So recently I was at a little event called MassCue where I gave a presentation on what we are doing here in Springfield to give teachers voices and choice. I will place the slide deck below but let me tell you a little about this project. If you hit the wayback machine to a few years ago I was promoted out of the classroom into the position I have now. With the Digital Learning Analyst position I tried to figure out ways to help teacher see what other teachers are doing in the classroom. Being a classroom teacher, I know it’s hard to go and visit other teachers’ classrooms, especially teachers who are not in their school. I also knew that doing research about concepts like the SAMR model, gamification, and blended models is very difficult when you have a hundred things you are already doing. This is where I come in. 

Blogs

The first step was getting the blog going. With the blog we really focused on research and ways to help teachers integrate technology in the classroom, which included doing a deeper dive into the SAMR model, blended classroom, flipped classroom, game based learning, gamification, etc.. To make the blog more widespread I started my own blog site, where I repost these blogs, so they are publicly accessible and a whole lot easier to share. For the first couple of years, the blog stayed within our SharePoint site, but it made it harder to share as some teachers preferred to read the blogs on a device that wasn’t their Springfield issued device. 

Podcasts

Once the blog was underway the next step was the Podcast. Unlike the blog, which was an easy sell on why, I had to teach those who supervise me what a Podcast was and why I believed this was a way to reach teachers and also a non-video way to get teachers to share. If you didn’t know this, Teachers are big fans of being recorded…I think most people were the same way.  

After getting over that hurdle, I had a lot to learn about how to start a podcast, so I did a lot of research about how to run a podcast. We came up with the name the SPS Digital Learning Hour, which we believed encapsulating what we were trying to do. The first season I was working with one of my colleagues for the podcast where we would do a quick update section, then a session where we would discuss something related to technology in the classroom, the third act was the teacher interview (which I would do) and the final act was a wrap up of the interview and a call to action. As time went on, the show shifted more to where it is now, updates, interview, call to action. 

Sharing

For sharing the podcast, this was one of the things that required the district to purchase a platform that would allow us to host the show. The best thing about Spreaker.com is that they upload the episode to several areas including iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and even YouTube. 

Below, I am including the PowerPoint that I delivered for the presentation, which goes into a practical way to get started and I am including some of the links we used for resources for blogs and podcasts and I will continue to update the Wakelet’s so you will have a lot of great information on starting your blog or podcast.  When I look back on my career so far, this has been one of the highlights and I’m excited for you to see all the work that we have done!

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