My Great Big Personalized PD Week

Happy summertime, everyone!

At the end of a busy school year, I like to take some time in June to relax and recharge, but it’s also a great time to reflect and learn something new without the daily distractions of school life. I didn’t jet off to any formal PD this June; I was lucky enough to choose my own destination (with a plethora of cafés and beautiful Toronto libraries with free Wi-Fi at my doorstep) and I hand picked from a huge range of options what I wanted to learn about.

I started with the following collection of articles and blog posts I had gathered this year (usually following a LangChat I had tuned in to late on a Thursday night!) Re-reading or seeing these resources for the first time helped me work through some big-ideas planning for next year (an FSL collaboration with interested teachers in my PLN, applying game-based learning to my Origines de Toronto unit, changes to my culminating activities for next year). I also trained myself in Kaizena, ThingLink and PixiClip in my quest to find tools that are easy for students or me to use and actually improve the learning experience (faster feedback, personalized vocabulary acquisition and tutorials for me to post to my course LMS pages respectively). I’m really excited about these tools and will likely be blogging about them as I use them next year (hiccups and all)!

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to get students to reflect on their learning and performance more often, and Colleen Lee-Haye’s blog post showed up in my twitter feed just in time! I loved the tone she set for reflection at the beginning of the year with her class FAQ’s and the questions she asked of her students to get them thinking about her class. By following through on several self-assessments and reflections throughout the year, @coleesensei is imparting a valuable learning strategy on her students from which they will benefit for years to come.

If you are on twitter, an interesting feed to follow is #ksi14. I was lucky enough to participate in the Klingenstein Summer Institute in 2007, and since I knew a few teachers going to this year’s session, I decided to follow along in their learning adventure. Tune in for some rich reflections on teaching philosophies, diversity and everything in between. @lesmcbeth and @AaronVigar are some great people to follow!

Coming up, I’m looking forward to a google hangout on Authentic Resources on July 18^th with the LangCamp group I’ve joined (#LangChat for summer!) But first, I’m ready to enjoy a few weeks unplugged and on the dock at the cottage with my family. I look forward to catching up (virtually or in person) soon!