Laila Taylor

ITEC Portfolio Artifact Reflection

Standard 5.2 Professional Learning:

Candidates develop and implement technology- based professional learning standards,
integrates technology to support face-to-face and online components, models principles
of adult learning, and promotes best practices in teaching, learning, and assessment.
1. Briefly describe the artifact and the context in which it was created. What was/were
your individual contribution(s)?
This artifact was created for ITEC 7460 as a Coaching Journal. I worked with a veteran
teacher from September until November on creating and implementing a Weebly Web
Quest to use in her Social Studies classroom. This artifact has five entries where I
reflected on each coaching session, discussed strategies used, and skill and effective
changes that were made after each session.

2. Explain how this artifact demonstrates mastery of the standard/element under which it
is placed.
After completing a professional learning session for all academic teachers during all three
grade level planning periods I sent a google form and asked if anyone was interested in
working with me to help them create a web quest for their classroom. I coached a fellow
teacher on how to use google docs, and forms to begin with. The reason I agreed to
Coach this teacher is because she has told me numerous times that she would love to
incorporate more technology into her lessons but that she is scared of technology.
According to Knight (2007), Coaching is about relationships emotional connections, this
is the easiest part of the assignment for me since Teacher A and I have already established
great rapport. (pg. 79) For this reason the partnership approach was the best way to
move forward. I told Teacher A that we could sit down and develop a plan to decide what
she would like help with and what technology tool might work best with her needs. We
met face-to-face for three weeks during our planning periods where I helped her begin to
understand how to set up a web page on the weebly cite and what the main components
of a good web quest are. I was able to teach Teacher A how to embed a video and how to
create a screen cast. I showed her how my classes were using a class blog on our website
and how teachers can monitor and remove student comments if need be. As well as
sharing information on how to set up, design a web quest, and strategies for

Laila Taylor

ITEC Portfolio Artifact Reflection

implementation Teacher A shared a wealth of information with me. Teacher A is a

veteran teacher and has a vast amount of knowledge in the classroom such as effectively
grouping students based on needs and test scores. Teamwork was the success for my
Coaching experience.
3. What did you learn from completing this artifact? What would you do differently to
improve the quality of the artifact or the process involved in creating the artifact?
Teacher A stated in our high performance team meeting that she appreciated how I taught
her how to create a web quest and that I never made her feel inferior but patiently worked
with her and made her feel like her opinions were valuable and worthy as well. This
made me feel good and really understand how being humble as a coach is really the key
to getting people to buy in. Time is the biggest challenge that we faced finishing the
web quest. I think if I continued to coach her or anyone else I would definitely set up a
timeline where there was an end in sight. I think that has been the issue as of now is that
Teacher A and I are both swamped with professional learning that the school is requiring
from us that our coaching session are on the back burner.

4. How did the work that went into creating the artifact impact school improvement,
faculty development, or student learning? How can the impact be assessed?
Teacher A was very happy with everything she learned so far and is even talking about
creating a class website using weebly for her own class. She told other teachers on the
sixth grade hall and several have asked me to help them. I am excited about the small
impact that I had with a group of veteran teachers. Every teacher on my team has been
teaching more than me, in fact they were all teaching when I was in middle school.
Because of the teachers on my team, being veteran teachers this tends to lead to strained
relationships when someone younger is trying to train them. However, because of the
collaborative relationship that we are developing and because I always ask them to show
me Tricks of the Trade as well there is not any uncomfortable situations.