Little Miss Geek

Students need the time, space, and support to be problem solvers in their schools and communities. I am confident that a lot of teachers want to be able to support their students that way, but a lot of them need support to do that. At the GEG Leadership event a couple weeks ago I proposed an idea that turned into Innovation Incubators. The idea is that teachers will apply to participate in a school year long problem solving experience. Over the summer teachers will attend a professional learning opportunity all around design thinking. Teachers, with a group of students, work together to identify a community based problem, experience a design thinking process, get feedback from each other and develop an action plan. Over the year there will be checkins to help keep teams on track. In the spring teams will create videos of their journey and will be invited to share those stories in a large group event and celebration. I am super geeked! We opened the application this week! If you are ...

Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in the GEG Chicago Leadership Day at the new Goggle offices. We kicked off the day with some networking and team building -- it's always great to get to meet new people. Then we jumped right in working in teams to craft a mission statement for the GEG that would guide our work for the rest of the day. After several iterations we landed on "Empowering Educators to Innovate, Collaborate, and Inspire." From there we started the design thinking process around professional development and events that we could organize for the members of the GEG. Event ideas were voted on and people broke in to teams based on interest to begin planning. Overall the day was a huge success and I can't wait to see all of these plans come to fruition!

We are embarking on a new journey! After reviewing over 75 applications and ordering almost 1000 devices Mission:iPad is almost ready to launch. We will be going 1:1 with iPads in 53 classrooms this year! Teachers will attend three whole group professional development days, one in the fall to kick everything off and share expectations, a mid-mission check-in in January, and a celebration in the spring. They will also be meeting twice a month for one-on-one support with their school's Innovation Advocate, Ben or I (depending on which side of the district they are on). There will also be a Google+ Community for teachers to share their work and ask questions of the group so that we can all learn together. I am excited for all of the possibilities that will be available to our students and teachers with these new devices and supports!