5b.   Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership

Teachers continuously improve their professional practice, model lifelong learning, 
and exhibit leadership in their school and professional community by promoting  and demonstrating the effective use of digital tools and resources. Specifically, teachers exhibit leadership by demonstrating a vision of technology infusion, participating in shared decision making and community building, and developing the leadership and technology skills of others.


REFLECTIONS ON NETS-T-5b:

One of the purposes of the Innovative Instructional Fellowship Program (2010-11) of which I am a participant is to serve as a cadre of leaders in the School of Education who can envision technology infusion into the curriculum of the school. By participating in the seminars, small group, and one-on-one learning experiences, the twenty-two fellows (faculty and graduate students) will be engaged in community building with an eye toward developing the technology skills of students and colleagues interested in improving their knowledge of technology in the classroom. Working on innovative projects to morph face-to-face learning experiences into totally online courses or hybrid courses that will be delivered in the UMASS ONLINE learning environment, will make us leaders in the area of technology-mediated learning. Weekly for a full academic year, I will be working with a cadre of instructors interested in exploring the pedagogical possibles associated with a digitized learning experiences. The participants all come from different discipline, have a wide range of teaching experience, and have an equally wide range of technological expertise. The learning community formed will have numerous opportunities to share challenges, fears, and successes associated with developing technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK). After the first two meeting of the fellows it was apparent the products of this academic year would be valuable for students as well as for the instructors of these experiences. As a senior faculty member in the School of Education, I am able to improve my professional practices while modeling for junior faculty and graduate students what it means to remain of lifelong learner. This proposal’s submission and acceptance are testaments to my desire to remain a creative educator who exploits the power of educational technology. This program brings me full circle in the field of instructional applications of technology. In 1973 I defended my dissertation titled “Elementary Mathematics Education Via A Programming Language. In the decade of the 80’s I taught courses that utilized computers, graphing calculators, and virtual manipulatives in mathematics classrooms. In 2005, I was the General Editor of an NCTM yearbook titled “Computer Supported Mathematics Learning.” As we enter the second decade of the 2nd millennium, I find that my passions and my interests have remained focused on mathematics learning with the aid of computing technology.

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IIF Proposal prepared for the Innovative Instruction Fellowship Program (2010-11) at the School of Education.

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Rationale for Artifact associated with this Standard.