Classroom Teacher

Define your change

Be clear on the learning objective of your pilot, and understand exactly what you want to learn and how exactly you’re going to measure it – basically, how you’ll know whether it’s working. Finally, predict what you think will happen, so you have a hypothesis to measure against.

Then define your plan

Sketch out the steps needed to implement your innovation, whether it’s a new practice, a new product, or both. Who owns each step and when does it need to be done? Who needs to be advised of the change? What additional resources might you need to put it into place? And how do you roll it out to your students?

Find a thought partner

Find a buddy – a fellow teacher, or maybe a department lead – to serve as a sounding board both as you plan for your pilot and as you implement. Support outside the four walls of your classroom will be critical for both the frustrations that comes with trying something new, and the excitement that follows when it works.

Pick promising tools (or practices)

If you’re looking to pilot an edtech product, start with a short-list of promising products that are specifically meant to enable your learning objective. Look beyond the product’s bells and whistles, but at the team behind it, checking for education and content-area expertise, and at the depth and breadth of content available. (Does it address the needs of a wide range of learners, and for a long enough period of time? Does the product provide the data you need to measure the outcomes in your hypothesis?) Finally, make sure that the product requirements match up with the tech resources you have available: What bandwidth is required? Is a particular type of device required? Does a classroom need to be 1:1? Etc.

If you’re looking to get started with personalized learning, take advantage of the experiences of educators who already made the leap. Resources from classroom teachers are popping up on sites across the country, including the Learning Accelerator’s “Practices at Work” site, LEAP Innovations’ LEAP Learning Framework resources, and Teacher 2 Teacher’s social media streams.

Give it a try

Once you’ve made your plan and selected your edtech product and/or personalized learning strategy, put it into practice. Establish in advance how long you want to have a given strategy or product in place.

Document successes and problems

While piloting your edtech product and/or personalized learning strategy, make observations and document both successes and problems. Discuss with your students their perceptions of the product or the new practice.

Reflect and analyze

Take a close look at your implementation up to this point, and unpack the successes and challenges. Review any collected product data, observations, and feedback from students. Take a close look at your original plan – was your hypothesis correct? Did another question emerge in the process?

Share your results

Whether formally or informally, take the time to share your results with your peers. By sharing your lessons learned, both the good and the bad, you will be able to gather wisdom to add to your next iteration as well as inspire others to innovate within their classrooms.

Give it another try

Using your reflections and key takeaways, decide what to do differently to get you closer to your desired result, whether it means expanding the use of a tool or practice, adjusting the implementation, or trying something new altogether. Innovation is meant to be cyclical. Define the change you want to see, work toward it, pause to reflect and iterate, and then get started again with your changes in place.