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The Digital Innovator Program

NapaLearns & Napa County Office of Education launch new program

Mario Piombo, Director, Innovation
Published on August 19, 2016

NapaLearns and the Napa County Office of Education (NCOE) are excited to announce a new professional learning initiative, the Digital Innovator Program, the next iteration of the NCOE Dinner Series. The Digital Innovator Program is the answer to a question we frequently ask at NapaLearns: How might we provide educators with high-quality professional learning opportunities that accelerate technology-infused teaching and learning in their classrooms? As we set out to answer this question, we engaged our partners at NCOE as well as many teacher leaders across Napa County, and we began to understand that our educators wanted a new type of learning experience.

3 Learning Activities

  • Meetups will be hosted to provide participants with informal opportunities to network and learn from like-minded educators.
  • Workshops will be offered as free hands-on, after-school sessions designed and led by some of Napa County’s most distinguished teacher leaders; free dinner will also be provided to participating educators.
  • Online Learning will also be available to educators on a digital hub containing resources and virtual professional learning communities where they can share resources and connect with one-another.

4 Core Design Principles

  1. Learning should be provided in formal and informal formats.
  2. Topics should be dynamic and based on the needs of our students.
  3. Teachers teaching teachers should be the foundation of our program.
  4. Educators need the opportunity to network and go deep with their learning.

5 Focus Areas or “Networks”

Our stakeholders and partners also helped us pinpoint five areas of focus for the 2016–2017 school year. We are calling these focus areas “Networks.”

  1. Digital Classroom: Harnessing Tech for Teachers and Students
  2. Maker Education: “Making” Meaningful Connections to Learning
  3. Digital Storytelling: Leveraging Video for Learning
  4. Coding & Robotics: Learn to Code, Code to Learn
  5. Startup Classroom: Amping Up PBL for the Tech-infused Workplace

Each network will be facilitated by a teacher leader known as a Network Lead who will lead professional learning activities for their corresponding strand. Professional learning will be offered in a variety of formats.

Network-leaders
3 NapaLearns Fellows plus 2 Teachers of the Year lead professional learning

Teachers who sign up to participate in our first meetup/launch party will be given an opportunity to network and learn more about the program.

The Napa County Office of Education and NapaLearns are excited to see where our teacher leaders take us in the world of innovative teaching and learning.