My participation in Communities of Practice
This year I have sought opportunities to join, connect with, participate in, contribute to and establish Communities of Practice.
I have been a member of the learning community of fellow students in my EDUX 590 class. I have also joined the Classroom 2.0 community and some of the extension communities. Through these communities I have been exposed to a huge amount of professional reading. In consultation with Sheryl Naussem-Beach, I have been invited to act as a fellow for two PLP Communities of Practice, the Ursuline Academy in Wilmington, in the state of Delaware, USA and the Agnes Irwin School in Rosemont, PA, USA. I have had the opportunity of being involved in a Webinar session with this ADVIS cohort.
Within my own learning and teaching environment at Townsville Grammar Junior School, Northern Queensland, Australia, I have established a Community of Practice with a group of interested teachers and our focus has been on the integration of technology in all areas of teaching and learning. We have looked at how ICT and technologies can be used to promote engaging learning. We have had lengthy discussions on the subject of doing new things in old ways or doing new things in new ways. Our primary discussions have been around establishing some sort of data base of all the online resources and Smartboard resources that are available and that are being created by the teachers at our school, enabling all teachers at the school to have access to these resources from or school. We decided that the most user-friendly option would be to create a website, which I then created. The other teachers in the group have had editing rights to the site and they can also contribute. We also decided to hold 5 e-learning breakfast sessions each term and to have short, sharp Pd sessions for teachers with a focus on ‘Using it now!’ Our goal was to have hands on sessions introducing and showcasing different presentation tools and Web 2.0 tools so that teachers would be able to leave the sessions with something that they could use in their teaching and to support learning, immediately. We introduced the teachers to Comic Life, the SmartArt Graphics in Word 2008, Slide.com, Smartkiddies (maths resource) and Primary Resources as well as a variety of text to voice programmes i.e. Read the Words, AudioPal and vozMe.
This year I also attempted to establish a Community of Practice within my classroom as part of my professional practice project. A small group of students, together with myself, spent some special moments discussing learning, how we learn, how we know that we are learning and how to determine next steps to learning. At times I was involved in the discussions and at other times I left them to share together. Each time that we got together I would have some guiding questions to start off our discussions and we often found that these questions provided the platform for developing new questions, thinking and practical actions that we could use to improve our understanding of our learning as well as action some initiatives when working on actual tasks. In these discussions the students often sat with their laptops and made entries on their e-Portfolios, of their thinking and of the discussion, on the spot.
CK
BM
This year I have sought opportunities to join, connect with, participate in, contribute to and establish Communities of Practice.
I have been a member of the learning community of fellow students in my EDUX 590 class. I have also joined the Classroom 2.0 community and some of the extension communities. Through these communities I have been exposed to a huge amount of professional reading. In consultation with Sheryl Naussem-Beach, I have been invited to act as a fellow for two PLP Communities of Practice, the Ursuline Academy in Wilmington, in the state of Delaware, USA and the Agnes Irwin School in Rosemont, PA, USA. I have had the opportunity of being involved in a Webinar session with this ADVIS cohort.
Within my own learning and teaching environment at Townsville Grammar Junior School, Northern Queensland, Australia, I have established a Community of Practice with a group of interested teachers and our focus has been on the integration of technology in all areas of teaching and learning. We have looked at how ICT and technologies can be used to promote engaging learning. We have had lengthy discussions on the subject of doing new things in old ways or doing new things in new ways. Our primary discussions have been around establishing some sort of data base of all the online resources and Smartboard resources that are available and that are being created by the teachers at our school, enabling all teachers at the school to have access to these resources from or school. We decided that the most user-friendly option would be to create a website, which I then created. The other teachers in the group have had editing rights to the site and they can also contribute. We also decided to hold 5 e-learning breakfast sessions each term and to have short, sharp Pd sessions for teachers with a focus on ‘Using it now!’ Our goal was to have hands on sessions introducing and showcasing different presentation tools and Web 2.0 tools so that teachers would be able to leave the sessions with something that they could use in their teaching and to support learning, immediately. We introduced the teachers to Comic Life, the SmartArt Graphics in Word 2008, Slide.com, Smartkiddies (maths resource) and Primary Resources as well as a variety of text to voice programmes i.e. Read the Words, AudioPal and vozMe.
This year I also attempted to establish a Community of Practice within my classroom as part of my professional practice project. A small group of students, together with myself, spent some special moments discussing learning, how we learn, how we know that we are learning and how to determine next steps to learning. At times I was involved in the discussions and at other times I left them to share together. Each time that we got together I would have some guiding questions to start off our discussions and we often found that these questions provided the platform for developing new questions, thinking and practical actions that we could use to improve our understanding of our learning as well as action some initiatives when working on actual tasks. In these discussions the students often sat with their laptops and made entries on their e-Portfolios, of their thinking and of the discussion, on the spot.
CK
BM