E-learning experiences can be powerful, but sometimes a collaborative approach to a problem is more effective. Workshops (whether in-person or virtual) offer the chance for participants to not only learn from the facilitator, but also from each other. As an Department of Education iZone consultant, I worked on a team of three to create meaningful learning experiences for classroom teachers. One such set of workshops was the Summer Exploration Series.

Tools Used: Google Docs, Google Slides, Lucid Chart, Adobe Photoshop

Goal: The NYC Department of Education iZone was looking to create a series of Professional Development (PD) opportunities to offer to teachers city-wide, introducing them to educational technology tools that may help them with classroom issues.  A secondary goal of the workshop series was to give teachers a protocol to help them run a small scale pilot of a new tool in their classroom and help them evaluate whether or not it was right for them.

Overview: Prior to creating these workshops, we polled teachers around the city on some of their most common classroom issues. We took the responses and grouped them into three categories to create workshops around: Increasing Family Engagement, Supporting English Language Learners, and Strengthening Social Emotional Learning. We decided to create a series of three workshops, each one with one of these themes. Once we had the focus of our workshops the three of us got to work researching different educational technology tools that could help classroom educators with these issues. We reached out to developers to talk about their products, spoke to teachers about the kinds of products they were already using, and curated some resources on our own.

We then structured the workshop into three parts: 1) Refining participant’s problem of practice to be as direct and actionable as possible 2) Matching an edtech tool that may solve the problem and 3) Creating a mini-pilot for teachers to evaluate if that tool will solve their problem.  

To refine the problem of practice, we utilized the 5-Why Protocol for discovering root cause problems.  I created a document to walk participants through the experience with the hopes of honing in on a more specific and actionable problem that a new edtech tool could support. With this more focused problem of practice, we worked with participants to match them with tools. To do this, I put together an information sheet on each program we were exploring. The sheet contained a description of each product along with a variety of reviews, both positive and negative, from a variety of users. I also created a free trial account for every program to allow participants to log in and explore.

Once participants got a feel for the tools they wanted to try out, we walked participants through each one through a mini-pilot and evaluation program authored by the iZone and Digital Promise. We wanted participants to not only leave with a tool they wanted to try but a concrete plan to pilot the product in their classrooms and a way to evaluate its effectiveness.

Reflection: The workshop series was a great success. Feedback was collected from all the participants and the results were overwhelmingly positive. A series of follow up workshops were created and ran the following Fall. During the follow ups, we completed check-ins on the mini-pilots the various participants were running. I’m proud of my work on this series for many reasons.  I believe that it showcased my ability to both independently and collaboratively create instructional opportunities. In the team of three, we designed the structure of the workshops, analyzed potential participants and their instructional problems to ensure the workshops were beneficial and effective, and curated the edtech tools to showcase. Independently, I was responsible for creating the slide deck and facilitator notes, creating the information sheets on each product, designing handout materials for participants, and facilitating one of the three workshops. I also created advertising materials that were sent out to teachers across the city. Overall, I honed many skills relating to the creation and facilitation of workshops for adult learners while applying my creativity and problem solving skills in both independent and collaborative ways.