Foundational Coaching Practice for the Digital Age:

• UNDERSTAND the role of coaches in guiding educators to integrate technology effectively to support student-centered instruction;
• EXPLORE the potential of digital tools to enhance your Professional Learning Network (PLN) and knowledge base as a coach, as well as facilitate connections with educators worldwide;
• UNDERSTAND and apply frameworks, like the Technological Pedagogical And Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework and Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition (SAMR) framework as guides to the best intersection of curricular standards, sound pedagogy choices, and technology;
• EXPLORE strategies to support classroom teacher practices that enhance students’ Collaborative work, Communication with multiple audiences, Critical thinking, and Creativity (Four C’s);
• DEEPEN your understanding of the elements of Digital Citizenship to coach both educators and students toward digitally safe learning environments and habits;
• EXPERIENCE personalized application of your new learning and job-embedded practice;
• CREATE a Coaching Action Plan* that serves as a scaffold for guiding your colleagues and others toward effective digital learning; and
• CONTRIBUTE to the learning of others who participate in the course.

* Coaching Action Plans are required for those seeking 3 CEUs as opposed to 2 CEUs for course participation.

Online Professional Learning for Educators at the Friday Institute provides a scalable, accessible, and flexible approach that is aligned with the principles of effective professional development. Our approach is grounded in authentic, active, and collaborative professional learning activities. Participants will engage in discussion forums to exchange ideas with colleagues, as well as share and synthesize new learning; hear from peers on the ground; apply new learnings to their local context through small projects; and work on their own Coaching Action Plan, developed across all units.

Pathways

Beginning in Unit 2, you will self-select between two distinct pathways for learning...

• Emerging Coaching: This pathway, as part of a starter kit, will focus on impact, opportunity, and developing an inquiry coalition to institute a culture of digital-age learning and teaching.
• Innovative Coaching: For those that want to deepen their current capacity, this pathway will help coaches ready to elevate their practice with strategies to remove barriers, celebrate impacts, and how to keep learning from evidence and experience.

The approach builds upon the following key concepts:

1. Authentic project-based learning. You will work on your own coaching action plan based upon your interests and the needs of your school or district.
2. Peer supported learning. You will have opportunities to discuss ideas, share strategies and resources, and exchange constructive feedback with other participants in similar roles and schools. You can also participate as a member of a local school or district team.
3. Support for exploration. Activities and guidelines for providing feedback will encourage you and your fellow participants to propose new ideas, look at issues in new ways, consider new approaches and use new digital-age tools, all within a supportive context.
4. Crowdsourcing. The “wisdom of the crowd” will be employed to gather resources, vet ideas, tag and rate materials, and stimulate each participants’ ideas and reflections.
5. Self-directed emergent learning. There is not a fixed path through the course or a fixed curriculum everyone will follow. You will be able to — and are expected to — navigate your own path, consistent with your own goals, through the course’s activities, resources and exchanges, supported and guided by the facilitators, resources, and fellow participants.
6. Case study/scenario based approaches. You will address problems of practice, explore, and apply new learnings.
7. Anytime, anyplace learning in which educators can engage as their time allows, from anywhere they have web access via a computer, tablet or smartphone. Their personal experience as an online learner can inform participants about the potential of digital learning to improve student engagement and achievement.
8. Multiple voices, so that participants learn about the perspectives of other teachers and administrators along with those of students, researchers and experts in the field rather than from one or two experts who deliver a series of online lectures.