As I sat in the session on March 23 listening to George Couros, my initial reaction was to be overwhelmed by the endless opportunities that technology provides us to innovate as educators. In my experience this feeling often leads to inaction. I feel that I don’t know where to start and am much more comfortable with sticking with what I know and so as amazing as innovative teaching could be, I don’t engage it fully.

I made a decision, though, that even though there was only one day left before Spring Break, my best chance for stepping out again into the ocean of innovation and technology was to act on some of the inspiration I received from George the very next day. So, with a bunch of over-excited grade 8 math students on the day before Spring Break, we jumped into using Office 365 to develop a community board in One Note to display pictures of what the 3 different models of fractions look like.

The focus in the room was quite extraordinary considering that we were at the end of our spirit week and were scheduled to have a school-wide gym blast in the afternoon. I found that they were excited to engage in the learning task and even helped me as I navigated a new way of teaching, learning and presenting learning. I found that students were up out of their chairs helping each other when they came to problems much more readily than they do during my normal math class. There was a real spirit of collaboration in the class with me just being one of the learners along with them. Since the break we have continued to push into the use of this program and others. I am working to communicate with them electronically and found one student in particular who has trouble engaging in my math class has sent me more messages from her phone than she has asked verbal questions in class.

So, I continue to grow as an educator, we must do so. Although the risk and seemingly infinite opportunities have the potential to incapacitate and overwhelm me, I will continue to choose to embrace at least one small innovating teaching practice each week in order to grow as a learner and to engage with my students more effectively.

Sincerely,
Steve Nikkel
Isaac Newton School
Math/Science Teacher