Developing your own ICT Skills and Pedagogy
Engaging in professional development is something that comes fairly naturally to me. I have always been a curious individual at heart, and whenever I have a question or want to learn more about something, I will spend hours on the task until I feel that I have learned it sufficiently enough that the knowledge or skill feels like my own. As I plan for lessons and units, I am always searching for the best strategies to teach the content to students, so naturally I find myself watching YouTube videos or reading essays and papers as I am planning my lessons. I am independent, motivated (when I want to be), and driven to complete my tasks in the best possible way that I know how.
In my opinion, my downfall lies in being able to connect with people. This weakness exists in part due to my introverted personality, and also in part due to the isolation of having worked in China. With the Great Firewall blocking all forms of Western social media that I would have thought to use (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), it became much more difficult to engage in networking across the pond. At times, due to the hassle of connecting onto a VPN service (only to have it not work), I opted to not engage in using tools that were blocked in China. Apart from our small team of foreign teachers, I had very little opportunity to connect with other professionals and engage in professional development with my colleagues. Now being back in Canada, I'm finding that I have to re-learn many things all over again and start from the ground up.
Twitter and Active Engagement Online
As I am getting re-acquainted with having full accessibility of the Internet again, there are so many more tools and resources that I have never really taken the opportunity to use appropriately before. One such platform is Twitter. I used to use Twitter for personal reasons, but fell off of the Twitter train as I got more involved in the last couple of years of coursework in university. In my mind, I used to associate Twitter and social media as having no educational merits. What's so "professional" about memes and hashtags? But really, there is educational value in the skills that students learn using social media. Their ability to play with language and engage in conversation has improved, as discussed in the following TED Talk video by Harry Dyer (2016):
And so I changed my tune a little bit. If students can use social media effectively, why can't professionals as well? When I went back to take a look at my old Twitter account at the start of the course, I had to cringe a little bit at the type of tweets I was making. I thought, "Well, this is definitely unacceptable for a professional Twitter account" and promptly made a new Twitter handle to use for engaging in professional development. So far, I haven't had too much of a chance to use Twitter professionally as much as I would have liked, being a lot busier than I had originally anticipated at the start of the school year, but being able to follow other professionals and organizations that share my teaching philosophy and goals (BCTLA, BCECTA, etc.) and, most importantly, have ideas that they can share and offer for me has already made me feel much more connected. My next goal would be to start tweeting more often and actively engaging in conversations using the platform so that I can reflect on my practices and improve on them. From links to activities, examples of other teachers' practices, and hashtags that help promote awareness and events, there's so much that Twitter can offer the education professional that I wish to take more advantage of!
Workshops and Active Engagement in the Community
One way that I have previously engaged in professional development is through workshops. In China, we were thankfully given professional development days to collaborate with our colleagues and basically establish our own PLN groups in accordance to our inquiries. While the execution of these collaboration times and the workshops that administration organized and provided can be improved upon, it was nevertheless a valuable experience to have. It's so important to be able to connect with people who share the same professional learning goals as you so that you can have discussions and collaborate in a physical space.
What I like about being part of the Delta School District is having the chance to easily find professional development workshops that are inline with my professional learning goals through FirstClass. There were so many opportunities posted for the two Pro-D days this upcoming weekend that I had a very difficult time choosing just two workshops to attend!
However, it is important for me to remember that FirstClass doesn't have all of the opportunities that I may seek. For example, I decided to sign up for BCECTA's "Carpe Teachum" conference for TTOC's and new classroom teachers that was not found on the FirstClass Pro-D list. While not related to the library, I felt as a teacher who's new to teaching in BC, this professional development workshop would benefit me more in the short-term than one focused on teacher-librarianship (although I am following BCTLA so that I can get updates from them about future conferences!).
In LLED462, we were introduced this week to the app Symbaloo. Combined with Feedly, I think this will be a great resource in being able to keep track of all the wonderful online resources that I find. As this is a new tool for me, I am still learning how to use it, so perhaps I will have something more to show for it in the future!
References
Dyer, Harry [TEDx Talks]. (2016, March 28). Incorporating & accounting for social media in education [YouTube]. TEDxNorwichED. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZteEZbAtsNI
BCECTA. (2018, April 20). Save the date! Friday, October 19 PSA Day Conference! BC Early Career Teachers' Association. Retrieved from https://bcecta.wordpress.com/2018/04/20/save-the-date-friday-october-19-psa-day-conference/
Engaging in professional development is something that comes fairly naturally to me. I have always been a curious individual at heart, and whenever I have a question or want to learn more about something, I will spend hours on the task until I feel that I have learned it sufficiently enough that the knowledge or skill feels like my own. As I plan for lessons and units, I am always searching for the best strategies to teach the content to students, so naturally I find myself watching YouTube videos or reading essays and papers as I am planning my lessons. I am independent, motivated (when I want to be), and driven to complete my tasks in the best possible way that I know how.
In my opinion, my downfall lies in being able to connect with people. This weakness exists in part due to my introverted personality, and also in part due to the isolation of having worked in China. With the Great Firewall blocking all forms of Western social media that I would have thought to use (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), it became much more difficult to engage in networking across the pond. At times, due to the hassle of connecting onto a VPN service (only to have it not work), I opted to not engage in using tools that were blocked in China. Apart from our small team of foreign teachers, I had very little opportunity to connect with other professionals and engage in professional development with my colleagues. Now being back in Canada, I'm finding that I have to re-learn many things all over again and start from the ground up.
Twitter and Active Engagement Online
As I am getting re-acquainted with having full accessibility of the Internet again, there are so many more tools and resources that I have never really taken the opportunity to use appropriately before. One such platform is Twitter. I used to use Twitter for personal reasons, but fell off of the Twitter train as I got more involved in the last couple of years of coursework in university. In my mind, I used to associate Twitter and social media as having no educational merits. What's so "professional" about memes and hashtags? But really, there is educational value in the skills that students learn using social media. Their ability to play with language and engage in conversation has improved, as discussed in the following TED Talk video by Harry Dyer (2016):
And so I changed my tune a little bit. If students can use social media effectively, why can't professionals as well? When I went back to take a look at my old Twitter account at the start of the course, I had to cringe a little bit at the type of tweets I was making. I thought, "Well, this is definitely unacceptable for a professional Twitter account" and promptly made a new Twitter handle to use for engaging in professional development. So far, I haven't had too much of a chance to use Twitter professionally as much as I would have liked, being a lot busier than I had originally anticipated at the start of the school year, but being able to follow other professionals and organizations that share my teaching philosophy and goals (BCTLA, BCECTA, etc.) and, most importantly, have ideas that they can share and offer for me has already made me feel much more connected. My next goal would be to start tweeting more often and actively engaging in conversations using the platform so that I can reflect on my practices and improve on them. From links to activities, examples of other teachers' practices, and hashtags that help promote awareness and events, there's so much that Twitter can offer the education professional that I wish to take more advantage of!
Workshops and Active Engagement in the Community
One way that I have previously engaged in professional development is through workshops. In China, we were thankfully given professional development days to collaborate with our colleagues and basically establish our own PLN groups in accordance to our inquiries. While the execution of these collaboration times and the workshops that administration organized and provided can be improved upon, it was nevertheless a valuable experience to have. It's so important to be able to connect with people who share the same professional learning goals as you so that you can have discussions and collaborate in a physical space.
What I like about being part of the Delta School District is having the chance to easily find professional development workshops that are inline with my professional learning goals through FirstClass. There were so many opportunities posted for the two Pro-D days this upcoming weekend that I had a very difficult time choosing just two workshops to attend!
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| Delta SD FirstClass | Pro-D Registration |
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| BCECTA |
References
Dyer, Harry [TEDx Talks]. (2016, March 28). Incorporating & accounting for social media in education [YouTube]. TEDxNorwichED. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZteEZbAtsNI
BCECTA. (2018, April 20). Save the date! Friday, October 19 PSA Day Conference! BC Early Career Teachers' Association. Retrieved from https://bcecta.wordpress.com/2018/04/20/save-the-date-friday-october-19-psa-day-conference/
Well done post. I learned a lot about teaching in China from your descriptions and was disappointed that even tools like a VPN were not always sufficient for gaining access to networks, media and information when you needed it. I hope that all this catch up now is very invigorating and supportive of your growth as an educator back in BC and your new abilities to attend much more participant driven Professional Development. Your toolbox is growing and your goals for future sharing, connecting and organizing useful resources sounds like a great plan.
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