Post for 10/25
Class was interesting today as we got to air a lot of the frustrations or new issues our colleagues are experiencing in their respective fieldwork placements. I thought that this was incredibly useful since it was more of a casual atmosphere to relate some concerns and ask questions about them. In addition, it extended into a conversation about what to do in multiple scenarios. How to deal with tense situations, how to defuse conflict and how to react professionally to common problems that might come up in a school atmosphere but rarely in other professional instances. Professionalism as a teacher is a lot more than dressing well, being prepared and showing up on time. It's reflected in the language we use, our tone, our calm and our Presence in general. Professionalism is a reflection of our preparedness and I feel that even if I'm not exactly where I'd like to be in this regard, I'm moving in the right direction.
In addition, we worked on a collaborative project with instant messaging in relation to a particular document. While I thought the end result of the exercise was a good one (a real-time collaborative outline of our reading assignment), I honestly found the instant messaging to be a bit distracting and not very productive. Although it could be viewed as productive anonymity, I didn't know who was saying what so there was little to no accountability. In addition, I couldn't track who said what in the past since the numbers of the writers were constantly changing so the lack of continuity was also confusing. Finally, the pace was too fast for me. I mean, I can balance Gchat conversations, Facebook chats and multiple text messages without many issues but the changing numbers and multiple writers threw me off entirely. However, I think the importance of collaborative work was illustrated overall and that we need to think about innovative ways to get students to collaborate.
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