6.2: Reflection
Candidates regularly evaluate and reflect on their professional practice and dispositions to improve and strengthen their ability to effectively model and facilitate technology-enhanced learning experiences. (PSC 6.2/ISTE 6c)
Artifact: Click here for my blog page
Candidates regularly evaluate and reflect of their professional practice and dispositions to improve and strengthen their ability to effectively model and facilitate technology-enhanced learning experiences
It is characteristic of our roles as educators that we enable our students to regularly reflect on their work to build growth into their character for knowledge and, in the most practical sense, learn from what they did right – and from what they did wrong. It is imperative that this happens in a safe environment of trust and mutual understanding.
When asked as part of my growth as an instructional technologist to reflect on my own professional practice – my disposition, my knowledge and my own inward inflection to effectively model and facilitate technology enhanced learning experiences, I empathized with the role of the student and the ways in which we as teachers enable their reflection (journals, discussions, formative feedback, assessments) and found myself delving into the blog as a method of reflecting on learning and documenting the knowledge for future reference and collaboration. Therefore the artifact that I have chosen to testify to this standard is the blog that I started on the day that I created my Weebly Portfolio for this Masters programme of study. This is a holistic testimony of my journey to date (and will continue to do so as I continue my instructional technology career). Each contribution is a unique insight to either completion of a module of study or inspired by the daily learning and thinking that goes into establishing true mastery of skills that are needed to integrate technology into teaching and learning.
In detailing mastery, this blog gives oversight of each component of the course that was studied and how it was applied into real life circumstances. Many of my posts feature my students, the willing participants in many of the classroom activities that we ventured to explore together in our school 1:1 laptop programme and the outcomes of these experiments. While these are valid reflective snapshots of professional practice, they also give a further credence to an ability to enact knowledge gained in an academic setting and its deployment into a 21st century classroom with careful evaluation of how these modern contexts for learning affect learning outcomes for students.
I learned many things while creating this artifact. Firstly, the commitment that goes into maintaining a blog. Blogging is not for the faint of heart – like maintaining a classic car; it needs regular maintenance, due care and diligence for its authenticity and is not really useful unless it is seen in public for all to enjoy. Therefore, one of the challenges that I faced was to insure that I was faithfully and regularly posting to the blog – not just at the conclusion of the course content but when the action of that content in the classroom needed reflection for future reference and to share with the rest of the audience that was reading the blog. That comes to my second level of learning. It is a universal truth that we, as teachers, are able to write and communicate well. The interesting reflection that came from this point is that, while there is that expectation that teachers are excellent communicators of knowledge and ideas to their students; that we write daily words of encouragement and formative feedback to give the students direction for learning and report comments that guide and inform the student and the parent to the necessary steps for success, it is rare that we write for ourselves or, indeed for a wider audience. Blogs take time, discipline and a sense of writing acumen that I had not used in a long time. Twenty years in education has brought many opportunities to write – but not for this particular audience and not in this particular way.
As I reflected on the blog posts over the last two years, I had a pang of regret that I had not maintained my early blog attempts at certain junctures of my life – moving to the United States in 2003; a road trip blog journaling a venture across the “flyover” states in 2011 and another that I started with the beginning of this course with the second free Weebly site documenting a road trip that I took with my parents to Toronto, Niagara Falls and New York City. Many exciting things to talk about – but not sustainable beyond the actual trip – to the extent that they now sit in an online mausoleum, consigned to the heap of best intensions by this educator to inform and educate through the medium of writing and image. If I were to change anything, it would be to have started a blog in my first year of teaching in 1996. Imagine the data, the wealth of reflective experience and knowledge that would have been curated by this stage in my career!
One of my favorite bloggers, Richard Byrne, has become my hero because of his blog “Free Technology for Teachers”. He has carved out his niche – so this leads to my last piece of learning. Having a platform. A blog cannot be like a Seinfeld idea – a show about nothing. It has to have a slant, an angle – something that pulls the reader in. They are investing time in reading about your experience for a reason. They want to learn too. How you get them to your blog is also important. I had an existing Twitter feed and only a few followers at the beginning of this course. As of today, I have 240 followers on Twitter and link my blog posts to Twitter to let those followers know that I have updated my wisdom and would like to share. A blog is a two way street in that sense – having an audience that wants to read ones writing is good – but having a shared, cooperative and human experience takes the blog to the level that it really should be in – a collaborative tool for learning and an open, safe online discussion.
Perhaps my success in growing my Twitter followers through my blog is a measurement of success (although presentations at professional development conferences like the International Standards for Technology in Education (ISTE) augmented that number so cannot be taken as a true measurement. One thing is for certain – blogging is now part of my professional toolbox and will be deployed and used on a regular basis. Hopefully, when I look back on this archive in twenty years' time, I will smile and settle on the reflective view about this decision in 2015 and by 2035, the posts that defined me as in instructional technology lend to a testament of my personal growth in this time in my career.
It is characteristic of our roles as educators that we enable our students to regularly reflect on their work to build growth into their character for knowledge and, in the most practical sense, learn from what they did right – and from what they did wrong. It is imperative that this happens in a safe environment of trust and mutual understanding.
When asked as part of my growth as an instructional technologist to reflect on my own professional practice – my disposition, my knowledge and my own inward inflection to effectively model and facilitate technology enhanced learning experiences, I empathized with the role of the student and the ways in which we as teachers enable their reflection (journals, discussions, formative feedback, assessments) and found myself delving into the blog as a method of reflecting on learning and documenting the knowledge for future reference and collaboration. Therefore the artifact that I have chosen to testify to this standard is the blog that I started on the day that I created my Weebly Portfolio for this Masters programme of study. This is a holistic testimony of my journey to date (and will continue to do so as I continue my instructional technology career). Each contribution is a unique insight to either completion of a module of study or inspired by the daily learning and thinking that goes into establishing true mastery of skills that are needed to integrate technology into teaching and learning.
In detailing mastery, this blog gives oversight of each component of the course that was studied and how it was applied into real life circumstances. Many of my posts feature my students, the willing participants in many of the classroom activities that we ventured to explore together in our school 1:1 laptop programme and the outcomes of these experiments. While these are valid reflective snapshots of professional practice, they also give a further credence to an ability to enact knowledge gained in an academic setting and its deployment into a 21st century classroom with careful evaluation of how these modern contexts for learning affect learning outcomes for students.
I learned many things while creating this artifact. Firstly, the commitment that goes into maintaining a blog. Blogging is not for the faint of heart – like maintaining a classic car; it needs regular maintenance, due care and diligence for its authenticity and is not really useful unless it is seen in public for all to enjoy. Therefore, one of the challenges that I faced was to insure that I was faithfully and regularly posting to the blog – not just at the conclusion of the course content but when the action of that content in the classroom needed reflection for future reference and to share with the rest of the audience that was reading the blog. That comes to my second level of learning. It is a universal truth that we, as teachers, are able to write and communicate well. The interesting reflection that came from this point is that, while there is that expectation that teachers are excellent communicators of knowledge and ideas to their students; that we write daily words of encouragement and formative feedback to give the students direction for learning and report comments that guide and inform the student and the parent to the necessary steps for success, it is rare that we write for ourselves or, indeed for a wider audience. Blogs take time, discipline and a sense of writing acumen that I had not used in a long time. Twenty years in education has brought many opportunities to write – but not for this particular audience and not in this particular way.
As I reflected on the blog posts over the last two years, I had a pang of regret that I had not maintained my early blog attempts at certain junctures of my life – moving to the United States in 2003; a road trip blog journaling a venture across the “flyover” states in 2011 and another that I started with the beginning of this course with the second free Weebly site documenting a road trip that I took with my parents to Toronto, Niagara Falls and New York City. Many exciting things to talk about – but not sustainable beyond the actual trip – to the extent that they now sit in an online mausoleum, consigned to the heap of best intensions by this educator to inform and educate through the medium of writing and image. If I were to change anything, it would be to have started a blog in my first year of teaching in 1996. Imagine the data, the wealth of reflective experience and knowledge that would have been curated by this stage in my career!
One of my favorite bloggers, Richard Byrne, has become my hero because of his blog “Free Technology for Teachers”. He has carved out his niche – so this leads to my last piece of learning. Having a platform. A blog cannot be like a Seinfeld idea – a show about nothing. It has to have a slant, an angle – something that pulls the reader in. They are investing time in reading about your experience for a reason. They want to learn too. How you get them to your blog is also important. I had an existing Twitter feed and only a few followers at the beginning of this course. As of today, I have 240 followers on Twitter and link my blog posts to Twitter to let those followers know that I have updated my wisdom and would like to share. A blog is a two way street in that sense – having an audience that wants to read ones writing is good – but having a shared, cooperative and human experience takes the blog to the level that it really should be in – a collaborative tool for learning and an open, safe online discussion.
Perhaps my success in growing my Twitter followers through my blog is a measurement of success (although presentations at professional development conferences like the International Standards for Technology in Education (ISTE) augmented that number so cannot be taken as a true measurement. One thing is for certain – blogging is now part of my professional toolbox and will be deployed and used on a regular basis. Hopefully, when I look back on this archive in twenty years' time, I will smile and settle on the reflective view about this decision in 2015 and by 2035, the posts that defined me as in instructional technology lend to a testament of my personal growth in this time in my career.