A while ago I signed up for #etmooc (http://etmooc.org/ ) to gain ideas to further my own teaching. I have recently been reading many entries on the etmooc hub (https://etmooc.org/hub/) around Personal Learning (PLNs PLEs etc) and thought I might take a few minutes to reflect on my own personal learning.

I think life is a personal learning journey. All aspects of life have learning attached, and currently I am on a few Personal Learning Journeys (PLJs). The one with the steepest learning curve is probably the PLJ attached to being a first time parent, each day has new knowledge and new worries, but the same can be said for any PLJ.

Professionally, we are all on constant PLJs, we learn more about our teaching with every lesson. Pupils will throw up a misconception we never conceived of, or will behave in a way we’ve never seen. These are the day to say constants that help us improve. I think these are good, but I like to take this further, which Is why I am keen to observe as many other teachers as possible and to get involved with as many other projects as I can. This blog, the blogs of others and twitter conversations have extended my PLN in a big way and given my PLJ an extra gear. The world we live in is amazing; people from all “corners” of the earth are connected at the click of a button. I can post on twitter something like “Anyone got any good ideas for teaching matrix multiplication?” and get instant responses from teachers in Singapore, Australia, the USA and many other places. This connectivity is mind-blowing.

I joined up to etmooc to further my own personal learning journey, and have received some great ideas on the use of tech in lessons. I have found loads of new blogs to read and I am excited to see how it all progresses.

My PLJ currently includes these other projects, which I will write about in more detail later.  Firstly, a project with a PE teacher where we are observe each other;  a project with a science teacher, which is set to include joint planning and team teaching; a project with a maths teacher and an English teacher, which also involves joint planning and team teaching and a project with a maths colleague which currently involves observing each other, but who knows where it may go.  Each one of these projects excites me, as I am sure they will all help to improve my classroom practice and give me ideas to use in future lessons.

Filed under: etmooc, Teaching Tagged: Education, etmooc, Teaching