Interesting Websites for Teachers from Teachers
Professional Development is at the forefront of everybody's minds. How am I going to meet the required hours?
There are various ways you can build up PD hours, without necessarily attending any professionally organised PD sessions.
The most interesting way collecting and working your Professional Development is, by searching for, and joining Learning Communities.
To give you an idea, reading the information on this website is regarded as PD. All you have to do is keep a log of the time you spent reading this, and one or two lines as to how reading the information on this website contributed to your professional skills.
I could also suggest joining the following formal Learning Communities I've managed to track down, organised by different educational organisations.
- Two websites of Learning Communities worth investigating and that you can sign up with are:
a) Scootle – Registering with Scootle is free
CRTs can register with Scootle, but it's done in a slightly different way to people who have an edumail username and password. CRTs can email the Digital Content email address ([email protected]) requesting access to Scootle and I will send them a registration link. I need to confirm their status as a teacher before sending them the link, so they need to include their VIT number.
Your CRTs might also be interested in FUSE (https://fuse.education.vic.gov.au/), which is a DEECD content repository that has content for students and teachers. You won't be able to log in, but the vast majority of the content behind the login is from Scootle. The Digital Learning ICT Showcase (http://epotential.education.vic.gov.au/showcase/) also has lots of resources on different topics with a focus on using ICT to enhance teaching and learning.
b) Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (ITSL) –
www.aitsl.edu.au
this website has got an online questionnaire enabling teachers to reflect upon their practice in accordance with the Standards. This should be a very useful and valuable exercise for any teacher to perform. From what I can gather with information available on the website, reflecting on your practice will eventually lead to creating an online e-portfolio, which is very handy to have when job hunting.
Registering is relatively uncomplicated.
I would also like to encourage you to develop your own e-portfolio. It is an online cache you develop, storing all the evidence you've collected, teaching and PD hours.
In developing such an online resource will facilitate easy and relatively painless collecting of evidence that you can present to the VIT if asked for it.
www.thefunneled-web.com
www.funbrain.com
www.evernote.com an amazing website where you can store a large volume of information online
www.splash.abc.net.au - a new initiative from ABS network, and worth taking a look as to what it has to offer.
http://www.ict.mic.ul.ie/graddip/web_2_0_tools.html -- updated list of web 2.0 tools
www.teachersdomain.org - lost of lesson ideas and material that teachers can use