Reflections on Reflecting

My personal formula for reflecting on my practice is a simple one: review, respond, react.  In my school division, the process of reflecting on our work is an essential component of our evaluation process.  It is no longer enough to teach a lesson but you need to reflect back over not only the way you presented the information or designed the lesson but you also need to reflect on how the information was received and processed by the learner.  We rely heavily on the work of Charlotte Danielson in our evaluation process and use the CLASS system for program evaluation.  Both of these strategies require you to look closely at what you are doing and how students are responding to instruction.

My approach is very simplistic but it works for me.  First I review the information at hand. Do I understand what happened, or what information I observed/learned?  Then I respond with a restatement of what I observed, believed to have happened, and most importantly my feelings about my role in the instruction/learning process.  Then I react to my instruction/learning by adapting what happened, develop strategies for improvement, recognize challenges and successes and use all of the information gained to build new learning for me and my audience.  

This blog is a method of reflecting. I just need someone to give me feedback of my ramblings so I can grow!

RSS and Twitter

Back from vacation--much needed and much enjoyed.  On the way, my son had his 3G tablet with him along with his cell phone.  He had downloaded an app that alerted us to police cars radar units, another app to monitor the weather, and of course plenty of music. His phone was constantly chiming with new emails or alerts. I don't know if he could function if you took them away.  They are part of his routine and I don't think he realized how often he was checking this or that until I pointed it out to him.  He even sleeps with his phone on the bed!  

Once we arrived, I was able to watch my grandchildren interact with technology.  The 8 and 10 year old have already mastered Dad's iPad. They seem to play games so of course, I downloaded some 'educational games' for them.  Might as well learn while they play-right?  What continues to amaze me is how young they are and how much they know about using technology.  I read somewhere that if you hand a new technology to a child, they immediately begin pushing buttons, clicking here and there and are up and running within moments.  Hand the same piece of technology to an adult, and they want to know where the instruction manual is!  Even the 4 year old was showing me how to change colors and shapes using a drawing program on the iPad. My friends call me the technology toy queen as I seem to gravitate to using the latest techology so it was funny to see me learning from the grandchildren.  But if you want to learn, watch them! 

This project has made me think if I am using technology or is technology using me.  I joined Twitter but have never been a big user.  It always seemed to be just another thing to keep up with but I have posted my involvement with the 23 Things for Professional Development to my 'followers' and I am curious if anyone else will tweet back.  On the other hand, I rely heavily on my RSS feed for my favorite blogs and online writers.  I have a Google Reader and try to read the postings each morning as I drink my coffee.  Quite often I find information that I then pass on to others in my district.  There are probably a lot more blogs that I could read and over time, I have narrowed the lists to those who make me think, who encourage me, or even those who I don't always agree with.  Many have found themselves off of my list as I did not find them relevant to my work. Reading other blogs is a time issue for me.  So I have tried to use the KISS philosophy--Keep It Simple Sweetie- to keep the reading manageable.  

I would love to know what you are reading and if you are interested, I will share my blog list.

Stay cool--we are in our 3rd day of 95+ degree temps!