6. Facilitator

Educators facilitate learning with technology to support student  achievement of the ISTE Standards for Students. The program shall prepare candidates who:  

• Foster a culture where students take ownership of their learning goals and outcomes in both independent and group settings;

• Manage the use of technology and student learning strategies in a variety of environments such as digital platforms, virtual environments, hands-on makerspaces, or in the field;

• Create learning opportunities that challenge students to use a design process and/or computational thinking to innovate and solve problems; and

• Model and nurture creativity and creative expression to communicate ideas, knowledge or connections.

As a facilitator, I created and delivered a professional workshop using the learning tool Lumio by SMART. This tool was purchased for our county but is not widely utilized. With this tool, I created a learning experience for my participants by modeling its functionality and flexibility. I encouraged my learners to extend and elevate their instruction with technology. I emphasized the promotion of student choice, engagement, and activity.  

As a facilitator, I created an instructional lesson covering the use of a digital tool. This artifact demonstrates methods by which educators can challenge students, assess, and provide opportunities for student engagement. 

As a facilitator, it is my responsibility to deliver my instruction in such a way that it inspires creativity and innovation in my students. I love to challenge my students with opportunities to use prior knowledge, new skills, and application of the same to real world situations.  I love for students to express themselves in other forms besides paper and pencil. Technology provides the avenue by which I can do just that.  Admittedly, I have had quite a fear of public speaking. After facilitating and leading instruction, I find that I am better equipped to lead, model, and instruct effectively. Asa a facilitator, I learned a lot about myself. I recognize my strengths and weaknesses and work to improve them. I discovered that I like my students perform better as a facilitator when delivering instruction in person. One of my strengths is assessing my audience and using the realtime feedback to drive my instruction. The feedback from "reading the room" allows me to determine where and when I need to reinforce or change the skill I am teaching. While I presenting my Professional Development Workshop, I was able to learn how to improve my delivery. As much as I prepared by repeated practice sessions, I still found challenges. Thankfully I was able to successfully mitigate those my challenges and deliver a lesson that my participants found helpful. I received very encouraging feedback that I will use to inform future instruction using this delivery model.