on her blog was the following:
"I like the idea of getting the teachers to get parent responses. I also think the process described is a very effective one to achieve the goals. With a supportive and hardworking group I think this plan could work very well."

The second post of hers I commented on was an older post than the previous one. This post was Passion Driven Professional Development - Teachers Unplugged at NAISAC14. In this post she describes an "unconference." Through this type of conference, whoever shows up suggests the topics, from there the participants voted on which topics they wanted to discuss. If nobody shows up to your conference or the conference you are attending is not what you thought it would be, then go to another one. These discussions will last for about 20 minutes. To wrap up the conferences, everyone in the group tells something they learned.

My comment on her blog was the following:
"I definitely see how this could be a good change to the tradition style of conference. This could be very welcomed for those who are tired of the same type of in-service"