Candidates plan for ongoing professional growth.
Reflection
"Unity is strength... when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved."
Mattie Stepanek One lesson that I learned early on in my teaching career was that this profession will always require ongoing professional development. The last few years it has been easy to justify my professional growth as I have used my coursework at McDaniel to meet the professional requirements for evaluation and certification. This will become more challenging as I leave the McDaniel program and am forced to create my own personal learning network to ensure my continued growth as a professional librarian. One of the greatest discoveries that McDaniel has provided me is an awareness of the many professional opportunities that are available. These opportunities now play a strong role in my plan for future professional growth. |
Artifacts
My Personal Learning Network:
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Over the last three years I have noticed a change in my needs as a learner. As my life has gotten busy I have found it essential to shift my focus to online learning opportunities that would allow me to learn in my own time and space. My two most essential tools in online learning have been my RSS reader and Twitter.In the Learning Technologies class one of the assignments was to create a RSS feed of different blogs that we found useful. The class required us to create a feed using Google Reader but I have since moved mine to Feedly because Reader is shutting down. The RSS feed has allowed me to collect the blogs of a variety of teachers and librarians that I respect into one space to read. It is such a time saver and has become one of my most valued sources of professional growth.
Twitter has become my other most valued tool. Before the McDaniel program I had always viewed Twitter as a tool to use in my personal life. I did not realize how much knowledge is shared through micro-blogging. Through Twitter I have been exposed to articles and websites that I would have never found on my own. I have built relationships with people around the world and I have become connected to different learning communities that provide me ongoing professional growth. |
One learning community I have discovered is the Level Up Book Club...a book club that meets entirely on Twitter. It was created by a couple of librarians (one a McDaniel graduate) who wanted to explore gamification in the classroom and library. Through this book club I have been introduced to professional learning tools like the PLN Starter kit and gained a group of mentors that can connect me to new information and ideas. I had the opportunity to sit in on a workshop at the MASL convention run by Matt Winner (one of the founders of the book club) on successes and failures in his own library. It was pretty neat to connect a face to a Twitter handle.
I think that one of the biggest lessons I have learned through the McDaniel program is that ongoing professional growth does not have to come from a formal class. I continue to seek professional opportunities from my peers and professional contemporaries while at the same time grow my skills as a digital learner. These digital skills are important as we see our students depend on digital modes of communication and information. My own learning experiences in the digital world help inform my instructional practices with students and educators. I think it would be really great to start a school-wide professional learning network over the summer to help keep teachers communicating and informed. I know that my students have appreciated the lessons that I have created using the digital tools I have learned about. As the media specialist I have the opportunity to help instill some of that confidence in my colleagues. Overall, I plan to grow as a learner and as a teacher by using the current tools of the times and pushing myself to try something new.