APC Activity 5 - Professional Connections

Following on from the last post, this task asks us to examine our current and potential professional connections. I used Popplet to create this visual map of my connections:

Choose two professional connections you have in your map. Evaluate their impact on your practice and professional community.

I have mentioned it several times in this blog already, so it is probably no surprise that the first connection that comes to mind for me is Twitter. I may well be coming across as a stuck record, but I cannot emphasise enough the impact that Twitter is having on my practice. I had signed up for it a long time ago and never really 'got' it. In fact I was quite disdainful about the site and saw it as full of mindless celebrity shenanigans. However after going to 2 or 3 professional development sessions in a row whose main message seemed to be "Get on Twitter!" (even though they were about unrelated topics) I started to realise the professional potential. I created my account from scratch as purely education related (with a wee dash of wildlife and conservation) and started to see some exciting things pop up in my feed. However it wasn't until Mind Lab and getting my head around scheduled chats that my interest really took off. I now try and participate in various chats as often as possible. It is so exciting to engage with like-minded professionals who share, advise and inspire. I get all sorts of ideas for my practice and am kept up to date with exciting things happening in education. This has had a huge impact on me as an individual, but I also try and share regularly with my school community and am encouraging everyone to get on there themselves!

The other connection I have forged in recent months which has had a significant impact for me is my Mind Lab cohort. While I have learnt an amazing amount from the course content, probably the most valuable thing for me about the course has been the time spent sharing, collaborating and engaging with other professionals as excited about new things as I am. We are absolutely spoilt with the global connections available to us through the internet, however there is nothing quite like face to face and the weekly sessions in the first half of this course were some of the most inspiring hours I've spent during my education career. Now that we are not able to catch up in person so regularly, however, I am very glad this connection has extended online with the Google + community and contact I have with my particular group I got to know in the course. I am blessed with an awesome bunch of colleagues at my own school, however to now be able to reach beyond that and find out what others are doing in other contexts is having a profound impact on my own teaching and learning.

APC Activity 4 - Communities of Practice

I have really enjoyed the emphasis on professional communities during my Mind Lab studies, and something that has really stood out for me is the huge importance and value of these. For this task we are looking at the concept of a ‘community of practice’.

For an excellent overview of this concept, see this webpage Introduction to Communities of Practice put together by Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner. It puts forward the following definition:

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

It goes on to identify three key elements that must be present:

1. The domain
2. The community
3. The practice

I see myself as part of a number of communities of practice, which as pointed out on the webpage above, is common to most people. I like the concept of becoming more aware of less obvious formal communities and being able to “perceive the structures defined by engagement in practice and the informal learning that comes with it”.

I would align myself primarily with three communities: my school, the Bays Cluster and now the Mind Lab and associated Google + community. The interactions within these are what makes them so beneficial. Within my school, especially since moving to collaborative teams, we constantly share and learn together. Our cluster has become closer and more active over the last few years, and our regular professional development sessions and catch ups are an invaluable chance to collaborate and problem-solve. Mind Lab has turned out to be a fantastic community of practice which through Google + and personal connections we have forged, I expect to extend far beyond the end date of this course.

What are the current issues in your community? How would you or your community of practice address them?

One of the biggest issues in our school and cluster community is the move to MLEs and collaborative teams. This is only the second year into it for most of us and we have all taken part in a massive learning curve. The fact that we form such a strong community of practice is central to how we are addressing this. We are in constant communication, both face to face and digital, at a staff level, school level and cluster level. We exchange ideas, share experiences and offer advice. We hope to spend even more time working with other teams this year and taking opportunities to observe what each other are doing.

What is your specialist area of practice? How does your specialist area of practice relate to the broader professional context?

I have always had a keen interest in digital tools, and since commencing my Mind Lab studies this has become somewhat my ‘specialist area’ though I still have a lot to learn! I think this is becoming an increasingly important area in our professional context as it is more and more vital for students and teachers to be able to make the most of the amazing technology at our disposal. We also need to prepare students for the world ahead of them and equip them with vital 21^st Century skills.

What changes are occurring in the context of your profession? How do you think you or your community of practice should address them?

Change is very much the word of the hour! We are in a constant state of significant change and it is becoming increasingly vital for everyone involved in education to be open to this change and able to adapt constantly. We are responsible for equipping our students to cope with this changing society. Our community of practice needs to be proactive about staying relevant in terms of technology, modes of learning and global communities.

APC Activity 3 - Reflective Practice

This activity asked us to read “Reflecting on reflective practice” by Lynda Finlay (2008) and respond to the article while considering our own reflective practice. The article is an interesting one that discusses reflection in some detail, comparing a number of models of reflection and discussing some of the current ideas and debates around reflective practice. 

We had discussions within our Mind Lab group early in the course around reflection and the huge variance in how teachers undertook it. Some people commented on how they thought it was done as a matter of course by all teachers, but were discovering that this was not in fact the case. However, the article highlighted to me that there are so many different ways and means of reflecting, and others may not be doing it the same way as you. The question does remain though, is their method, and for that matter yours, an effective one? 

There were a couple of key points that stood out to me when reading Finlay’s piece. On the very first page I have put a big highlighter mark next to “for busy professionals short on time, reflective practice is all too easily applied in bland, mechanical, unthinking ways.” I like to think I avoid this where possible, however I know I have fallen into this trap in the past, especially when endeavouring to put some sort of ‘structure’ around my reflection. Finlay lists the five levels that Zeichner and Liston (1996) put together, and the first is identified as “Rapid reflection – immediate, ongoing and automatic action by the teacher”. I think that this is something we all do, and though it is not typically recorded, it is vitally important to be able to think and adapt on the fly. I believe I do this well, but am not always effective at finding ways to expand on and document my reflections. 

Having said that, I commented in my last post about my Mind Lab studies having an effect on my whole approach to teaching and learning. Brookfield (1995) is referenced in the article as characterising critical reflection as “stance and dance” – having a stance of inquiry and a dance involving experimentation and risk. This is very much the direction I feel my practice has taken since participating in this course. 

My current ‘model’ of reflection is extremely informal and unstructured. However I do regularly stop, think and evaluate, and write anecdotal notes on my planning. Moving to a collaborative teaching team has also made an enormous difference to the amount of reflecting I do, as we are having constant conversations every day about how things have worked and how we can improve. There is definitely, though, room for improvement as even though structuring reflection can lead dangerously towards mechanical box ticking, I currently don’t have much in the way of documented reflections to learn from and look back on. My own goal is to continue this blog beyond this course as a platform for ongoing reflection.

Reference:
Finlay, L. (2009) Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opencetl/file/ecms/web-content/Finlay-%282008%29-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf

APC Activity 2 - Reflection on KCs + Practice

In this activity we are tasked with reflecting on the last 24 weeks of our study. It seems quite a long time ago now that the email about this course came into my inbox. In my very first blog post back in July I wrote about it catching my eye:

If you're a teacher reading this then you'll no doubt agree that our inboxes are often filled with various professional development opportunities - courses, workshops, seminars and the like on any number of topics. While I'm keenly interested in taking these opportunities where possible, there simply isn't the time to keep up with everything and I'm not sure what made me delve further into the original email I received from my principal about this course. Maybe it was the (particularly relevant and exciting) title of the course itself, maybe the lifelong student in me was drawn to the idea of studying further on a more regular basis, maybe it was the word scholarship! Or maybe I'm just a sucker for punishment and didn't think I had enough to keep me busy at school (ha!) But whatever the reason, having now begun my journey, I am very glad I clicked on that email when I did.

Looking back now, I am still extremely glad that I took that leap and embarked on this course. It has been tough going at times, as we have all had to find ways to juggle life, school and study. But the development in my knowledge, skills and confidence has been invaluable and whilst I can pinpoint some definite changes in my practice, I think the benefits are actually far more wide-reaching than the tangible things I am doing in my classroom.

Back in week 3 of this course we were asked to think about our own Key Competencies, which are defined in the curriculum as "the key to learning in every learning area". If we are trying to promote these in our students, surely we should be thinking about how they apply to our own practice.

I answered as follows:

Which KCs are your strengths?
Using language, symbols and texts, managing self, relating to others.
Which would you like to develop further?
Thinking, participating and contributing

It is interesting looking back on that now. Whilst I do identify managing self as a strength in my classroom practice, it is something I have struggled with a lot in the context of completing this study. I have found it difficult at times to prioritise appropriately and stay on top of tasks. As a result, even though I initially had it as a strength, I think it is an area I have worked hard on and developed a lot throughout this course. Fitting in my course requirements has had a flow on effect to how I manage my tasks for school. I find I am getting better at compartmentalising and being able to focus on the job at hand. It is something I am working on all the time, however, and hope to improve further! As an aside, if you haven't discovered Evernote I can not recommend it highly enough. I manage my entire life through that app and would never have got this far in my study without it!

Funnily enough, I think I would identify my other most developed key competency as relating to others - another that I put down as a strength back in July. I do think it was a strength then and is now, but it is something that I've been very aware of, particularly throughout the leadership modules of this course. I didn't really realise going in how much of a leadership component there would be, and I found it far more fascinating and useful than I expected to. Both in terms of leading colleagues and as a 'leader' in front of a class of students. I have in fact now taken on a leadership position this year and feel I have a lot to draw on thanks to this course. I have been so excited to share my new learning but have at the same time been conscious of how I share my ideas so as to actually take the time to help others learn alongside me.

As for actual changes in my practice, as I said above I think I have experienced a fundamental shift in my whole approach to teaching and learning. But there have certainly been some key things I've adopted that have made big changes to my classroom.

The first is using fun new digital tools and toys! While I have not come anywhere close (and never expected to) to utilising everything we learnt, I have definitely implemented some of these and have a lot tucked up my sleeve to call on later. My favourites are Seesaw (which we didn't look at directly but I found as a result of collaboration with my group), using Weebly for elements of flipped learning, and the dabbling I've done with Scratch and the MaKey MaKey. I also have an exciting Aurasma project in the wings with some colleagues at school! There is such a vast selection of tools out there and I love not only learning how to use some of them, but feeling far more confident to give these new things a go.

The other key change to my practice has been my involvement in online collaboration. Thanks to this course I got into Twitter in a big way and have started developing a fantastic online PLN. I have been so inspired and learnt so much from colleagues all over the world, and have become somewhat addicted to various scheduled chats. I've been blown away by the immense value in this engagement with others and am so appreciative we have the opportunity these days to do it so easily. It is great now also having our own Google Plus community which is growing all the time.