The Friday Four

It's been a VERY hectic past few weeks but I am jumping back on my own #thefridayfour bandwagon!  Let's get it!!!

What went well this week?
 I allowed myself to rest.....and that was a GREAT thing!  Labor Day was on Monday and I did absolutely NOTHING!  My mind and my body needed it!  This week has been awesome as a result!  Coworkers even commented on Tuesday, how rejuvenated and rested I looked!  

What can I do better next week?
Next week, I have got to manage my time in a MAJOR WAY!!!  There are a few projects at work that are REALLY about to start to move forward and I am going to need to balance my time in order to get it all done!  This seems to be a theme every week, huh?  LOL

Who or what did I affect in a positive way this week?
Over the past few weeks, I've been helping a fellow colleague create her first blog!  She has been moved to help tell the stories of leaders in the field of education that are doing PHENOMENAL THINGS!  This week, IT LAUNCHED!!!!  I am soooo proud of her!  She has gone from not using technology a whole lot, to creating a blog, a Twitter account for her blog, AND I even taught her how to embed her Twitter feed into her blog!!!  This is the ONE thing that I wish Blogger would allow for...in due time, right?

What is something I did professionally for myself?
I became an Apple Teacher!!!!  My good friend, and fellow edtech colleague, gave me a gentle push to check it out.  I did indeed check it out and earned my certification!  I'm SUPER excited!!!! 

There it is!  What are your #thefridayfour this week?

#thefridayfour

It's Friday!  It's Friday!  It's the end of the week and the last day!  You know what that means!  It's time for The Friday Four!  Here are mine....what are yours?

1.  What went well this week?

I led an AMAZING G-Suite training this week at a local charter school who is freshly going Google! This group of educators was brand spanking new to Google and all that's in the G-Suite.  I was able to show them how to log in to their drive, Docs, Slides, Forms and Sheets.  I shared several different add-ons and extensions that they thoroughly enjoyed!  The feedback that I received after the training was really positive and I can't wait to see how this group of educators takes off with Google this year!

2.  What can I do better next week?

Next week, I'm looking to cross some things off of my to do list and tie up some loose ends.  I have a few work ideas/work projects that I am excited to work on and check off my list!  Time management will definitely play into this!

3.  Who or what did I affect in a positive way this week?

I'm going to refer back to question #1!  Training 20-ish educators on G-Suite filled me up!  I loved reading through all of the feedback at the completion of the training!

When asked what part of the training, participants found most valuable, here are a few of their responses:

"How to not only create documents but also how to have students the ability to become interactive by using google classroom."

"How to access cheat sheets and a general one-stop resource."

"Assignments in Google Docs adding and grading them from the classroom."

"Everything!"

"The stream page on Google helped me to streamline what I was already doing on Google."

4.  What is something I did professionally for myself?

This week, I reached out to one of my Google idols to pick his brain out about some things!  He is so inspiring and when we got off of the phone he had me feeling like I could change the world! For him to not only respond to my inquiry, but take time out of his day to talk to me on the phone was really appreciated!  I am truly blessed that he is a part of my professional learning network!

#thefridayfour

It's that time again!!!  Time to reflect!

1.  What went well this week?
I prepared a presentation for our district wide professional learning day that would be shared with all of our K-5 educators!  I used a lot of the skills that I learned in Tony Vincent's, Classy Graphics course!  I definitely feel more creative as a result of taking his course and using what I've learned to create amazing presentations that will be utilized during professional development.

2.  What can I do better next week?
Time management still continues to be something I need to improve on.  There just never seem to be enough hours in the day.  I have a planner that I use and I still run out of time!  Maybe I need to plan my day hour by hour....hmmmm.....

3.  Who or what did I affect in a positive way this week?
I helped one of the coordinators in our district with Google as she prepared for a working session this week.  She had a unit plan template that she needed to disseminate to her teachers.  While working in pairs, they needed to access the document, work within the document collaboratively and send it back to her.  We set her up a shared Google Drive that she then turned into a tiny.url and her teachers had at it!  They made copies of the template, renamed it with their information, collaborated on the document and then it was there waiting for her!  It worked perfectly!  We opted to go this route instead of using the Teams Drive because she didn't have the time to manually add each teacher in one by one.  Once she has time to do so, I'll work with her to create a Team Drive and move that folder into the drive so everyone is able to access it going forward!

4.  What is something I did professionally for myself?
I spent a lot of time in #classygraphics the course and resources this week!  I had to quickly create a flyer that is going to be administered at our Back2SchoolBash tomorrow.  I also started creating a series of graphics that I am calling "The Anatomy of..."  These are graphics that show the anatomy, or parts of different ed tech resources that I come across and love!  Of course I used those #classygraphics skills to create them!

Tag!  You're it!  What are YOUR Friday Four?

#thefridayfour

So, I had a thought!  Fridays are usually reflection days for me on what happened during the week. What went well?  What didn't go so well?  What can I do differently next week?  What can I do better next week?  Who did I affect this week?  Did I make a positive impact on someone or something this week?  You get the picture!  I decided to start what I'm going to call "The Friday 4!"

Every Friday (let's hope), I'm going to make a concerted effort to reflect on 4 things:

1. What went well this week?
2. What can I do better next week?
3. Who or what did I affect in a positive way this week?
4. What is something I did professionally for myself?

It's my hope that being more focused in my reflection each week, will help me to be more intentional about my goals for the following week.  So....it's week 1 and here goes!

What went well this week?

This week, in general, was just a REALLY productive week! It was the first week back with our entire Instructional Technology team.  We had numerous trainings and planning sessions that went really well!

What can I do better next week?
Next week, I am going to be sure to create a complete brain dump at the end of each day!  Although this week was super productive, I've had a feeling of "loose ends" all week.  I need to make the effort to get everything out of my brain and on to paper (or a computer!) so I know that I've dotted every i and crossed every t!

Who or what did I affect in a positive way this week?
New Teacher Orientation was today and I positively impacted 145 new teachers to my school district! I was able to trouble shoot issues of not being able to log into their email or their Google Classroom and although these issues were small to me, I know it's going to make a world of difference to them! They are eager to get started as new teachers to our district and begin getting their plans together!

What is something I did professionally for myself?
I purchased a few inspirational books to read, as if I don't have enough "books to read" on my bookshelf! I also blogged and spent some time analyzing analytics of my website! It's amazing to see the number grow every week as well as to see where in the world people are located that are reading what I've got to say!

So....what about you?  What are your #thefridayfour?  As you close out this week and prepare to celebrate the weekend, take a moment to reflect.  Take some time to get in the right mind to close out this week and get ready for the upcoming week!