it’s personal

Every now and then the staff is scheduled for vertical meetings after school throughout the school year.  What that means is that each subject area or department meets together and collaborate with each other for an hour or so.  Now, there’s nothing wrong with being independent, but when you’re the only art teacher in the school it is hard to share ideas, share resources, and reflect on teaching practices by yourself.  I can certainly share ideas with myself, but that’s just plain crazy.  Ideas and resources sometimes need to be shared and discussed for opportunities to collaborate.  Plus, it would be great to hear other people’s thoughts and ideas.  When situations like this happens, it definitely would be great to have someone or somewhere to turn to when I need to develop other forms of creativity and to be innovative with my teaching.  Though I don’t work in a cubicle, the classroom in some sense can become a cubicle if I don’t extend the areas of where I can gather and share information.

Creating and being involved in a Personal Learning Network (PLN) can and will be very beneficial to my teaching.  Dr. Wagner lists 10 Tips for ways to be involved in creating a personal learning network or networking to learn.  Taking part in this new journey for the IT&DML program has already began to open and expand my personal learning network as I press and type this sentence in this newly created blog.  There is a wealth of knowledge, help and advice online and the use of digital tools that I should take advantage of in order to stay current with the change and to sharpen my teaching skills.  I know by creating a Personal Learning Network will help me to connect with other professionals in a global network in order to have a better teaching and learning experience.