2015/16 Pro D as a Digital Literacy Coach

Although my tech skills aren’t anything I would ever consider writing home about I agreed to help out my staff by taking on the position of Digital Literacy Coach back in January 2015 because I am passionate about the advantages technology can bring to education. The best part about taking on this role was the professional development opportunities it provided.

As DL coaches, we were provided with a couple of days of Pro D the week before school started and a 1-night/1-day Pro D conference in October. For me the biggest take-aways on these days was learning how to use iBooks Author and more presentation tools and strategies.

Here is a link for two ebooks that I wrote using iBooks Author:

www.staceyhernberg.com/free-resources.html

One was created for our district’s iTunes channel and for parents who ask me how they can best help their children at home. The other was for our school website when some of the teachers at our school put on an event to help parents learn ways to help their children with their writing.

Another great experience was applying for the Langley School District’s Zone of Innovation Grant. Part of the agreement for getting five laptops for our school was to summarize and report on the ways we used them through an iTunes U course. I enjoyed learning the process of putting together an iTunes U course called Adventures in Literacy that can be found on Langley’s iTunes U channel: School District #35.

While helping my colleagues with their tech questions, I was also able to learn of lots of cool things that they were learning and exploring. I was able to report on some of the great ideas my staff was exploring in a blog that the districts DL coaches contributed to. It’s entitled Small Steps for Teachers, Large Strides for Education.

Ironically that’s a good metaphor for how I feel about my experience as a DL Coach. It was a small step for me to agree to be oJKE’s DL Coach but it helped me make large strides in learning more about using technology to provide students with terrific learning opportunities.