Michigan Educators Providing Ongoing PD Online
Innovation Classroom (www.innovationclassroom.com) highlights how technology can transform teaching and learning. Short, user-friendly videos showcase lessons integrating technology in real classrooms focused on pushing higher level thinking skills. Many of the lessons revolve around students striving towards the creation level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. This website was created by teachers for teachers.
Heather Gauck, project organizer and team leader for Innovation Classroom, is a K-3 resource teacher in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She saw a need for short videos showing exactly what it looks like to use Technology to support and push students’ learning in the classroom.
Gauck is one of several teachers from Michigan who contributed to the initial bank of lesson videos. The other teachers on her team are: Carolyn Bolduc, Grand Rapids Public Schools; Jennifer Bond, Walled Lake Consolidated Schools; Josh Bridges, Dowagiac Union Schools; Karen Brummans, Holland Public Schools; Kathy Kanu-Thompson, Grand Rapids Public Schools; Kristin Kochheiser, Waverly Community Schools; and Matt McCullough, Schoolcraft Community Schools.
“One of our goals in this work is to build a thriving network of teachers who can learn from one another and co-create knowledge about the role of innovation in shifting how students learn,” said Gauck. “It isn’t enough to use technology in engaging ways – we really need to spread what we know from teacher to teacher to have the widest possible impact to raise student success,” she said.
Innovation Classroom is funded by Mark Zuckerberg’s StartUp Foundation. Learning Forward served as an additional partner on the project along with a local media company Alvarium Studios. After working at last year’s Powered By Teach to Lead at the Governor’s Summit, we are excited to be moving into Phase #2 of this project. We are looking to build strategic relationships including Pre-service teachers from Grand Valley State University to build up our content on the site.
We are also looking forward to building our community of teachers through our social media platforms. Look for us at MACUL 2019 on Friday for the Poster Sessions and come learn more –
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Innovationclsrm
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/innovationclassroom/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/innovationclassroom8/?hl=en
To hear more about Innovation Classroom, check out our story- https://youtu.be/PyAUzIviSNw
Author
Josh Bridges (@JoshMbridges): Josh is an Instructional Technology Coordinator at Dowagiac Union Schools, a SIG PL Steering Committee member and part of the Innovation Classroom project.