I Am Teacher 2.0

I've now completed Steve Hargadon's Teacher 2.0: Using the Web for Your Personal and Professional Growth, and overall found it to be a very beneficial process. The workshop day back in August was a great introduction, covering many of the same concepts, and I benefited from being able to go back over the ideas in my own time, to really take in the big ideas.

How often do we give our students the opportunity to slow down and process something they have been exposed to? Particularly if they already appear to have achieved competence. There is a difference between being able to do something, and seeing the big picture and significance of the ideas behind it.

For me, that's an important take-away message.

You might like to check out my 'Personal Web Presence', created during completion of the above series of tasks: http://www.natashaglaister.com

I would love to receive feedback or suggestions on it!

The Internet and Learning

This is part four of Steve Hargadon's Teacher 2.0: Using the Web for Your Personal and Professional Growth.

"How has the internet impacted your own personal learning?"

Walsall Library Presentation Key by Black Country Museums available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

This sounds trite, but the internet has changed my teaching life. When I first started teaching (2002, my first teaching rounds, 2006 my first class), sure I used the internet. I would look up teaching resources, images, animations, lesson ideas... the usual. I was pretty "techy", and I knew how to find what I needed. In the last couple of years, I started using a lot of web 2.0 and social media, but not for my teaching. For some reason, the blatantly obvious connection between my personal and professional usage had escaped me.

2011 was the year it all changed.

It began simply enough, as many things do. I signed up for a new twitter account. As you would know from my previous post, in addition to being a teacher, I am also a photographer. I had signed up for Twitter not long after starting my business, but I only followed a couple of people, and never saw the benefits. This time though, I started following people. I spent a couple of days building up my network, starting by following people who were using the #ultranet hashtag, following the people they followed, and so on (I now follow 196). The information that I had pulled toward me was relevant, interesting, and on so many occasions, exactly what I needed at that very moment.

I am, however, not the first or only person to think that getting information from Twitter is like trying to drink from a fire hydrant. I needed some way of filtering out the junk, and more importantly, saving the gems. I downloaded Tweetdeck, which helped immensely. I created a few columns - #edchat, #vicpln, #Ultranet, which were filled with people sharing great resources. However I needed a way to file it all. I created a Diigo account, a readitlater account and set up my Google Reader account (which, like many tools, I had used for years but never for teaching) properly with folders. I have blogged in more detail about how I use these here.

Now that I manage the information effectively, I can honestly say that Twitter is the source of the best professional learning I have ever done (and at present I am including my M.Ed in that - the quality of info shared via Twitter is THAT high!).

Without the internet, this year alone, I would have missed out on:

• The Age Digital Literacy Seminar
• Stever Hargardon's Teacher 2.0 Professional Learning Day
• A video conference with a NASA astronaut
• A massive number of great blogs
• Enrolling in the Master of Education
• Countless teaching ideas & resources
• Many more things!

Something I love doing

This is part three of Steve Hargadon's Teacher 2.0: Using the Web for Your Personal and Professional Growth.

"...Write down something(s) you love doing or something(s) you love learning about."

Perfect timing for me today, as I have just returned from doing something I love doing, that I haven't had the opportunity to do for a long time: Photography.

Among the many hats I put on, I am a photographer. I run a small wedding & portrait photography business called Natasha Glaister Photography. This year my photography has been a little neglected, as between full time teaching, part time M.Ed, running a house, and seeing my husband occasionally, there hasn't been a great deal of spare time. It is my one passion that is 'for me', and something I truly enjoy, particularly when the creative energy is flowing!

I love all aspects of photography, being able to see the light, visualise how I can capture it, then succeed in doing so is a wonderfully rewarding process. If I can then capture something that other people enjoy, that is a bonus! 

My students loved discovering my passion for photography, and I have just started running an "E-Lective" for those that are interested in exploring their own interest in photography. I have never taught a "creative" subject prior to this year (and now I'm teaching music as well!), and I am really enjoying the different approaches.

I love getting to know each of my student's passions every year, and next term I have invited them to explore an area that they are passionate about in extensive detail, with the completion of "Passion Projects". The idea is that they will explore something that they are passionate about, and will be paired up with an industry expert, a 'mentor', in their field of interest. It's very open ended, and I am excited to see what they come up with!


*** All photos in today's post are my own, captured this afternoon at the Tesselaar Tulip Festival in Silvan.

I Matter!

Creative Independence by nattu, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

I'm doing Steve Hargadon's "Teacher 2.0: Using the Web for Your Personal and Professional Growth", after attending a professional development day of the same name a few weeks ago. I completed step one on the day, which asked me to register at http://www.teacher20.com.

Step two asks me to ponder what I am good at. I believe that I am really good at adapting my teaching to include new ideas - I am very open-minded. I will try pretty much anything at least once, and will always look for ways to incorporate the best aspect of new things into my teaching. This certainly extends to using technology in my classroom, there is a multitude of technology out there, and I am continually striving to seek out the best tools and incorporate them into my teaching.

My students certainly recognise this, teaching from the edge of my comfort zone frequently takes me outside it, and I share this openly with them. My commonly heard phrase is "I don't know if this will work, but let's try it anyway". I think it's so important to model this mindset for students.