Shep's World

Picture courtesy of : https://gamebooks.org/gallery/cyoa001n2.jpg Hello my friends and welcome back to Shep's World where I discuss my thoughts and personal development as an educator.  Lately I have been reflecting on the role of professional development on me as a classroom teacher. Many times professional development that is provided by our schools is less than ideal due to poor planning, lack of teacher buy in, or a variety of other issues. Not that I blame the school/district for these issues due to the fact that a one size fits all pathway to professional development is an unreasonable expectation for something that REALLY needs to be a very personal journey of self discovery for the individual teacher; however, if the schools didn't try to provide the PD in the first place how many teachers would simply not attempt it at all? My guess is honestly depressing and what is most depressing about it is that prior to this year I would have been that teacher that avoided P

     Photo Courtesy of:  https://cdn.makeawebsitehub.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/social_media.jpg Welcome back to Shep's World and this week I am going to talk about my continuing adventures in the field of Social Media in the context of education.  Never in my career prior to my class EDET 543 would I have ever considered using social media as a tool that I could use in my profession but every time I turn around it feels as if I am discovering some new use for social media. Whether I am talking about professional development, classroom and community management, or as an instructional tool that uses of social media in the classroom only seem limited by depth of my own creativity.  I have explored using Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Google+, and Pinterest  in the last few weeks and the number of applications I am still learning about is almost overwhelming so I am going to repeat advice that I was given to anyone who may be reading along and possibly feeling the same.  S

Photo courtesy of: http://dailygenius.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/twitter-in-the-classroom-770x770.png Education today is really undergoing some revolutionary changes. I heard someone once say that the problem is that we are often so close to what is changing that we don't actually see whats taking place. When I think about the classroom today and the tools that my students have available to them it is dramatically different to what students had when I firststarted teaching. Compared to what I had available to me when I was a student it almost seems like I was learning in the dark ages of edtech (I can't imagine what the schoolhouse teacher of the 1800's would have thought). Students today are connected and engaged globally through social networking on a scale that would have been impossible only a decade ago and what  really is upsetting is that my educational practices had not really changed since I first begun teaching despite the options available. At times I fe

Photo courtesy of:  https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BXgqEd7CIAAerju.jpg Welcome back my friends today I've been reflecting on a topic that we all have experienced and that is professional development.  As educators we all are expected to participate in PD and we have all been a part of PD days that were poorly planned, over planned, boring, or the subject of any number of other complaints (to be fair to the individuals responsible for planning PD days teachers are a notoriously difficult audience who'd all rather be in their classroom "getting work done"). It's not that I was opposed to participating in professional development days just that I wanted to know that there was going to be something noteworthy that I could take away from the experience. In short I did not want to see my time wasted. This brings me to the subject of today's blog and that is meaningful professional development. Over the past week I have been talking with a friend of mine @STLinOK

Photo courtesy of:  http://elearningwiki.com/images/thumb/7/70/PersonalLearningNetwork.jpg/842px-PersonalLearningNetwork.jpg Welcome back my friends and let me be the first to say that many of my blogs reflect my thoughts as an educator but I think in a way also reflect many of our shared experiences in this field.  I am hardly the first educator to have my eyes opened to new possibilities by something I experienced and begin sharing my new revelation to others who undoubtedly attempt to avoid rolling their eyes as they think to themselves that "this is nothing new" or "I've been doing this for years" both sentiments I am also very guilty of having from time to time.  Recently however I have been reflecting over my career as an educator and have taken notice about how my practices have changed in the brief thirteen years since I started back in 2005. When I first began teaching like so many of you I remember struggling the first few years to accumulate

Look at the picture to the left.  I'm sure after taking a moment you quickly realized it was a picture of a boy and his puppy (my boy and his puppy to be exact).  I'm also sure that a number of thoughts possibly ran through your head as you looked over this image.  Maybe you thought of your own children, or your dog at home eagerly waiting for you to get home.  It is interesting how much information we can derive from a single image.  When we see an image we can connect that image with other information that we can relate too, often on a very personal level which makes it easier for us to retain.  Then we (teachers like myself) go to work on Monday and as class begins we instruct our students to dutifully get out their notes as we begin another death by power point lecture that we know is going to take 40 minutes when our students attention span is only about 10-15 minutes, depending on their age.  Just walk into any faculty meeting and you can start a stopwatch by how qui