What is PD Part 3.

Down in our sidebar you'll find a listing for teacher Blogs.  Here's a few out of it;

http://whatedsaid.wordpress.com/
http://primarytech.global2.vic.edu.au/

Did either of these, or any articles from others teacher blogs we have in the side bar, make you reflect on your role as a teacher?  Did it change your attitudes towards or approach to teaching in some way?  Did it reaffirm your core beliefs about teaching?  Can you put these thoughts in writing and show how it is going to make you a better teacher?

Then this is PD.

You don't have to be sitting in a room in front of a speaker, with other teachers, for it to be PD.

So why should teacher blogs be a valid place to find PD?  They are online to be sure but the fact doesn't change that it's one teacher imparting ideas onto another.  At it's core this is collegial learning which is a valid form of PD.  Teacher blogs often contain alternative perspectives from which to view a topic, helpful advice to deal with common or uncommon classroom issues and new strategies to delivering the same old content in ways which students find new, exciting and engaging.

If you go out and search for long enough you'll find hundreds of teacher blogs out there.  The internet gives you direct access to ideas and concepts world-wide.  Not only this but you can often go back to the start of a blog and start reading from the old to the new.  You can see the evolution of a teacher and how they have incorporated new ideas into their practices, which they are still talking about after a year and which they thought was fabulous at the time but seem to have fallen by the wayside.

Not only can you get access to new ideas but you can also draw parallels to your own evolution as a teacher.  See the areas that you are still struggling with where they have excelled, areas where they still struggle but you excell.  You can see what they have held onto that is making their lives easier or harder and use that as a reflection point.  This allows you to evaluate your practices against a world-wide stage full of regular teachers trying to do right by their students.

Regards,

Mel.