Nothing has contributed more to the growth of my teaching career than my personal learning network.
@mrlisok

How can social media be a good thing?  It’s full of gossip, trolls and rubbish that you just wouldn’t want to be associated with.  What on earth would Twitter or Instagram have to offer an educator? Surely the goal here is to stay away from the internet. If someone googles me I want NOTHING to appear.  That’s surely the best way to go forward?

Social Media is NOT your enemy.. It’s an opportunity and you shouldn’t miss it!

What if social media contained opportunities to “Participate in professional and community networks and forums to broaden knowledge and improve practice.” (PROF 7.4)? What if this was a way to “Incorporate strategies to promote the safe, responsible and ethical use of ICT in learning and teaching.” (4.5)? There’s a massive opportunity waiting for you and we don’t want you to miss it!

Let’s get you connected and growing your practice

In this week’s podcast we’re talking about how to connect with the millions of educators who are using twitter and Instagram everyday. How to learn from each other and develop and amazing personal learning network (PLN).

If you’re brand new to Twitter or Instagram then you might like to download our free guide for educators.  Just fill in your email in at Edufolios.org/012 and we’ll send it on over.

Below are some links you can use to connect with us and some awesome educators as you begin your journey in this space.  We’ve also included a link to an amazing list of twitter chats and hashtags.  If you’re not sure what on earth a twitter chat or hashtag even is… then most definitely tune in to find out!

Subscribe and Review

Are you subscribed to the podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today so that you don’t miss out on any of the episodes we have coming up. You can subscribe to the podcast on any of these channels.

Now if you’re feeling extra loving, we would be really grateful if you left a review over on iTunes, too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast and plus we love reading them! Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know what your favourite part of the podcast is. Thank you!

Further Reading

• The Official Twitter Chat List and Times
• Follow Selena on Twitter 
• Follow Edufolios on Twitter and Instagram
• Episode 007: Documenting Professional Development so that 1 hour becomes 20

I don’t know how to start! I have so many questions! Overwhelmed educators on beginning their portfolio of practice

Creating a portfolio of your teaching practice can seem BIG! There are so many things to consider aren’t there? If you’re honest right now… are you burying your head in the sand a bit? Not sure where to start? Not sure what a “decent” reflection sounds or looks like?

Well, let’s take a moment to breathe and to break the ice.

Let me share some top tips to get you started with your first piece of portfolio evidence. RIGHT NOW

In this episode we put down the perfectionist drive and replace it, firmly, with reflectionism. I walk you through some very practical ideas to remove those worries and get you moving forward with your very first attempt in learning. Your very first reflection on your teaching.  Yes. You’re going to write about your practice, you’re going to confidently select powerful artefacts and you’re going to know exactly which focus areas and standards you’ve hit with them.

Writing an evidence post is really all about YOU and what you’ve experienced as an educator.  Let me show you how to tune in so you can begin to celebrate more and worry less. Ready to feel confident and give it a go?

Subscribe and Review

Are you subscribed to the podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today so that you don’t miss out on any of the episodes we have coming up. You can subscribe to the podcast on any of these channels.

Now if you’re feeling extra loving, we would be really grateful if you left a review over on iTunes, too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast and plus we love reading them! Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know what your favourite part of the podcast is. Thank you!

How much of your day is ALL ABOUT YOU?

You’ve been working super hard. You’ve been learning and growing with your students. Responding to their learning needs and helping them to achieve as much as you can. As the term rolls on you begin to feel tired and it gets so much harder to stay on top of it all, to reach them all and to learn with them.

This is the norm for too many of us. Teaching is a highly emotive and cognitively demanding role. It takes so much out of you.  Burn out is real.

It’s time to reprioritise.

This week we’re talking self-care.  We chatting about how you can acknowledge how much of your day goes into serving others and how little time you have to commit to yourself and your own care.

Using a simple strip of paper, we’re going to re frame our thinking on time.  There really are only 24 hours in one cycle of the day.  As we draw closer to the end of one, we are about to greet the beginning of a new cycle.  There IS time.  There will always be time.  The question is, how are you prioritising that time and how much space are you making for you and your self-care.

In this podcast I ask you to lean in, and focus.  To grab a piece of paper and start tearing it up.  We break down the 24 hours of your day and take stock.  Do you regularly take time to prioritise your own rest? Your need to stop, to connect and to just be?  What happens if you don’t?

We’re going to connect with why you and your self-care should be a major priority.  Your most important priority.  If you don’t find time for you, to recharge your passion, your energy and your focus? Let’s face it you could have the best lesson plans and resources you’ve ever made but without energy, passion and focus those plans will never do what you need them to do for your students.  Your impact will be far less than you and your students deserve it to be. YOU are the most important part of the puzzle and it’s time to make yourself a priority.

 

Head to Edufolios.org/010 for more! 

Worried about including photos of students or their work in your ePortfolio?

Artefact and Annotations. Proof and reflection on Impact. They go hand in hand and are super important. What happens though when the artefact needs to be a picture with children in it? Or it's currently some writing in an exercise book and you need it to be a good quality digital image?

Well, fret no more my friends because in this episode we're going to sort this little barrier out!

Let's have a look at some FREE Apps to help you get the photos you need, ethically prepared to perfection

In this podcast I'll share with you some very simple tips around how to take photos with students in them. I'm also sending you off to download two fabulous apps (available on Android and iOS) that will help you no-end!

To listen here to get to my tips and to find out how you can use the apps I've listed below. Why not share an example reflection post with us in the comments so we can see how clever you are using these apps? 

In South Australia, Almost Half our Kids left school without completing Year 12.∗

“This is not about teachers and schools, this is about curriculum. We set out to look at why kids are dropping out of schools and what’s causing that disengagement”

Prof. Eddie Blass

Australia, we have a problem.  We’ve been hearing about it a lot. Some of us may even be living it.  Thousands and thousands of children are disengaging with school and it’s current curriculum.  In this week’s podcast, Selena speaks with Prof. Eddie Blass about just how we can turn this around.  How we can re-engage these kids and re-invigorate our curriculum.

It’s time to make sure our students have what they need to thrive both inside and outside of school.

Let Eddie explain what she’s discovered as she researched this problem and share with you some of the ways in which she’s creating innovative, unique solutions.  She’s created a unique and wonderfully simple new learning experience called “The Inventorium” and she’s inviting you to be a part of it.  She’s created a brand new way of delivering PLP for SACE. A new way that’s bound to get you excited… YES EXCITED… about the research project AND make a massive difference to your students as a result.

I’ve known Eddie for some time now. We met at a very cool Pitch Competition and she is just an inspiration! Trust me!  Recently she launched The Inventorium Co-operative.  The Minister for Education, here in South Australia was there, singing it’s praises and I just had to let you hear her story!

So, in this week’s podcast we discuss

• The importance of Personal and Social Development in young adults and how it’s essential to their success.
• Why, as a result, PLP and the Research Project should be the best subjects to teach, EVER (hear her out!)
• The statistics published in the Senior School Retention SACE Completion Report 2018 and what they mean for South Australia’s young people
• How Eddie has written you an entire curriculum (that’s mapped and approved by SACE) to bring about a change (neigh… a revolution!)
• Guy Claxton’s Four Habits of the Mind and how they’re at work here.
• How you can get involved in this amazing new learning adventure and use the resources and curriculum she has created

Oooh and, as promised in the podcast, she’s also asked me to share a sample lesson with you. It’s all about Totems and fits beautifully with 2.4 as well as  Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures. Just head here to enter your details and grab a copy!  

How are you recording your PD right now? How hard is it working for you?

How are you feeling about gathering your professional learning hours? Are you clear about how to reflect on what you’re reading, studying, listening too or attending? Does the whole idea of gathering professional development hours cause you a bit of stress?

It’s time to make those professional learning hours work harder!

In this podcast episode we’re answering Edufolios member Hilary’s question about how to write about the professional learning she undertakes. We’re going to cover:

• Why your professional learning belongs in your portfolio of practice.
• How to be so ready for audit you’ll be more than happy to audited.
• How to frame your conversation about learning and what to focus on.
• Why most professional learning starts at the graduate career stage and how to move it up to your level of practice.
• How to turn 15 minutes of new learning into 20 hours of growth and development.

Go listen now and, by the end of the episode you’ll know exactly how to make those PD hours work harder for you, your students and your career. You may also have some new ideas around the entire purpose of your portfolio!

Subscribe and Review

Are you subscribed to the podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today. There’s no way I want you to miss out on any of the episodes we have coming up. You can subscribe to the podcast on any of these channels.

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

Albert Einstein

Fear and discomfort is a natural part of growth and development isn’t it.  We’ve all seen our students struggle as they learn something new, pushing them past those negative, tricky feelings and coming out the other side.  It’s an important emotion.  It’s there for a reason. It’s there to guide us and to ask us to question.  It’s a really positive thing, unless it’s allowed to go unchecked and it becomes a barrier to learning and progress.

If you’re struggling with the process of accreditation and career progression, you are not alone.   It can seem hard, complicated and overwhelming.  I realised recently, that I taught my first lesson 21 years ago.  That’s 21 years of learning with my students and boy have there been some fears to overcome as I have done so. Let me share some of my thoughts on these fears with you.

Identifying Barriers and Removing Them – That’s kinda what you Do.

As a teacher, you’ve spent time learning how to identify how children learn, what barriers stand in their way and how you can remove them.  So, let’s spend some time doing just that for YOU!  You deserve it just as much as they do.

In this week’s episode, we’re going to identify five things that just stop us moving forward.  We’re going to name them and re-frame them.  No more worries about:

• not having any artefacts/evidence
• not having time to do this
• feeling overwhelmed by the whole thing
• Not knowing what it should look like
• Feeling like you’ve not been doing this long enough to go for it…

Let’s get you moving forward! Listen now!

“I don’t have time and I have no idea what I’d write about anyway..”

Overworked teachers, everywhere

Is this how you feel about reflecting or gathering evidence in your portfolio? Are you stuck for topics? Not sure what is reflect worthy or when on earth you could find time to stop, think and reflect?

You are not alone. This is a super common problem that I hear all the time. That’s why today, I’m going to share a full proof plan to help you create consistent reflections that will leave you feeling confident, excited and inspired by your own pratice.

Calm, Confident and in Control

That’s right. I’ve created a very simple (and easy to use) template to help you to plan your reflections. You can download it now by providing us with your email address – we’ll send it right over.

More than that though, I’m going to share with you my top 5 ways to choose topics to reflect on that will help you grow your practice your confidence and your level of impact. I’ve got you! We’re going to walk through this step-by-step. Honestly, if you can’t find enough to talk about after that, we need to chat!

Feeling calm, confident and at ease with you plan? I can’t wait to hear all about it! What did you choose to do? How much time do you think you’re going to save now you have this plan? Why not leave us a comment below or come and join us over on Facebook?  Especially if you’ve got something to help another (Number 3 on the plan…. remember?)

If I fail, I will be judged as a bad teacher.

You’ve just come away from your Year 7 English lesson. You don’t understand it! You spent so much time planning that lesson. You carefully used your assessment data (5) to craft activities (2) that would meet the needs of your students (1) and it should have been great. It wasn’t. Nah ah.

The only impact made in that classroom today was on you and it wasn’t in a good way.

Or will you be judged as the “chief learner”?

In this podcast I talk about how important it is to F.A.I.L and to give yourself the time to reflect on what happened. Yes.. in your portfolio!

We discuss:

• Why it’s important to be ok with failure
• Why it might be considered hypocritical not to be ok with making mistakes and learning from them
• How a principal might react to reading a post in which you did things wrong, and then talked about what you learnt from it
• Why there’s NO SUCH THING as perfect in a classroom

Go listen now and, by the end of the episode you’ll be feeling braver about taking risks in your teaching so you can grow an develop. You may also have some new ideas around the entire purpose of your portfolio!

How do you know when you’ve got the right piece of evidence?

You’ve made time this week to sit and reflect.  You open up your Edufolio and start to write about your experiences with that year 4 class you’ve been working on.  The standards and their focus areas can come later. Last time you checked in you, you wrote about who you had in your class, what you thought you needed to do in order to meet their needs and this time, you’re ready to share what you’ve put in place.  There have been some great results!

You finish writing and you feel good.  You identified some real moments of growth for both your students and yourself.   Now for the “fun” part.  Which standards and focus areas did you cover? Which artefacts should you include? How do you know?

The answers are in the descriptors my friend!

In this episode of the Reflective Teacher Podcast, Selena reveals the tricks behind decoding those pesky focus areas.  She’ll explore how to let all that reflection flow before focusing it, razor sharp on as many focus areas as you can find.

In this episode we look at:

• How to zoom in and understand what you need to do
• How to watch out for tricky standards that seem to be asking the same thing??
• What the not so secret structure of each content descriptor can reveal to you
• How to use that structure to confidently create awesome evidence posts

By the end of this post you will have all the tricks you need to confidently create awesome evidence posts.  No more wondering which artefacts you need and no more one post one standard.  That’s WAY TOO HARD!

Head to Edufolios.org/003 for your freebie!

So, how do you feel now?  If you don’t want to start a brand new post, you could go find one you’ve already written and use these tips to check your focus areas.  Did you get it right? How many did you miss? Most importantly, do you know how to move forward? Why not leave us a comment below or come and join us over on Facebook?  We’d love to celebrate your success with you!