Category Archives: Uncategorized

Reflecting on other’s posts.

Leave a reply

Reading through others posts has really made me consider what to blog about.

I now have realised that personal experience is a good way to give a context for what you believe. As you have this experience you can give more detailed answer and conversation on the topic you pick. I think because you have experience it makes it more personal and you really get the feeling of that person.

I like the way that someone may have seen something on social media and used this to develop a post. This shows using things that we have in daily life and then being able to reflect on this to create a response. I think that things on social media that you read are likely to give you knowledge and help you within this profession as you need to keep up to date with everything and this way you can reflect on these things you read.

The way some people bring theory into their own thoughts and opinions shows that you are reflecting on how the theorists could be correct or not. It allows debate and also means that others can see both points and take their own view. I think linking theory to what you see when on placement could be interesting as it shows whether what theorists say are correct or whether it shows more than one theorists ideas.

Interestingly the way posts aren’t always directed to school but education in general. Adding an idea that education is all around us, children don’t just learn at school. The idea of informal education is also paramount and therefore ideas such as morals are likely to be learnt outside school. These ideas also helps us understand what children are likely to know already and what they may believe. Therefore we should keep this in mind when teaching.

Overall looking at these blogs shows to me what sort of things others have found out about and are considering when becoming teachers. It also has helped me see what I can do to improve my posts.

Enquiring Practitioner

3 Replies

To be an enquiring practitioner I think you are always making formal investigations throughout your professional career. The research is based on the career in which taking, for us it would be teaching. This research that teachers take is done by themselves or within group collaboration. The use of being a enquiring practitioner means that you can reflect and evaluate teaching that you may have done or others may have completed or how you’re going to teach a lesson in the future.

Working as an enquiring practitioner has its benefits, one being that you can encourage and empower other colleagues to question and challenge education which may mean that they then change the way education is delivered. Also being an enquiring practitioner means that you can monitor your own teaching and others and therefore develop your practice and possibly your understanding on some topic for example. When monitoring your own practice you may find new strategies to use to teach with and therefore be able to develop your teaching and benefit the children from this. If you know more about your profession or what you are actually teaching then your self esteem with be enhanced and so will the identity you create of yourself through your profession. When being an enquiring practitioner you may work a lot together in groups and therefore there is benefits of working collaboratively too. Such as you are likely to have more knowledge this way as everyone will have a subject they are stronger at probably or a skill that they struggle with and so there would be a range of skills. Also you can bounce ideas off each other and therefore your discussions may become deeper than they would if it was just you working alone. Also someone may suggest something that you had never thought about or think about a certain topic from a different angle to what you do.

However there are disadvantages of being an enquiring practitioner especially when working in groups. If your group doesn’t have a clear aim then how are you meant to know what you are working towards and this therefore probably means that there will be a lack of motivation and therefore the group would be disorganised. There may be problems if group members are late and therefore not always 100% sure what is happening and therefore they can’t prepare ready for the next time you meet and therefore make the group not progress as much as like. Also if someone is dominating then they may not let anyone else put their views across and could create tension within the group.

 

Characteristics of a professional

Leave a reply

Patience

Patience helps us be more understanding towards others. For example if someone doesn’t understand something as quickly as you might, then giving them time to understand it means that you both are on the same page in what you understand. This shows being professional as you are taking into account others and therefore showing a better professional behaviour. Also when using this to teach children it is a friendlier approach and more expected as you can’t expect a child to understand something they have just heard about straight away. Plus if you show patience towards the children this may rub off and they then show patience to others in their class to or when they get to work making them learn professional skills from the start.

Respect

When a point is made that you don’t agree with and you want to put your opinion across you have to remember to be respectful of others views too. This is because other people may look at something in a different way to how you look at something. This also makes you see other sides to an argument so helps you broaden your knowledge and widens your gap and therefore you may see more possible outcomes when you look at other questions in the future. Also if you show respect to someone then they are more likely to show respect back and create a more professional relationship with you.

Honesty

When you are honest you are showing your genuine self and therefore you are showing yourself as a open person. When you are honest to people they are more likely to give you more respect. With more respect you are likely to be trusted with work and other elements within your profession. This may also mean that you become more professional as more people with interact with you because of the trust you have gained.

Integrity

The idea of being honest and showing moral principles means that you can show your views and gain trust from others. The quality of your honesty shows how much people can trust you and also your morals are shown and therefore people are more likely to think about your morals before saying something and they you should respect their morals. Some morals might be expected from society and therefore if you stick to these you are keeping to the view that everyone would expect from you. If you do this then in effect you are following the ‘rules’ which people assume you know and not doing anything out of the norm. I think this would improve communication and conversations with others and therefore make people more professional because of this.

Compassion

I think being compassionate will help towards being a professional as being compassionate to your colleagues, and within teaching the parents and children, means they are more likely to come and talk to you as you may seem more open and willing to talk to.  Also with being compassionate you may see how bad something is for someone and therefore help them and therefore this would be seen as professional as it is showing you helping them and showing genuine concern. Being compassionate will also help you see other peoples lives and how it affects different people as they are more likely to come to you for help.

What challenges/ opportunities you may be faced with when marrying the personal vs the professional presence on social media?

Leave a reply

Should we just have one account? Or two accounts one for personal aspects and the other for professional side?

The GTCS states that you shouldn’t share any information with a student unless it would be shared in a school setting. This therefore makes you consider who you accept to be friends with online and what information you let everyone see. This might make you contemplate having an account for professional use and one for personal use however if you don’t have the correct privacy settings on,  if a student just typed your name in a search engine they would probably be able to find your personal one too. If you left your privacy settings so that everyone could see what you put on then everyone anywhere can see what you have put on. If there was things that you wouldn’t wish your students or colleagues to see that may call your professionalism into question. Therefore you want to make sure the correct procedures are in place.

When online you could appear to be vulnerable. One reason this could be is because if parents have a complaint and they message you on a social networking site then they could get aggressive and you would have to be careful when replying to the parent so that you reply remembering that you are a professional. If this doesn’t happen then your fitness to teach may come into question. When replying to a parent or anyone related within teaching you should reply with a formal and professional tone as this way the boundaries are maintained and therefore you can’t be accused of anything. Another way could be to make sure you are using an official channel of communication such as work email address, this way it seems more formal and you are more likely to keep the formal, professional tone when speaking to them. To stop parents sending you messages via social messaging you may consider not to add them as friends on your social networking sites. This way if they have to contact you in a professional manner then they may keep to the professional tone that you start contacting them with.

I think that depending on what is on your personal account may depend on whether you want two accounts or just one. If your personal account has lots of pictures of things you do outside of school, which may make your professionalism be questioned, then I would consider either turning off the tags in the photos so that if someone does find you they won’t find the inappropriate pictures or you could also make sure your privacy settings are on so that only some people can find you rather than everyone. However if you kept the one account you would have to be careful with what you put on the site.

Is using social media in the classroom a positive or negative idea?

Using social media in classroom can be very useful as this is what children are used to in day to day life. Therefore I think that it could be seen as a powerful thing to use as technology is likely to keep developing throughout their lifetime so making them literate in the technology they will be using, will be a beneficial for them to possibly to succeed in life.

However there may be problems such as it may become a distraction if they started using the social media for something else than the work. Therefore they may have to have a school account as then there isn’t a distraction between their social life and actual work. Some people may argue that less human interaction occurs however I think that pupils are more likely to interact with each other and ask whether they have seen something on the social media as they could be excited over the process.

Overall I think that using social media in the classroom is a good idea as students are used to using technology outside of school so we should not go back in time when they enter school life. I also think that because it seems exciting as they aren’t just sat writing they are more likely to be enthusiastic and be more involved in the subject.

Welcome to your WordPress eportfolio

1 Reply

Welcome to your eportfolio. This is where you will document and share your professional thoughts and experiences over the course of your study at the University of Dundee and beyond that when you begin teaching. You have the control over what you want to make public and what you would rather keep on a password protected page.

The eportfolio in the form of this WordPress blog allows you to pull in material from other digital sources:

You can pull in a YouTube video:

You can pull in a Soundcloud audio track:

You can pull in a Flickr page

Teacher, Lorraine Lapthorne conducts her class in the Grade Two room at the Drouin State School, Drouin, Victoria

You can just about pull in anything that you think will add substance and depth to your writing.