To Web 2.0 and Beyond

Reading "Tweet me, message me, like me: using social media to facilitate pedagogical change within an emerging community of practice" by Goodyear et al. made me reflect on my experiences of professional development and pedagogical change and how much has been in person and virtual in my experience (and also what I prefer). Professional Development Days I love professional development. In my district in BC, we have designated professional development days that are either self-directed, run by our district or school-wide. The professional development days, 'Pro-D days' for short, that are held by the district typically recruit presenters and other professionals and have been in person before the pandemic. I enjoyed being able to have a designated day and invest in myself as an educator. Since the pandemic, these Pro-D days have been hosted online.  Do I prefer online or in person? I believe because our Pro-D days were virtual, I attended more because I had the time to a...

After my first year of teaching, I realized I was unprepared to effectively support the large number of ELLs in my classroom and scaffold their language acquisition. The same year, I decided I needed to learn more about working with English Language Learners (ELLs) and a year later,  completed my post-bachelor certificate in English Language Learners. ELLs are individuals learning English in addition to their first or home language. ELLs enter our classrooms with unique cultural, linguistic and academic backgrounds. Some ELLs may be born inside or outside of the country, Canada in my context, and some ELLs may be refugees or immigrants that have had no prior schooling or interrupted schooling due to their past experiences. ELLs may be experiencing trauma, culture shock or going through an adjustment to a new country, school and learning environment.  ELLs require a culturally responsive educator who will help provide a safe and student-centered learning environment, meet their...

One of our challenges this week was to create a vision board on Pinterest.  I am an active user of Pinterest for teaching and other inspiration, it is  an app that I would say I use the most. Pinterest is something I look forward to using and I use it weekly to gather ideas and inspiration as well as learn new things for everything in my life- my job, my outfits, my workouts, vacation planning, career goals and visions, recipes, DIY ideas, literally everything!  While some Pinterest boards function as idea and information boards, where I pin resources that link to important sites and further reading, I also have many boards that are vision boards that are meant to create aesthetic and visions of things.  I created a vision board for my Career Visions and what I want my work life and atmosphere to look like, check out this Career Visions board .  I believe vision boards can effectively help someone establish what they want an aspect of their life to loo...