2. Professional Organizations
•Learn from others
•Access to information and research
•Network with other educators
•Develop support system
•Help others improve
3. Developing Learner Agency
• Divorce from the standardized curriculum (Kolb,
2022)
• Develop student's soft skills
• Learn ways to encourage creativity in the
classroom
4. Student Application
• Find ways to involve students
in their own learning.
• Incorporate technology more
effectively
• Focus my teaching
• Students struggling in
standardized classroom
• Students having difficulty with
learner agency
• Students thriving in
technology-based learning
5. Special Education Technology
• Ways to incorporate technology in a special education
setting (Roland, 2015)
• Improving learning experience of students with special
needs
• Ideas on how to differentiate instruction for students
with special needs.
6. Student Application
• Improve my use of technology
with students with special
needs.
• Find programs to use to
diversify teaching methods
• Students with special needs
who struggle with written or
oral teaching
• Students who are delayed
7. Supporting Student Well-Being
•Methods to engage students about well-
being (Wurster, 2023)
•Ways to use social media appropriately
•Target lessons to improve student mental
health
8. Student Application
• Teach students how to
navigate social media
• Use real time data to
encourage and support
students
• Improve the mental health of
students though targeted
intervention
• Middle school students and
those struggling with mental
health
• Socially fatigued students
• Vulnerable students
9. ISTE EdTech Conference
• Students as digital citizens
• Students using technology for good
• Parenting challenges of technology
• Being an example of a good digital citizen
• Ways to improve digital citizen conversations
10. Interesting Sessions
How students are using social
media for good
• Can be very divisive
• Find ways to encourage
• Reach more students
Parenting in the Digital Age
• New technology
• New challenges
• Ways to connect and
communicate
11. Works Cited
• Kolb, L. (2022, July 29). Tools and Strategies for Developing Learner Agency. Retrieved from ISTE:
https://www.iste.org/explore/classroom/tools-and-strategies-developing-learner-agency
• Roland, J. (2015, October 7). How Special Education Technology Improves Learning. Retrieved
from ISTE: https://www.iste.org/explore/Innovator-solutions/How-special-education-
technology-improves-learning
• Wurster, P. (2023, January 5). Collecting Real-Time Data to Support Student Well-Being. Retrieved
from ISTE: https://www.iste.org/explore/tools-devices-and-apps/collecting-real-time-date-to-
support-student-wellbeing
Editor's Notes
Professional organizations are a great tool for teachers to use to grow in their abilities. The most obvious way that a professional organization will help a teacher is through its ability to offer learning opportunities. Articles, podcasts, seminars, and other forms of learning are all available through a professional organization. They also offer access to research that has been completed or is in process that may be beneficial to the teacher in their classroom. Another benefit is the ability to network with others. This can lead to job opportunities, advice for better teaching, or simply support for the teacher. It is important that teachers develop a support system they can rely on for advice and encouragement. The last, and possibly most important reason for a teacher to join a professional organization is to help others. Helping others is our highest calling as educators and Christians. A professional organization offers the opportunity to find other teachers who are in need of advice, encouragement or motivation. A teacher may be able to write articles, be a part of seminars, or simply develop a network of teachers with which they can support and encourage each other.
One interesting article that I found on the ISTE website was Tools and Strategies for Developing Learner Agency by Liz Kolb, written on July 29, 2022. This article was a great resource for learning ways to teach students soft skills by divorcing from a standardized curriculum and allowing students to direct their own learning within certain confines. If a teacher is looking for ways to use technology to encourage creativity in the classroom, this article is a great resource.
From a personal standpoint, this resource has shown me ways to involve my students more in their own learning. Allowing more participation from my students will allow them to develop a voice and improve their learning experience. It also has shown me how I can incorporate more technology in my lessons. Using the games and skills that the article mentioned will greatly increase the amount of technology I am able to incorporate in my lessons. Also, the article showed me ways to focus my teaching and improve a very important part of a students learning.
The students who would benefit most from the application of this resource are ones that struggle in a standardized or rigid classroom environment. Also, students who are having difficult with learner agency and finding ways to participate fully in their learning will show improvement. Lastly, those students who thrive in a technology driven classroom will find that the added technology will greatly improve their learning experience.
Another great resource thought ISTE is the article How Special Education Technology Improves Learning by Jennifer Roland published on October 7, 2015. This article will teach educators how to incorporate technology successfully into lessons for students with special needs. It will also show how to use technology to improve the learning experience of students with special needs. Lastly, it will give a teacher great ideas on different programs and tips on how to differentiate instruction when teaching students with special needs. These classrooms often prove to be the most difficult to maneuver, but this article will be a great resource for anyone looking to improve their abilities in that area.
I will use the information from this article to improve the use of technology in situations where I have a student with special needs. This article gave me many sources of improvement in my application of technology in a scenario such as that. I was also able to find programs or methods of applying technology that I will be able to use to better communicate and teach students with learning disabilities.
Any student with learning disabilities that struggles with written or oral teaching will benefit from the teacher's application of this article. This article will allow those students to use technology more effectively. It will also help students with learning disabilities who are delayed to catch up to their peers and become more successful.
The last source that I will be discussing that shows how a teacher can benefit from being part of a professional organization like ISTE is the article Collecting Real-Time Data to Support Student Well-Being by Paul Wurster, published on January 5, 2023. This article will show teachers how to engage students about their well-being and tips on how to bring this topic up successfully. It will also give teachers ways to use social media to their advantage as they attempt to increase their ability to monitor and develop better student mental health. Lastly, it will show teachers how to target lessons to focus on student mental health and make it a point of emphasis.
This resource has shown me ways to use social media to my advantage as I look to improve the mental health of my students. The information I gain from social media will allow me to target certain students with preventative care and hopefully improve their well-being. It will also allow for more real time and up to date information that will greatly improve the value of the information I gain about my students.
The students who will benefit most from what is taught in this resource are those who are in the crucial social developmental years of middle school. Often these students struggle with mental health and self worth and become socially fatigued. This leaves these students vulnerable and susceptible to low self esteem and poor well-being. If I apply the lessons taught in this article, I will be able to more effectively improve my student's mental health.
The latest ISTE EdTech Conference I was able to find was the DigCit Connect held online on October 22, 2022. This conference focused on students and parents as digital citizens. The speakers spoke at length about how students can use their online presence for good, as well as the challenges that teachers and parents face with new digital technology. The speakers also had sessions on how to be a better digital citizen, and how teachers can improve their presentation and conversation around being a good digital citizen.
As I looked through all the sessions offered at the conference, I was most interest in two. The first was on how students can use social media for good. Social media has a stigma around it as it is often use for the wrong reasons. People use it to be divisive and degrade and make fun of others. I would like to hear a perspective on how it can be used to instead encourage others. I think learning more about positive ways to use social media would lead to me being able to reach more students.
The second session was the one on parenting in a digital age. I find this interesting as a teacher and a parent because it is often difficult to keep up with the latest technology. This presents new challenges on an almost daily bases as I try to sort through new technology and find out how I can use it for good and what the dangers of it are. I also believe that if I understand more how to parent in a digital age it will allow me to communicate and connect with my children and my students on a better level.
