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he job of teaching * Join in the discussion reddit this Comments (1) Wendy Berliner Guardian Professional, Monday 3 October 2011 18.30 BST Article history Teacher Daniel Hartley from Chulmleigh Community College, Devon. Photograph: Apex Back in the summer we decided here at GTN HQ that, with our membership rocketing, it was the right time to mark our first six months in operation with a survey to find out what members thought about teaching today. There were questions across a wide spectrum of topics and, at the end, we left a free text box for teachers to add any comments they wanted to share. It was the dying days of the summer holiday - August 25 - when it went out just after lunch. We knew the survey would take ten or 15 minutes to complete so we weren't quite expecting what happened next, but within those first few hours after its release, we realised you had started something big. By 10.30pm that night we'd had several hundred questionnaires back, which in itself was impressive with many teachers perhaps still away on holiday or back but busy preparing for the new term. The most impressive thing of all was the content of those text boxes. There was just so much of it. Some people wrote several hundred words at a time, speaking clearly from the heart and arguing cogently against the things they felt were going wrong in education. A love of teaching and vocational pleasure felt working with children and young people emerged but it was emerging from a fog caused by far less pleasant aspects of the job - disrespect from society and governments, bullying by senior management, other teachers, parents and students, despair at the parenting skills of some homes and despair with government targets and league tables that were funnelling education into an ever thinner tube feeding stuff that improved Sats and exam results rather than nourishing a lifelong love of learning. One former solicitor questioning the sense of the switch into teaching said: " M

How often have we sat in a Staff Meeting or Professional Development day and listened to the talk turn into a complaint session with no real solutions being offered? I have one suggestion, join Twitter and start tweeting. This has been an invaluable tool for me. I started about a month ago professionally, meaning before …

How often have we sat in a Staff Meeting or Professional Development day and listened to the talk turn into a complaint session with no real solutions being offered? I have one suggestion, join Twitter and start tweeting. This has been an invaluable tool for me. I started about a month ago professionally, meaning before …

"My colleague, Silvana Meneghini, and I have been working on developing a Professional Development framework for embedding technology use and modern learning litercies based on Ruben Puentedura's SAMR model. The template consists of 4 Focus Areas. Each stage of the SAMR model consists of 4 focus areas in the template, that support vision, planning, and evaluation in activity  and task design as well as a professional development framework."

"Of all the initiatives a school can begin, integrating technology may require the most professional development. This is partly because of the equipment, hardware, and software involved and partly because of the shift that a teacher must make in his or her teaching style, technique, and planning process in order to effectively use technology in the classroom. Here are some basic "dos" and "don'ts" for anyone doing tech integration professional development.

"The interactive guide looks at the 50 examples of innovative approaches to professional learning and performance and development profiled in the Global Trends in Professional Learning and Performance and Development report."

"I wanted to present the information in an engaging way by modeling the use of technology instead of just handing everyone a sheet of paper with some links. I knew where those papers would end up! With this in mind I started working on a new professional development model that made sense to me and would hopefully make sense to others."

"A new era of personalized professional development is sweeping into schools. We've created this guide to capture the extraordinary changes in PD tools and in the cycle of learning. We look here at tools that support how teachers engage with colleagues; that help teachers learn or find support for implementing fresh strategies and approaches; and that measure how that learning impacts practice in the classroom."

From the NZ Govt., these resources, though aimed at school leaders, are useful toinform teacher professional development

"Of all the initiatives a school can begin, integrating technology may require the most professional development. This is partly because of the equipment, hardware, and software involved and partly because of the shift that a teacher must make in his or her teaching style, technique, and planning process in order to effectively use technology in the classroom. Here are some basic "dos" and "don'ts" for anyone doing tech integration professional development.

"IconArchive is a professional tag based icon search engine with more than 330,000 icons for web developers, end users and graphic artists. Also it is an inspiration source for new design ideas and a place to enjoy beautiful icons. You can collect, organize & share your favorite icons here with ease. If you want to customize your desktop, you can download icons for all operating systems, Win, Mac & Linux. Website or Software developers with demand for custom icon design could search for professional icon artists here. This may result in freelance jobs and/or design help for projects of any size. On our icon artists page you can select artists offering custom icon design."

An interesting reflection from 1995 from Gary Stager about 'Professional Development'. Interesting that in many ways things have not really changed.

Professional Development Evaluations from Educational Technology and Life Blog

The Leading Curriculum Change program will enhance teachers' knowledge, skills and confidence to effectively lead curriculum change, particularly local implementation of the Australian Curriculum.It will be a unique opportunity to learn with teachers from across Australia in a national professional learning community.Bringing curriculum to life through innovation and excellence. Teachers will experience a high quality, evidence-based, interactive online professional learning program that is designed by experts for adult learners.

Straight forward description explaining how to utilise hashtags to maintain professional distance on Twitter

we have all covered with highly Professional Wedding Photographers with their high quality lenses and gears that will surely astonish you. So let us convert your happy ceremonies to some reminiscence days.

"Meet the Snowball; the world's first professional USB mic. Whether you're recording a guitar at your kitchen table or a complete band in the studio, the Snowball can capture it with detail unheard of before in a USB mic."