(I opened a twitter account a week ago. Yes, I’m slow. I have a suspicious mind, too. When everyone’s talking about the same thing, I simply suspect. I get a sort of mind saturation as well . The result is I don’t feel like trying. This is what happened to me with twitter. I finally surrendered; partly because of the SMiELT course, partly because I’m on holiday, partly because everybody seemed to have calmed down, but -most of all- because I decided to get rid of my prejudice. It wasn’t an unconditional surrender, though. “Let’s see what you have to offer!”, I thought as I signed up.

I won’t write a post about twitter here, I won’t add one more to the thousands that already exist. I won’t even tagg this post ‘twitter’. I want to talk about something else and just wanted to tell you that I had absolutely forgotten about the Open PD sessions that were to start yesterday and Darren’s tweet was a on-time reminder (perhaps it IS showing me what it has to offer after all, GRRRR)

That said, I start the post.

The idea of Open Professional Development wouldn’t have been possible without technology, that’s a fact. It wouldn’t be possible without people (in this case Darren and Robin) taking the trouble and dedicating their time to organize the session, true.

If you have a look at the topics you’ll find a list of tools. However, the Agenda shows the schedule is based mostly on discussion.
Both Darren and Robin have a way of approaching tools that I love. They show how to use them, get rid of the technical aspects soon and start asking why and what for and motivating discussion to share experiences. At the end of the session we were asked to write our reflections in a wiki page, the tool we had mostly discussed. It’s worth reading what the participants wrote. It’s always encouraging to find out that we share so may concerns and hopes, regardless age, teaching experience or working conditions.

There are other sessions.If you missed this one, you haven’t missed them all.

Photo by holosmoss

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