What are the most important things you've done this past year for your personal and professional growth?

I'm interested in what activities or resources have really helped you discover your passions or have allowed you to make significant personal or professional growth.

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Permalink Reply by Елена Григорук on February 28, 2012 at 8:20am

I have done my first site and continue working e-learning courses

Permalink Reply by Mark A. Tozer on April 17, 2012 at 5:41pm

The MOST important things I've done this past year for my personal and professional growth are attend live and listen to recordings to as many Future of Education and, to a lesser degree, Classroom 2.0 interviews on Blackboard Collaborate, iTunes, and their respective websites, as time / life allows.  My views and understanding of Education have become so much clearer over the past 3 years, I feel as though I'm finally putting key pieces together.  

Now I feel as though I have to interact with others here to help continually evolve my understanding, and develop my voice.  I may say some pretty "out-there" things, here and at school, so I need to learn to discern when and where to say what I'm thinking.  I've often said that "I just say what I'm thinking", but I've been though a few bad experiences where I've stopped saying what's on my mind.  At this point, I'm getting my "voice" back, and have to re-learn how to read people around me with the bigger picture in mind, and more carefully choose what to share and when.  Also, I tend to use way too many words to try to get my point across 8-)

Permalink Reply by jason huber on August 20, 2012 at 7:20am
I've read Imagin: How Creativity Works which affirms and puts into words many of my tea hint actions. It's a really inspiring read. I also travel as
U h as possible. For the third year in a row (and at two separate schools) I've launche global service trips for middle school students. Amazing experiences, life changing perspective ( for me as well as kids), and real world learning at its best. I moti aged to keep reading, connecting and traveling. Now I want to connect kids across the global for PBL.
Permalink Reply by Paul Beaufait on August 22, 2012 at 9:01pm

I've endeavoured to extend professional development networks through a number of Web 2.0 Labs (Nings), as well as other so-called social-networking systems such as Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn, in order to (re-)discover and share passions for learning and teaching. At the same time, I've been trying to consolidate, that is, interweave rather than over-extend, personal and professional web presence, in a process that Don Hinkelman referred to as "bricolage" (Action research and educational ethnography in blended environments, 2012.08.17 JST).

Permalink Reply by Alice Keeler on August 22, 2012 at 9:22pm

Great places to do that! I love twitter, it is my best PD.  Are you on twitter?

Permalink Reply by Paul Beaufait on August 22, 2012 at 10:04pm

Actually, I'm no twitterer. Though I observed a few avid early adopters come and go, and I do have few noteworthy Twitter feeds in Google Reader (that I hardly ever get 'round to reading), I never quite saw the point of a tool for scattering decontextualized bits of info., only to necessitate their re-constitution elsewhere with additional tools. That is, especially when there are potentially contextualizing, discoursive, group-oriented, hypertext-compatible, and meta-data enriching tools at hand.

For instance, instead of tweeting a cool website I happen to find, I annotate, categorize, tag, and share a link to the site via Diigo. I can do so both publicly, as well as directly to any number of focused social bookmarking groups. If such groups want to become discursive communities of inquiry on Diigo, they can – either independent of, or cross-linked to, blogs, Moodles, Nings, wikis, or similar loci for interaction capable of framing discussions and incorporating RSS feeds.

Permalink Reply by Nam Dang on October 4, 2012 at 8:17pm

Last Spring, as part of a class assignment, I had the opportunity to go and observe Special Education classrooms for a period of two months. I found this to be very beneficial because I was able to gain a lot of insight on how to handle certain situations. There are a wide range of disabilities that people have and, as teachers, we need to learn how to manage different situations with our students while also making sure they are learning to the best of their abilities. 

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Heeren on May 3, 2013 at 8:22am
I spent this past year reading numerous books and how to best use technology to connect with students and how to utilize technology to help students outside of the classroom.

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