Welcome ELC 2016 Participants!
You will find the resources for all four of my ELC sessions on this page. Please feel free to explore any and all of them! Click on the session title to go to the page for that session, which includes the presentation and the relevant resources.
If you have any questions, or would like to get in touch, please click here to contact me. If you’d like to find out more about me, please feel free to explore this site, or if you’re looking for my bio, please click here.
Workshop 1: The Difference Between Ordinary & Extraordinary: Telling (and Owning) Your School’s Story
We’re all proud of our schools, our students, and our community. Our students are engaged in outstanding learning experiences on a daily basis, but these are rarely documented or shared outside the individual classroom in a purposeful way. 
How can we, as school leaders, highlight the amazing work of both our students and our teachers in spaces that connect within and beyond our immediate school community? Why should we share? What should we share? Where should we share? What tools should we use?
We all know that if you’re not telling the story of your school, someone else is! Ordinary schools leave it up to someone else to tell their story, extraordinary schools plan, coordinate and purposefully share their story with intention and focus. Leave today’s workshop with an understanding of why sharing your story is so critical, how to harness the multitude of tools you can use to share your story, and an individualized action plan for taking your school’s story from ordinary to extraordinary!
Workshop 2: Cultivating Community: Helping Parents Understand the Power of Technology for Learning
In our technology-rich schools, we are often focused on ensuring that we have the right tools so that teachers and students can use technology effectively in the classroom. We spend plenty of professional development time and funds on training teachers to transform learning for their students. 
On top of all that, in many of our schools, we employ coaches to help teachers continue to develop their skills with technology. However, many schools still struggle to help parents understand why students (and teachers) are spending so much time with technology.
Developing a parent education program, specifically around technology and learning, can help build a sense of community within the school, support teachers and schools in their efforts to transform learning, and create a network of positive and engaged parents who will advocate for the school’s technology goals. This session will highlight key elements of parent education programs I have developed and facilitated over the past 8 years at International School Bangkok, Yokohama International School and NIST International School, as well as the positive outcomes of those programs for all three school communities.
Workshop 3: Bang for Your Buck: Getting the Most out of Your Technology Coach(es)
In our technology-rich schools, we know that changing classroom practice doesn’t end with the distribution of hardware and software. Building and sustaining current teaching and learning practices requires strong pedagogical support.
Many schools have hired technology coaches (sometimes called facilitators or coordinators) to fulfil this role because they understand that it is the partnership between the teacher and coach that brings out the full potential of any laptop program.
However, not all coaching teams are created equally, and we can easily see that coaching is more effective in some schools than others. Is it all a matter of personality? Or skill set? Or expectations? This session will highlight key elements of a successful technology coaching program including what to expect from your coaches, as well as strategies and suggestions for hiring, building and sustaining a successful coaching team, based on experiences at International School Bangkok, Yokohama International School and NIST International School.
Workshop 4: Looking for Learning in a Digital Classroom
Our teachers and students have access to a wide variety of devices – everything from one laptop per student, to sets of iPads or tablets for each classroom. But how do we know that those devices are being used to transform learning, and not just replicate what’s always been done, now in digital form? Or even worse, when the technology is used just for the sake of using technology, with no true purpose at all?
What should we be looking for when observing teachers and students in action? How can we tell that student learning is deeper, more authentic, or more relevant to today’s world when they’re using digital tools? How do we know that student learning is reaching the transforman level of the SAMR framework when we have only a few minutes in each classroom?
Starting with a deeper understanding of the SAMR and TPACK models of technology integration, this session will give administrators key areas to focus on during classroom observation so that they can evaluate and support teachers in their goals to transform student learning through the use of technology.