Building an Instructional Coach Mindset ~ AMEBOGISTS WEB

What are your must-have ingredients in a recipe for learning? Is it just about the technology and the content or is there something more?

Here today, gone tomorrow? This can be EdTech as many of us know it today. This can be good when we are able to move onto something better or it can be devastating when we've invested so much time into learning a tool does what we need it to do. This is why we believe that sound teaching pedagogy will always trump the power of any technology tool when we create a recipe for learning.

The best teaching and learning recipes start with ingredients connected to strong pedagogy concepts before adding in the technology ingredients.

Today, we try to always start supporting educators and students by asking "why" questions. Sometimes, when we don't know why we are doing something, we always have to ask why are we still doing it? Maybe we need to look at changing the recipe, before moving forward? Without a reason why we need technology, we rarely see technology have a solid impact on improving the teaching and learning experience.

It is important for any educator or group of educators to first explore how they might approach the instructional goals before adding technology to the plan. Once we have a pedagogical plan, we are ready to find the right technology that we can add to our teaching and learning recipe.

These two resources are great places to start exploring how we can create great learning experiences.

What Are Your Teaching Fundamentals? (Edutopia Article)

Sample Teaching Recipes From an EdTech PD Session

We also always try to emphasize that the best EdTech does not have the power to make a bad lesson great. EdTech can even make a good lesson worse. A strong teaching and learning plan must always come first or the power of instructional technology is to often wasted time.

I hate wasting time!

Here are a few of the resources that might help EdTech and Instructional Coaches build their recipe cards to best support teachers and students.

The ISTE Standards for Educators might be a great starting point to help teachers focus on essential skills that can be supported with EdTech.
The ISTE Standards for Coaches is a great place to start building your coaching mindset.
The ISTE Standards for Students can help planning from the student perspective.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers Who Use Technology is another resource to explore EdTech in the classroom.
If you are a Google district I would consider using the Google Training Courses as part of the course plan. These are well put together and focus on skills before the tools.

Here are a few additional resources that can support an Instructional Coaching Mindset.