I finally read the book, Map It by Cathy Moore.  It is on almost every influential instructional designer's recommended reading list and the only reason that I had not bought it earlier is that it is quite expensive.  Now that I have read it, I will admit it was worth the money.  It provides a pragmatic and thorough explanation of how to create an action map for training materials.  As Cathy Moore states:  "We're going to turn vague 'they should know this' training requests into projects that solve real, clearly defined performance problems.  Our solutions will be targeted to specific groups in specific situations and provided when they are most needed.  The solutions might not include conventional training at all."  Moore asks that when we design learning experiences instead of asking "What do people need to know?", we should be asking "What do people need to do and why aren't they doing it?"  Only then can we get at creating learning experiences that solve problems and are meaningful to people.  

Moore walks us through really concrete examples as she shows how to create an action map and then prototype an activity.  She is big on scenario-based storytelling as an engaging format for learning experiences.  Below is an example she used with soldiers in Afghanistan to help them improve cross-cultural communication with Afghani tribes.  She reveals the importance of showing not telling and engaging learners in scenarios that require them to consider situations that happen in the real world.  She is also a big proponent of streams of activities that provide small increments of training over a longer period of time rather than a one-shot workshop.  Her book validated much of what I have come to understand about effective learning experiences for audiences with diverse abilities.  Her book provides a wonderful map of how to stay true to what learners need not what others think they should know.  While I highly recommend  this book to anyone interested in learning experience or instructional design, her website also provides a wealth of good information to get started with action mapping even if the book is not yet in your budget.

Since November, I have been volunteering as a learning experience designer for Rumie Learn.  They specialize in creating Bytes which are microlearning courses that take 6-9 minutes to take and are aimed at social media users aged 14-29.  The idea is to get people to scroll with purpose.

Rumie has an excellent onboarding program where you go through a series of Bytes that are located together on Rumie Build, which is the content creation system used to create Bytes.   Since each Byte is built in the format of the Bytes learning experience designers will be creating, you get a good sense of how to format a Byte while you getting the information and training you need to create Bytes.  Brilliant!  

The learning director, Steve Birek, takes a very active role in supporting new learning experience designers and also giving support throughout the process with a weekly volunteer support Google Meet as well as quality feedback during the  Byte creation process.  Slack is used effectively to build teams or squads of designers and as a place to get support and get to know the Rumie Build Community.  Rumie also uses Discord to connect the entire Rumie community connecting the learners who use Rumie with the designers and staff of Rumie.

Microlearning course creation at Rumie involves a two-week Sprint structure.  First, you choose a learning objective in Clickup, the project management software utilized throughout the Byte creation process. This learning objective will be the focus of your Byte. Then you have a week to design the first draft of your Byte.  During the second week it goes through Peer Review where LXDs review each others' Bytes.  Then the Byte is reviewed by a Byte Editor and finally published on Rumie Learn.

I found it challenging and fun to work within the constraints of microlearning and also the Rumie Build system.  The emphasis is on using clear, concise language and  pictures, gifs, and memes to keep learners engaged. I chose to create Bytes on a wide range of topics.  I have learned so much through this process and  plan to continue to stay on as a learning experience designer to create more Bytes in the future. 

​“By intentionally combining learning science with the principles of human-centered design, as well as social and behavioral psychology, learning experience design results in contextualized, outcome-oriented experiences where the learner leaves with something to remember.”   -NovoEd Course
 
NovoEd offers a free course a few times a year called, Learning Experience Design:  From Ideas to Impact.  It is a 6-week online course that is packed with extensive information about Learning Experience Design (LXD) and the tools necessary to create a successful experience.  I was fortunate to take this course this fall and feel like it has helped me understand new LXD trends and exposed me to a valuable workflow to utilize for future projects.  The online course is laid out in a way that showcases their learning platform and is taught by some of their LXD team members.  It has a wealth of information, but is chunked in a way that makes the learning efficient and manageable. Also, there is a wonderful “Look Behind the Scenes” section for each of the units in the course where the design team discuss their design and curricular choices for the course. 
 
The capstone project for this course was to create a blueprint for a learning experience initiative or course and present it to the community as well as your workplace (if appropriate).  Each week was dedicated to a part of the blueprint with explanation and examples that provided the opportunity to develop a personal blueprint and compare it to others’ blueprints including a model blueprint that was created for the course.  I chose to develop an onboarding learning initiative to increase engagement of diverse populations.  It was an interesting exercise and the blueprint is a wonderful model to help you build engaging and collaborative learning experiences.  The course provides really useful information about giving and receiving feedback and then provides the opportunity to do just that for your blueprint. 
 
It was insightful to take a course that explored what makes quality learning experiences while learning the why and how of course creation from the design team.  I know I will utilize many of the resources in the future.  I recommend this course for anyone interested in digging deeper into LXD.  More information can be found at on their website.

​Building a course from scratch is a ton of work and the process of designing and teaching a computer science course for girls took about a year and a half.  When I started my position as Curriculum Integration Specialist at Saint Mary’s School, an all-girls school, I knew I would primarily be focused on supporting the faculty and staff.  However, I have always tried to keep my hand in teaching in the communities I serve as I feel it gives me the experience and perspective, I need to support faculty.  I also have a genuine passion for innovative teaching and designing this course provided the perfect opportunity.  From a needs analysis, there were no computer science or technology courses being offered at the school and creating a safe, focused space, where girls who are gravely underrepresented in Computer Science, seemed like an important endeavor for me. I also hoped to push the envelope of teaching with this course making it a hybrid project-based learning course utilizing Canvas LMS.  During this time, I was in the process of implementing Canvas schoolwide and having a class that could showcase how to expand classroom teaching with a learning management system was one of my hopes for this class. 
 
I had to go through a course proposal process and then was tasked with figuring out how to best design the course.  I decided to enroll in a 6-month long professional development opportunity offered by Online School for Girls that provided participants an opportunity to design a program that would help girls thrive.  I based my course off of the AP Computer Science Principles Course which was just gaining ground as new course being offered by the College Board.  It was centered around the Five Big Ideas:  Creative Development, Data, Algorithms and Programming, Computer Systems and Networks and the Impact of Computing.   It also used the Computational Thinking Practices:  Computational Thinking Design, Algorithms and Programming, Abstraction in Programming, Code Analysis, Computing Innovations, and Responsible Computing.  It appealed to me because it was more holistic in nature than many CS courses and lent itself to diverse pathways of mastery that allowed for freedom in curriculum design and a real-world project-based focus.
 
Researching and designing the curriculum was the fun part.  There was a plethora of engaging activities and programs that worked well for the course and it was a matter of crafting lessons and curating content that would be of interest to girls and designing projects that required students to wrestle with real world problems.  It was also important for girls to see themselves in Computer Science fields and emphasis was made to highlight successful women in those fields.
 
I had a small yet diverse group of Juniors and Seniors who took the course. I built the course in the Canvas LMS and utilized the rubric capabilities of Canvas to role out the use of this feature at our school as utilizing rubrics was an important school goal.  It was the school's first blended learning course as well.  The students met with me two days a week and then completed work independently in Canvas on the other days. My students learned important computer science principles, the basics of programming with Python, worked with Raspberry Pi’s and built mobile apps.   In addition to creating a digital portfolio with all of their projects that they presented to a panel of computer science and education professionals, students took part in the Technovation Challenge, an all-girls mobile app building competition where students had to design a business plan and mobile app solving a real-world problem.  There is plenty out there that speaks to the passions and interests of girls and it was fun collecting it all in one space and really getting a sense of what works and doesn’t work with girls.

​Bringing in a whole new technology product that students and teachers are expected to use extensively was a little terrifying.  Ultimately, my job is to support faculty in their use of technology and the fear of any technology facilitator is to garner the resentment of the people you are there to support, because you chose a tool that is cumbersome, ineffective, or simply doesn’t do the job it was supposed to do.  I am happy to report that this was not the case with Canvas.  It was a good year with Canvas.  I think the fact that all teachers were required to use it and now are fairly comfortable with using it on a basic level is huge for the first year of implementation.  They also see now that the work they do is saved and can be built upon for future years.  Also, we had a great group of early adopters who did some inspiring things with Canvas and shared them with the community.  I can honestly say I have learned Canvas inside and out and as far as learning management systems go, I really like it.   What I appreciate most about Canvas is its flexible structure, great support, and constant improvement.   New features are always popping up both small fixes and major improvements.  It was approximately a two year process to go from a needs analysis to selecting the best LMS to getting early adopters and then on to training the entire staff to be ready to implement Canvas for the following year.  Giving faculty the summer to add content to their courses and creating a schoolwide course template to use, so that subsequent training could be cohesive was especially helpful.  I am proud of the work around Canvas at Saint Mary’s School.  It was a huge undertaking, but now a part of the school culture.

​A couple of weeks ago the winners of the 2015 Technovation challenge were announced.  For those who don’t know, the Technovation Challenge is a global entrepreneurship competition for girls in middle school and high school.  Teams of girls must design and build a mobile app that solves a problem in their community.  In addition to creating the app, they must also create a video pitch, demo video, and write a business plan for their app.  It is truly a global competition, and was exciting to see that teams of girls from 60 different countries entered the competition.  My students created an app called Politics on Point to get teens more involved in politics and be more politically informed.  It was a phenomenal process and at the end of the process, my students were transformed. The high school winners were a team from Nigeria, below is their video pitch.

As participants we were able to see all of the apps created by other teams.  I acted as a judge for the Asia teams and was so inspired by all the apps that I judged.  One that really touched my heart was created by a team from India.  This group of girls was from the slums of Dharavi in Mumbai where community problems for women and girls are pretty serious and that’s what they chose to focus on with their app Women Well Being.  Competitions like this are at the heart of getting more girls thinking early about careers in technology and leveling the playing field in computer science.

This was my proudest moment in all my years as an educator.  The Technovation Challenge was precisely that, a challenge.  My students not only had to come up with a good idea for a mobile app, they also had to design and program it, write a business plan, and create a video pitch and demo video.  This was such an empowering project on so many levels.  It was amazing at the end to see all the apps created by teams of girls around the world.   It has really opened my eyes to an important means of teaching teens important computer science skills.  Mobile app development hits on so many important concepts within computer science and I am looking forward to further developing this curriculum and learning more about mobile app development.  Here is the demo of the app my students created.   The prototype is also available on the Google Play store.

Global collaboration has always been a passion of mine.  The Youth Talk Project allowed for a much more extensive collaboration than I have ever had the opportunity to get involved in and it was a big success.  This 6-month long collaboration with a school in Palestine included 5 video conferences and a collaborative project that dealt with an issue in the community.  One of the most important skills the girls learned was how to ask complete questions and how to be culturally sensitive.  Al Fata A school was amazing and I felt it was an important opportunity for our students to connect with students in the Middle East.  The Recycled Art Gardens that the two-school created were unique and creative.  Here is a short video of the process and finished gardens:

This year at Saint Mary’s is my first year as an all-girls school educator. I have always thought all-girls and all-boys education was a valuable undertaking, but attending the National Conference on Girls’ Education in Philadelphia from Feb 7-9 was the first opportunity I’ve really had to explore girls’ education on a deeper level.  This was a tremendously valuable conference for me on so many levels.  I heard one participant passing by say, “I’ve learned as much about myself as I have about educating girls at this conference” and I think I could say the same thing.  It’s can be difficult to decipher the ways gender plays a role in a variety of settings, but this conference helped illuminate this topic and I was able to learn about so many innovative and effective ways that educators across the country are working to support girls.

Online School for Girls Certification Kick-Off
To kick off the conference I got to spend the first 3 hours with others who are undertaking the 7-month long certification process.  Our cohort was treated to a presentation by members of the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives called Positive Risk Taking & Technology in All-Girls Schools.  The powerpoint below covers the main points of their talk.
We then did the Marshmallow Challenge which is an activity I was considering doing as an ice breaker for my class next year.  I think we will be doing this as a school during STEM week, but it’s really valuable for getting students to think about the process of creating and innovating instead of being focused on the end result.  We then spent some time learning about the expectations of the course and getting to know one another a bit better.
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Keynote Speakers
I couldn’t believe how inspiring and diverse the keynotes were that I attended.  The opening keynote was given by New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who is a passionate advocate for women’s rights.  In her keynote she basically  laid out her Opportunity Plan for what needs to happen in our country for women to be supported.  The following day I saw a keynote from UCLA professor, Linda Sax entitled, The Gender Gap and STEM:  Progress and Challenges.  What stood out to me in her keynote was her personal story of how she left a major in Engineering after her experiences at Berkeley and has spent most of her career in the social sciences exploring why women leave or don’t enter STEM fields.  I appreciated also that she articulated succinctly the reasons it is so important to get women in these fields:

• Women’s economic independence (this is where the jobs are)
• U.S. global competitiveness
• Inclusion of diverse perspectives that can contribute significantly to innovation
• Global demand for individuals with computer science training (valuable in any field)

Then there was the unforgettable Irshad Manji, NYU professor of Moral Courage, whose keynote, How to Turn Girls into Gutsy Global Citizens blew the audience away.  What an articulate, engaging speaker.  It is like she has oratory super powers.  Though there were many books at the bookstore I wanted to buy, I was able to resist the temptation to buy all except Irshad’s book, Allah, Liberty and Love:  The Courage to Reconcile Faith and Freedom.  I had her sign it for my in-laws, though I do plan to read it first.  Her Keynote was followed by an incredibly touching video called Stand in Our Shoes (the video is on the side bar of this page) by the Young Women’s Leadership Network that left everyone in the room in tears.
On the final day of the conference, we were treated to the hilarious, Peggy Klaus, whose book and keynote, Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It demanded that we create a personal “bragalogue” which was both fun and unnerving at the same time.  Only someone with the charisma of Peggy would be able to get a ballroom full of tired educators to do this activity at this final breakfast keynote.

Workshops
I tried to hit workshops that dealt with a range of topics around girls’ schooling.  I attended a couple of tech-oriented workshops. The first one, Using the SAMR Model to Transform Online and Blended Teaching, was presented by two technology directors, one from Atlanta and another from Palo Alto who had just finished the Certification program that I am starting.  This workshop was their final project for the program and an enjoyable presentation of how to use the SAMR model to get teachers to think about how they are using technology by first having students develop projects then think about where those projects fall on the SAMR model. I also went to a workshop presented by technology specialists at the Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem called the “Maker Faire” Approach to Technology for Girls that allowed me to learn a bit about Google Coder and the Raspberry Pi.
One of the most inspiring workshops I attended was presented by faculty of  a Washington D.C. school, Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart called Service, Girls and Self-Esteem through Social Action. Although you wouldn’t know it from the title, this presentation reflected the most powerful example of promoting leadership in a school that I have ever witnessed.  At this school, every other Wednesday is devoted to service projects and they have developed this tremendously thoughtful program that requires girls to be leaders on so many levels.  They distilled the process of social action to three distinct steps: Preparation, Action, and Reflection and it is embedded in all that they do…they even have reflection leaders!
Finally, I must mention the two-part workshop that I attended on Sunday morning that provided an amazing story of one school’s transformation to a 21st Century Learning Community. In the first half, the head and assistant head of Bishop Strachan School, the oldest all-girls school in Canada, shared the strategic approaches and difficult choices the administration made over a 10-year period to dramatically change the culture of the school to make it more inclusive, diverse, and innovative. The second half involved the faculty discussing how they used protocols with much of the time spent involved in a Project Tuning Protocol where feedback is given to a teacher on a project or process, they want to assess or improve. I LOVED this process as it provided such a rich environment for improvement, community building and dialogue, and I believe it is a direction our school is going to take which I am excited about.

Inspire! Sessions
In lieu of a workshop, each session offered Inspire! sessions around a specific theme which involved 30-min roundtable discussions where you are able to attend the presentations of two different groups.  I went to the Leadership Track Inspire! Sessions and I chose two that dealt with global leadership. I learned about a wonderful program at Havergal School called Ready, Set, Dream that provides a forum for girls to take problems in the world that are bothering them and formulate a plan to do something about it. One program that was talked about extensively involved a group of student athletes who worked with a group of student athletes in Ghana to run sport camps there for young children. I thought it would be a wonderful concept to bring to my boxing gym. I would love to have students at the gym be involved in a program like this. The second session was presented by Saint Mary’s School in Memphis and dealt with global conferencing. They actually do a one semester course that involves online study in the Spring semester followed by travel in the summer.
Philadelphia in the winter isn’t so bad when you get to go to a phenomenal conference that opens your mind to a community passionate about girls’ schooling.

“Increasingly in the twenty-first century, what you know is far less important than what you can do with what you know.  The interest in and ability to create new knowledge to solve new problems is the single most important skill that all students must master today.  All successful innovators have mastered the ability to learn on their own “in the moment” and then apply that knowledge in new ways.”  -Tony Wagner
I had the opportunity to read Creating Innovators by Tony Wagner as part of St. Mary’s Summer Reading Program for its employees and absolutely loved the book.  It was a refreshingly optimistic view of today’s youth and the endless possibilities for being innovators that our global, connected world provides them.  This book looks at approximately 10 innovators in a variety of fields and tracks them from their childhood experience through college and into their current fields of work.  What I appreciated most was the diversity of fields and backgrounds that these innovators represented and that despite this diversity there were some common threads that put these stand outs on the track of innovation.
Critical to this track were supportive parents.  Parents who encouraged their children to tinker and pursue their passions without judgment about those passions from their parents.  What surprised me most is that these parents limited the “scheduling” of their children’s time as well as the number of toys and gadgets the children had to play with.  Instead, they focused on getting their children to use their imagination.  Reading books was also a valued activity in these homes.  The other critical factor in the lives of the innovators studied was a mentor who allowed them to pursue their passions in nontraditional ways that provided real world experiences for trying out their ideas.  This mentor came in many different forms from outlier college professors who taught innovative classes to community members and activists.

The innovators in this  book followed a path of play, passion, and purpose.  What started as play for these innovators turned into passion, and then a sense of purpose for using those passions to do meaningful work.  Unfortunately, our traditional education system doesn’t generally nurture innovators and most in this book had to look outside traditional avenues to follow the innovation track.  There are a number of high schools and colleges that are restructuring traditional models of education and a good chunk of this book looks at some of these spaces of innovative learning like High Tech High, MIT Media Lab and Olin College.