Saturday, October 20, 2012

And so it begins... Cohort 21 Thoughts and Reflections

Riding my bike away from The York School yesterday, I was mulling over exactly what I had signed up to be a part of for the coming school year. A year long PD involving teachers from every department from schools across the CIS is both exciting but also overwhelming at the same time. Coming away from my morning, I realized that I had not experienced a PD morning like this before, because I was not leaving the forum behind at the end of the day, but this was now the start of a continuous and openly reflective year.

One my of PD Cohort 21 pals, Melody Russell from the Bayview Glen School has summarized the new tools that we were introduced to throughout the day. Her blog post here has an explanation for each and the link to the associated sites. One of these tools, twitter, was my hill for the morning. Being apart of the "millennial" generation, I was surprised to feel like my mother on a computer. Overwhelmed with lists, hash-tages and symbols that I thought I knew about. I have now set small goals to open my twitter once a week. This process also made me realize that I can't assume that my students are any more computer savvy than me. Just because I would rather have ICQ'ed someone than phone them in high school doesn't mean that I have an innate ability to retweet and cause a trend in the twitter-verse.

Personally, I am very excited about this blog. As a previous international teacher, I became used to scouring the internet to find teachers and blogs that would answer my questions and provide inspiration when I was the only math teacher in the school. I have always wanted to be apart of the conversation, rather than an observer and so I hope that this will be my launching pad to share my ideas, gain peer critique and open my eyes to new possibilities.

So here I am raising my coffee mug to a year of personal growth and learning through technology. I look forward to sharing my ideas here in this medium and hearing any suggestions you may have through the comment boxes or at my twitter account (@mcarthur_r). Now, I'm off to walk a dog and disconnect myself from the online world. No Twitter-verse can beat a fall day and great colours #Sundaymorning.

[caption id="attachment_9" align="alignnone" width="300"] Nothing beats a fall walk through Toronto.[/caption]