Reflection on Dynamic Landscapes 2015

At the beginning of the year, I listed some goals for myself.  One was to actively practice stepping outside of my comfort zone by teaching workshops for adults, with the ultimate goal of presenting at a conference.  I am happy to report that I achieved this goal over the past two days at Dynamic Landscapes!

While this is something that I'd been wanting to do for some time, I'd been reluctant about presenting to an audience of colleagues. The thought that teachers can be some of the toughest critics was not helping; I was terrified to make myself the center of attention for an adult audience.  With the support and encouragement of other educators, I was able to overcome my fears; I am grateful to Joanne Finnegan and Doug Dunbebin for helping me make the leap.  Thanks to you both for taking this journey with me.

Although I wish that I hadn't been clutching my notes so tightly during my introduction,  my first presentation, "Radical Remixing with Creative Commons," went better than I had hoped.

I was lucky to have a supportive, curious audience of about 15 people. If I'd had more time, I would have shown more examples of places to find Creative Commons licensed media.  My presentation highlighted Flickr as a go-to resource, but there are many other resources for remixing that educators can explore.   Perhaps, I will design and share another presentation that focuses more broadly on Creative Commons resources across the web.

My second presentation, "Delving into DoInk:  Adding Animation to Green Screen Videos to Tell Your Story," was for a slightly larger audience (22 people).  Although the space was not quite large enough to accommodate that many people, all trying to record video and audio at the same time (it was quite loud), I enjoyed this workshop even more.  Unlike the first presentation, which was less interactive, this one was a two-hour hands-on session, allowing me to circulate and talk to people as they practiced and played on their own.  I prefer this type of teaching to the "stand up and yammer" model.  Teaching other teachers in this type of setting is not much different from the way I teach kids, so I felt comfortable.

As a result of this experience, and my desire to continually improve my practice, I am going to be submitting another proposal for VT Fest, coming up in November.  I am grateful to Vita Learn for their support of educators' professional growth.

Collegiality Unlimited (30 Day Blogging Challenge #18)

Today's prompt:

What do you appreciate about your colleagues?

  by  dianecordell 

Since I am not currently working under a contract, I started thinking about the beloved people that I used to work with when I initially read this prompt.  I actually felt a pang of loss that tempted me to skip this post altogether. Then, the more I started thinking about it, I gratefully realized that I didn't have to access experiences from my past in order to answer this question.

I am still connected to other educators through my PLN. While I have worked closely and personally with some of these colleagues, and casually connected with others through coursework and conferences, a surprising deal of my interactions with colleagues these days has been limited to social media.  

I am not suggesting that casual conversations and exchanges of information via Twitter or Google+ can replace the deep personal relationships that are forged when people work alongside each other in the same school, but I am nonetheless grateful to my colleagues near and far for sharing their thoughts and ideas.  

I appreciate the fact that I can share a human connection with other educators that I may not have actually met, rather than wallowing in isolation.  Collegiality is no longer limited by proximity.  How great is that?

Encouraging Student Self-Reflection (30 Day Blogging Challenge: Day 19)

Name three powerful  ways students can reflect on their learning, then discuss closely the one you use most often.

There are a variety of ways that students can reflect on their learning, as long as enough time is provided and the expectation for thoughtful reflection is modeled and made explicit.  My favorite ways to encourage reflection are through:

• discussion (peer conferencing, conversations)
• writing (statements of intent or observations about what worked and what didn't)
• self-assessment
  

The one that I use most often is asking students to self-assess their work.  When I ask a student to self-assess their work, I often ask them to evaluate projects based upon the criteria outlined on a rubric, and then take it a step further.  The meaty, meaningful part comes when students explain what their process was, what they are most proud of, and areas where they had the most difficulty, in order to help themselves determine how they might improve in the future.  Students who curate samples of their own work in the form of a digital portfolio (or some other type of evidence) can learn to be more reflective as they document their own growth.

(This derivative work was created under a Creative Commons license, courtesy of chrisotruro §catching up§ /Flickr/ CC BY NC SA)