Personal Growth Plan

A major goal of the Certificate courses (CEP810/811/812) is that they are malleable enough to integrate with your own learning needs and goals. To help accomplish this task as well as to assess your progress, you will be constructing a personal growth plan that describes how you hope to grow as an educator as a result of these courses. In so doing, we will be asking you to both look forward and look back.

This project is based on three ideas.  First, creativity is one of the foundational mindsets to the program. And, as Csikszentmihalyi noted, making time for personal reflection is one of the keys to personal creativity.  Second, it has often been said that if you aim at nothing you’re pretty sure to hit it. So we want you to make some specific goals that will make you a bit uncomfortable and push your knowledge.  Finally, we know that learner intentionality is very important.  This document will be your ideas about what is important to learn and will be under your control. Be reflective.  Be specific.  Personalize this plan.  Aim high.

That said, in the first week, we want you to write about four things:

  1. Reflect on your teaching and educational technology learning experiences that preceded this program (undergrad, graduate, in-service, professional development, workshops, etc).
  2. Reflect on this first week of classes and how it has changed any learning trajectories established in #1.
  3. Create a personal growth plan for the remaining portion of the 2010 summer courses.
  4. Lay the foundation for a personal growth plan for the remaining portion of the MAET program (years 2 & 3) and the next five years of your career.

Think about making this first week serve as a model for something your students or colleagues could write at the start of a course unit or school year.

But, “what do you really want!?!” you may be asking.  Once again, the specific ideas you right about are those that are personally relevant or resonant for you. Paul may be really interested in TPACK and Jillian creativity.  Andrea might want to learn more about using Twitter in the classroom, and Chris may be really excited for the Web/Vid/Screen/podcast project in week 4.  You have just started to scratch the surface this week – after this brief exposure to what’s ahead, what are your goals for finding the “sweet spot” in the TPACK model? What skill sets do you need to increase? What other literature or theory do you want to connect with? How will you pave your way and make sense of the opportunities you are exposed to? How are you going to take what you’re learning here and integrate it into your personal and professional workflows?  These are just some possible questions to address.  Find your own.  What is important to you as you develop both personally and professionally?

Each week this summer, we will return to this post and provide time for review, revisitation, and elaboration on theses questions and the concepts, ideas, and technologies that apply to your own classroom.

THE DETAILS
- The first question we always get – how long should it be? It depends – and don’t worry about it.  Each week, you will be given a “free-write” time during which we expect you to focus entirely on this plan. You may also find that you will want to extend your ideas in the evening.  The goal is for this to be a living document that will follow you week to week this summer, but much longer thereafter.

- This first week, please use the yourlastname_social Google doc as you are drafting your first post. Then, we’ll take a look at what you have done this evening and provide text
feedback for revising and posting your first personal growth plan blog entry. This first post should be up on your blog by Monday, July 5 at 8:30am.

- Any questions?  Sorry, this project is all about you.  We will not be fielding questions about the project proper after introducing it :) Have fun, take charge of the experience.  Time for reflection in the modern world is scarce.  You will have at least four extended periods of time this summer to do so.  With due respect to Woody Allen, take this time (and more) to drink deeply from the river of knowledge…don’t just gargle…