Activity 5 - Professional Connection Map

Create a blog post where you draw a map which demonstrates your current and potential professional connections. Based on the map, make goal(s) for extending your professional connections. 

The following provocations can be used to help you create the map:

1.     What other professional communities intersect with or lie at the borders of your own profession? What impact do these communities have on your practice and professional community?

2.     What are or what would be the benefits and challenges of working in a more interdisciplinary environment?

You need to explain the map of professional connections and evaluate one or two connections you have. This can be done in written form or using embedded media (presentation, video, etc,..)

What other professional communities intersect with or lie at the borders of your own profession? What impact do these communities have on your practice and professional community?

The professional communities that intersect with my profession include NZCER, I am involved with the current project run by Rachel Bolstad investigating using games for learning. I have also worked with Rachel before in implementing writing games for reluctant writers.  One project has already changed the way I teach, using writing games to enthuse learners, this change has then propagated through some of our school to change the practice in other classes, we are hoping that it will also move into our local community of schools as other teachers become aware of it through parent discussions in the community.  

I am hoping a similar change will occur during the gaming project. Other connections include linking with local schools who have implemented similar technology, suppliers of technology and service, who we gain ideas from relating to how others are using technology in their schools. All of these communities have an impact on how I teach, which has the possibility to alter the way others in my community teach as I implement new ways of teaching and share my views and ideas.

The connection with NZCER has had a minor impact on my practice, I have used the writing game within class and it has become a useful tool for a small number of students. The actual interaction gave me a link to NZCER and inspired me to sign up for the gaming initiative. My goal is to use new knowledge gained in my practice making it more engaging and creative for students. Once embedded I would like to share this knowledge to the wider community potentially inspiring others.

Over the last few years I have been lucky enough to interact with a number of educators, at Mind Lab, at ULearn, within an ICT cluster. All interactions and discussions have given me new and interesting aspects, some give me ideas on how to change my teaching, others that I may think about but not implement. Within these links there is the possibility of extending links outwards even more to engage with a wider community, and with the increasing use of social media the network can become even wider, linking to marine biologists in Saudi Arabia or astronauts orbiting the earth becomes a real possibility for students all over the world.

The interaction at Mind Lab has had a major influence on my practice, most of it coming from the DCL component. I have set goals to introduce new technology to the class such as Makeymakeys and electronics, but even more exciting is the goal to change my basic teaching. Moving away from traditional to a more independent style of learning that empowers students. This is a goal that we continually reflect on and amend to improve the process.

Harvie (2012) states that working in an Interdisciplinary way has been linked with promoting higher order, critical and holistic thinking skills. This holistic thinking is the ability to understand how ideas and information from relevant disciplines, relate to each other and to the problem. Many argue that this is a powerful and engaging strategy that leads to sustained and transferable learning (Hiebert et al. 1996).

From the perspective of the teacher interdisciplinary activities allow for better use of time, creating an environment that will develop skills for use in the 21st century and creating relevance for the wider world. Creating links between disciplines can develop real life thinking and creating collaboration then teaches skills relevant to the work force today. Extending the exisiting links to those outlined above to give real life learning opportunities to primary school students using technology available today would extend our professional connections and give learning opportunities to students that are out of this world.

How exciting is that?

References

Harvie, J. (2012) Interdisciplinary Education and Co-operative Learning: Perfect Shipmates to sail against the Rising Tide of ‘Learnification’. Stirling International Journal of Postgraduate Research 1 (1), 1-22.

Hiebert, J., Carpenter, T. P., Fennema, E., Fuson, K., Human, P., Murray, H., Alwyn, O. and Wearne, D., 1996. Problem solving as a basis for reform in curriculum andinstruction: The case of mathematics. Educational Researcher, 25(4), pp. 12–21.

Jones, B. F., Rasmusson, C. M. and Moffitt, M. C., 1996.

Real-life Problem Solving: A Collaborative Approach to Interdisciplinary Learning.

Washington, DC:  American Psychological Association.