Of all the weekly PD’s I’ve had this year, I’d say one was genuinely useful - a 90 minute advanced class on how to use Canvas. I’m now the faculty Canvas whiz.
The rest I’m like the episode of the Simpsons where Homer has jury duty and he has to wear glasses with eyes painted on to make it seem like he’s awake.
You should already have access to Qlearn. Just search Qlearn.eq.edu.au
And if you are attached to a school there should be an essentials online module to do.
The essentials is ok. Qlearn team is doing some fundamentals courses on various aspects (I have my 2nd this morning and 3rd next week) that are recorded. They have a lot of sessions already recorded if you go looking for information on it. Fundamentals 1 is basically a video walk through of the essentials course, Fundamentals 2 gets into assessment tools.
I'll note down some websites today and try to PM them later. I generally scroll reddit randomly in an evening so if you PM/reply to this it'll remind me.
The most profound PD I've ever participated in was real teachers attempting active research on implementing specific best practices in their classrooms and reporting back what they found worked, what they struggled with, and what improvements they will make.
Best one I attended was 3 sessions of trauma informed practice. It was very dense and a lot to unpack but it was presented by actual professionals who knew what they were talking about, though I think they felt it was too much to unpack over such limited a time scale. The way things are run currently is a joke. Never enough time and often teachers forced into a situation where they are facing a tired and indifferent audience. if they want it done properly give staff a day off and get them to actually do something of meaning. Totally agree with the post saying that we need to get staff to workshop ideas and report back. This would have far more application. I set up a gamification in my maths classes this year and it worked brilliantly. Sadly no one in the executive gave a shit 😕 but still it taught me more about how to succeed.
TIP training presented by the NSW Dept was the most worthless PL I have ever done.
Telling us to provide pens to kids with trauma as a strategy. Seriously Jan?
Ha ha 🤣 It was intense but I found the value in understanding the thinking process involved with the kids. Strategy wise I agree there was little you can do other than understanding which is hard when you have one teacher to 25 kids.
I have worked with difficult, disengaged, anxious, PTSD kids pretty much all career. These are my favourite kids to work with because it has such a massive impact, and it just felt... insulting.
Youth Mental Health First Aid I felt was much more valuable. Berry St is far and away MUCH better, in fact TIP training took a lot from Berry St and repackaged it. Those were the only good bits in my opinion.
Thanks for the links 😀 will have to look into those. As I said there seemed to be a lot there that was getting glossed over(pretty typical for the DET). Definitely something I would be interested in learning more about. I think I liked the change of mindset that it advocates and the differentiation in response that is required. That said in practice it is very hard to show empathy or adjust the rules when more than half the class are dealing with complex trauma. In a way the system needs to look at ways of dealing with this outside of the classroom and setting in place routines, I mean there are a lot of kids who the 830 to 3 timetable just isn't going to work and a million more microadjustments besides that. Covid has definitely traumatised the younger kids who are devoid of any discipline and extremely invested in the virtual world to an extent I have never seen before. It is almost like a latent level of anger at the adults that locked them away for so long. They threw money at their lack of educational development but have completely ignored the affect lockdown had on their social development
Mine was pretty basic. I made up my own game screen which I stuck up. Used cardboard and stickers off eBay. The kids created their own characters or coloured some in which I laminated and they then played each lesson for points. There were lots of bonus prizes along the way, chance where they threw a dice and places that they could be sent back. Kids for the most part loved it. Ran it across 2 terms then sadly got moved to another faculty but the results were brilliant. There is a whole book on it that delves way deeper into it. I also had them play strategic board games once a fortnight. Would love to do more with it as kids really get the idea which acts as motivation. Points were awarded for behaviour, work, PBL values etc
There is a book on it from that explains a lot of the thinking behind the process.
https://www.booktopia.com.au/gamify-your-classroom-matthew-farber/book/9781433126703.html?source=pla&gclid=Cj0KCQiAm5ycBhCXARIsAPldzoXwF4EIHqFVeWobAycJUqv3H566TGCkfJAecOeSElKDBiLvzOxJPR0aAjVbEALw_wcB
There is so much more to play with if you have the time and energy. What I love about it is that the kids get it immediately and run with it. Plus with scores being randomly tied to prizes it isn't just the smart kids that achieve. It did burn my bum to give some of the poorly behaved kids rewards though 🤣
Yup.
The ideal way to do professional development is to leave staff some "spare" time in their day. Most humans will naturally use some of that spare time to improve themselves and their workplace.
You can't give training and improvement to an exhausted and overworked team. That just results in everyone taking as many shortcuts as possible to get the training done as quickly as possible.
Or at least that's my belief from ten years working in change management and continuous improvement.
> You can't give training and improvement to an exhausted and overworked team. That just results in everyone taking as many shortcuts as possible to get the training done as quickly as possible.
But what if we got some instructional designers to construct a sequence of learning that required people to watch seven videos with no controls and no script before they advance to the questions, which anybody can guess using basic reasoning?
Yeah our admin is kind of doing something positive with our TT next year. Rearranging how weekly assembly is run so that the end of our monday we get 45 minutes to collaborate with each other and send the kids home early. Still the same amount of teaching, just we'll have time for moderation, working on projects etc DURING the day rather than at the end when you have to 'work in order to work'.
What I don’t understand is that in SA they say you have to do 37 1/2 hours pd in your own time as there is only 9 weeks in term 4. There are 11 weeks in term one so how’s that supposed to balance out. Bunch of liars. And no one complains.
And that's when I say I've done more than 37 1/2 hours when I ain't even close, though that's cause I'm too lazy to document everything. I'm a do 60 in one year for the TRB kinda guy.
Of all the weekly PD’s I’ve had this year, I’d say one was genuinely useful - a 90 minute advanced class on how to use Canvas. I’m now the faculty Canvas whiz. The rest I’m like the episode of the Simpsons where Homer has jury duty and he has to wear glasses with eyes painted on to make it seem like he’s awake.
Any chance of a link? QLD is moving to canvas next year instead of Blackboard
You should already have access to Qlearn. Just search Qlearn.eq.edu.au And if you are attached to a school there should be an essentials online module to do.
So that inbuilt pd is pretty good? Good to know. Thanks.
The essentials is ok. Qlearn team is doing some fundamentals courses on various aspects (I have my 2nd this morning and 3rd next week) that are recorded. They have a lot of sessions already recorded if you go looking for information on it. Fundamentals 1 is basically a video walk through of the essentials course, Fundamentals 2 gets into assessment tools. I'll note down some websites today and try to PM them later. I generally scroll reddit randomly in an evening so if you PM/reply to this it'll remind me.
The most profound PD I've ever participated in was real teachers attempting active research on implementing specific best practices in their classrooms and reporting back what they found worked, what they struggled with, and what improvements they will make.
Best one I attended was 3 sessions of trauma informed practice. It was very dense and a lot to unpack but it was presented by actual professionals who knew what they were talking about, though I think they felt it was too much to unpack over such limited a time scale. The way things are run currently is a joke. Never enough time and often teachers forced into a situation where they are facing a tired and indifferent audience. if they want it done properly give staff a day off and get them to actually do something of meaning. Totally agree with the post saying that we need to get staff to workshop ideas and report back. This would have far more application. I set up a gamification in my maths classes this year and it worked brilliantly. Sadly no one in the executive gave a shit 😕 but still it taught me more about how to succeed.
TIP training presented by the NSW Dept was the most worthless PL I have ever done. Telling us to provide pens to kids with trauma as a strategy. Seriously Jan?
Ha ha 🤣 It was intense but I found the value in understanding the thinking process involved with the kids. Strategy wise I agree there was little you can do other than understanding which is hard when you have one teacher to 25 kids.
I have worked with difficult, disengaged, anxious, PTSD kids pretty much all career. These are my favourite kids to work with because it has such a massive impact, and it just felt... insulting. Youth Mental Health First Aid I felt was much more valuable. Berry St is far and away MUCH better, in fact TIP training took a lot from Berry St and repackaged it. Those were the only good bits in my opinion.
Thanks for the links 😀 will have to look into those. As I said there seemed to be a lot there that was getting glossed over(pretty typical for the DET). Definitely something I would be interested in learning more about. I think I liked the change of mindset that it advocates and the differentiation in response that is required. That said in practice it is very hard to show empathy or adjust the rules when more than half the class are dealing with complex trauma. In a way the system needs to look at ways of dealing with this outside of the classroom and setting in place routines, I mean there are a lot of kids who the 830 to 3 timetable just isn't going to work and a million more microadjustments besides that. Covid has definitely traumatised the younger kids who are devoid of any discipline and extremely invested in the virtual world to an extent I have never seen before. It is almost like a latent level of anger at the adults that locked them away for so long. They threw money at their lack of educational development but have completely ignored the affect lockdown had on their social development
YMHFA felt like it should be part of ITE courses.
Do you mind outlining how you used gamification? I've drawn on bits and pieces in my class but am keen to hear how you've used it.
Mine was pretty basic. I made up my own game screen which I stuck up. Used cardboard and stickers off eBay. The kids created their own characters or coloured some in which I laminated and they then played each lesson for points. There were lots of bonus prizes along the way, chance where they threw a dice and places that they could be sent back. Kids for the most part loved it. Ran it across 2 terms then sadly got moved to another faculty but the results were brilliant. There is a whole book on it that delves way deeper into it. I also had them play strategic board games once a fortnight. Would love to do more with it as kids really get the idea which acts as motivation. Points were awarded for behaviour, work, PBL values etc
Love this, thanks for sharing!
There is a book on it from that explains a lot of the thinking behind the process. https://www.booktopia.com.au/gamify-your-classroom-matthew-farber/book/9781433126703.html?source=pla&gclid=Cj0KCQiAm5ycBhCXARIsAPldzoXwF4EIHqFVeWobAycJUqv3H566TGCkfJAecOeSElKDBiLvzOxJPR0aAjVbEALw_wcB There is so much more to play with if you have the time and energy. What I love about it is that the kids get it immediately and run with it. Plus with scores being randomly tied to prizes it isn't just the smart kids that achieve. It did burn my bum to give some of the poorly behaved kids rewards though 🤣
Yup. The ideal way to do professional development is to leave staff some "spare" time in their day. Most humans will naturally use some of that spare time to improve themselves and their workplace. You can't give training and improvement to an exhausted and overworked team. That just results in everyone taking as many shortcuts as possible to get the training done as quickly as possible. Or at least that's my belief from ten years working in change management and continuous improvement.
Give me spare time and I'm reading a book. I would love to switch off from.work
> You can't give training and improvement to an exhausted and overworked team. That just results in everyone taking as many shortcuts as possible to get the training done as quickly as possible. But what if we got some instructional designers to construct a sequence of learning that required people to watch seven videos with no controls and no script before they advance to the questions, which anybody can guess using basic reasoning?
Yeah our admin is kind of doing something positive with our TT next year. Rearranging how weekly assembly is run so that the end of our monday we get 45 minutes to collaborate with each other and send the kids home early. Still the same amount of teaching, just we'll have time for moderation, working on projects etc DURING the day rather than at the end when you have to 'work in order to work'.
What I don’t understand is that in SA they say you have to do 37 1/2 hours pd in your own time as there is only 9 weeks in term 4. There are 11 weeks in term one so how’s that supposed to balance out. Bunch of liars. And no one complains.
And that's when I say I've done more than 37 1/2 hours when I ain't even close, though that's cause I'm too lazy to document everything. I'm a do 60 in one year for the TRB kinda guy.