Created using Dalle-3 by Samara Marin 2024

In the fall of 2023, I decided to go back to school to get my master’s in education. After teaching for almost six years using my English Degree, I felt as though I needed some formal education as an educator. I learned to be a teacher through experience, as I learned almost everything else in my life. As someone who is surrounded by technology, I wanted to learn how to help my students learn how to use technology efficiently to assist them and myself with schoolwork. I originally wanted to join the program a few years ago, but I needed to be a certified teacher. After being updated, the applied digital learning program allowed me to join the program while working on completing my certification. 

I logged into my first class excited to learn how technology could be integrated into the classroom. My tune quickly changed once I started listening to what the instructor was saying. I felt as though I was drowning in information, projects, and due dates. When I turned in my first assignment for the class, developing the growth mindset plan, I turned in what I thought the teacher wanted. I followed the directions to a T and even used the examples given to organize my post. Looking back at this assignment now, I can see where I was following a list and checking to make sure I had every part. Once I started tinkering with the settings in WordPress, I began to mold the directions into reflections of myself. In the first class, I proceeded to create my learning manifesto with more of myself in the post other than the story.

Being given a choice in the outcome of my projects was daunting at first. If I wasn’t given an exact blueprint, how would I know that my project was good enough for the instructor? For the first project I turned in, I spent more time questioning what was expected than actually completing the project. The first rotation of classes was the Concepts of EdTech and Disruptive Innovation Courses. These two courses made me feel as though I didn’t know what to do due to the amount of freedom I was being given. I could feel myself jumping into a box in order to fit what I thought the instructor wanted. However, the more I read COVA: Inspire Learning Through Choice, Ownership, Voice, and Authentic Learning Experiences, the more I realized that I was the only person placing myself in a box.

“If you aren’t willing to give up control and give your learners a choice, there will be no ownership, and your projects will not be authentic” (Harapnuik & Thibodeaux, 2023). When I read this quote in the COVA book, I realized that in order to pass this program, I had to escape my own box. The box I created to make myself more comfortable with my assignments was actually hindering me. I decided to take a chance and submit a project how I wanted. Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success offered me a new perspective on why I feared failure to the point of limiting myself. “I was too scared to expose myself to the possibility that I might not be a “natural’” (Dweck, 2016). I was so accustomed to being a “natural” at everything I had done in the past, the fear of not being able to do that limited me. By the time I joined the next two courses, these two quotes stuck with me; as I entered my next two courses, my ePortfolio had taken a life of its own. I began writing what I wanted in the style that I wanted and editing the images in my ePortfolio to have a more cohesive style. Through creating images for my ePortfolio, I decided to adjust my focus to how AI can assist educators. I saw firsthand how choice in my learning helped me create a path for my research. I decided that through the choice to write my own blog posts during the ePortfolio course, I would create a page for what I interpreted COVA as. The further I travel my learner’s journey, the more I see how empowering COVA can be to learners.

Created using Dalle-3 by Samara Marin 2024

When I first joined the program, I completed my innovation plan with no intention of implementing it. The question in my mind was, “Who would listen to me?” However, once I began researching AI and how it could be beneficial to educators and crucial for students to learn in order to stay competitive in the technological terrain, I felt more compelled to create change on my campus. That being said, it wasn’t until the Leading Organizational Change course I took during the summer term that I genuinely believed I could make a change. At first, I wanted to create change in my organization quickly; however, through my change plan, I realized that I needed to slowly implement the change plan if I wanted the change to be significant and long-lasting.

Just as I had to wait for the seedling that helped create me into the learner I am today, I need to wait for the seedlings my change plan creates to grow. I began to teach those around me how to use AI in order to assist their planning. Once I created a group within my organization that knew the basics of AI implementation, I was ready to implement my professional learning plan. Currently, I am at the point in my innovation plan where I implement my professional learning plan at my campus in my district. I have given one professional learning session while I coach those around me by assisting them in either learning more about an AI they use or looking for an AI specific to the task they need. I am preparing the next professional learning after I receive implementation feedback from my coworkers.

Created using Dalle-3 by Samara Marin 2024

Creating a Significant Learning Environment (CSLE) and COVA go hand in hand in ensuring that learners are receiving the education that fits their learning. Considering I have a constructivist and connectivist learning style, both CSLE and COVA fit my learning philosophy. I prefer to focus on outcome-based learning as both an educator and a learner. When it comes to information, we as learners will always interact with information differently. Giving learners choice over their learning through a learning environment that creates the necessary boundaries to guide learners is how I prefer to both learn and teach. Significant learning environments create safe spaces for learners to explore new information. Through this method we ensure to create active learners instead of passive listeners.

The more I learn about the learner’s mindset, the more I realize that my learner’s philosophy hasn’t changed more like it took shape. My education, when it comes to the classroom, has been through an alternative certification and professional development on my campus. Since I became a teacher in the classroom, I believe that students are more likely to cooperate with a lesson if the lesson aligns with real-world experiences or a topic they are interested in. What I mean that my learner’s philosophy has taken shape is that I now have a name for the style of teaching and learning I choose to use. I always tell my students, “No one knows more about your abilities than you, and I believe everyone can accomplish their goals.” So, by giving students a choice in their learning and the goal for their learning then I can become a mentor/facilitator of my students’ learning. Whenever possible, I give my students choices in their assignments and attempt to link each lesson to real-world experiences. This can be seen in my sample lesson created using Fink’s 3-column table or the Understanding by Design outline I created for a course. In these outlines, I show how I give students choices, even in something like their final research paper for the class, in which students can align their topic to personal interests. The students do this while still staying within the boundary of their topic being WWII-related.

When it comes to transferring the CSLE and COVA approach from the classroom to the professional learning environment, it is important to remember that no matter the age, if someone is in a position to learn, then they are a learner. So, what this means to me is that by creating a learning environment suitable for creating change in my organization, I have to make the information accessible to different levels of learners when it comes to the flipped classroom and AI. Each person in my organization will want to use AI for a different reason and at a different level of experience. I started by creating co-facilitators in my organization by teaching those with a high interest in AI how to use it first on an individual basis. When it came time to create my professional learning environment, I kept in mind that there were others who could teach within the group due to pre-teaching. So, while I was presenting, those in the crowd could help guide the lesson in the direction that would be of the highest interest to most in the learning environment. I also sent out a pre-training survey to those that would attend. The survey was simple:

1. What implementation method would you like to learn about AI?
   • A. Grading and Feedback
   • B. Lesson Planning
   • C. Personalized Learning
   • D. Administrative Tasks
   • E. Content Creation
   • F. Data Analysis
2. Is there something that you have been wondering if AI can do? What is it?
3. Is there something keeping you from using AI in your lesson planning? If so, what is it?

When it came to teaching my organization in order to begin implementing resources that could help with flipping the classroom, I took into account what outcomes the learners wanted from their learning. This created an environment in which those in my organization who were apprehensive about the teaching topic were more likely to engage with the information. This was because the topic was more relevant to each educator’s goals for their classroom and not just aligned with the goals of my innovation plan.

Created using Dalle-3 by Samara Marin 2024

Dweck, C. (2016). Mindset: The New Philosophy of Learning. Random House.

Harapnuik, D. ; Thibodeaux, T. (2023) COVA: Inspire Learning Through Choice, Ownership, Voice, and Authentic Experiences. Learner’s Mindset Publishing. Kindle Edition.