Melanie



Space for Reflection: Well, I got off to a rough start for my first overseas Teacher's Conference. I did not bring a laptop. When I taught in the States the school always had a computer lab for us to use and so I never had to bring a laptop before. Would have been nice to know, so I could have made arrangements to bring that or an Ipad. It appears most schools that are part of EARCOS are one to one schools, where as my school has a not even a dozen old computers that we use and only two old laptops for presentations that I could not bring. Luckily pity was taking on me and I was loaned a laptop from the school here and I am very grateful for that. I learned many new things at this conference. Many of them I will not take back with me to use at my current school because of lack of resources and support from the owner, but I will play with them over the next 9 months and have them in my knowledge base so hopefully when I start applying for a new job these terms won't all be foreign to me. There is also knowledge I want to share with my fellow students in my online School Library Media classes that I am taking from the US as some of the things I have learned have fit in with assignments and discussions we have had in my classes so far. One of the first things I am going to share with them is the Creative Commons as it fits well in with our discussion about CopyRight Laws and our responsibility as educators and librarians and will probably open up new discussion. Coming to the conference has made me more excited about overseas teaching. My current school was not at all what I expected. The SCIS Pudong campus is more of what I think a school is and more like what I am used to. I think in talking with others and listening to them there is probably another school out there that would be a better fit for me. Also, possibly another community where I would not be a minority unto myself. I would like to have more of a social life, because even though my love for teaching is important I have to be happy outside of the classroom too.

Ideas and Takeaways: I am going to find out more about Twitter. I was hesitant to try it with the TMI information that I have heard about in the news. After listening to others and how great it is I think I will try it. The last year has been very challenging since I could only bring two 50lbs. boxes with me of belongings and most of those were clothing items, so I could not bring many lesson plans, activities, projects, etc. that I have developed with me. Some things, of course, I had on my jump drive but this job opportunity was two weeks from the time I found out about it to the time that I left, and I had to pack a whole house away that I had little time to make sure everything I had developed was uploaded on my jump drive. Needless to say I only had about a handful of things I have brought in some form that I can use where I am. My previous co-workers have been great at e-mailing me things, but Twitter sounds like it will be even more beneficial. Also, since this is very different from my previous two schools there is probably someone else out there in a similar situation that might have more ideas to help me out to help my students with lack of resources, staff, etc.

Am definitely going to check more into Creative Commons. Using that for future assignments and probably posting my own things. Also, going to do more exploring of Flickr and Picnik for future use. I, of course, won't use everything that I learned but now I will have a year to play with things experimenting if I can with where I am at now and just preparing for the next step in my journey as an educator.

Questions:

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