I know…, you know …, we all known, that self-review is essential for good practice.  True self-review should be the combination of both formal and informal review tools.  These tools may include personal reflections, professional conversations, mentoring, professional appraisal, journals and learning circles.  Personally I enjoy engaging in self-review through reflecting and sharing my practice in a professional blog. My blog is where I engage in my own professional form of ‘just-in-time’ learning; it is here where my self-review with make an immediate impact on my practice. What I am having trouble with at the moment is wondering whether it is appropriate for me to engage in this medium during school time.

The Background:  I am the Principal of a Sole Charge Rural School.  This means that for 0.7 (three and a half days) of my week I am a normal classroom teacher, well as normal as you can get with eleven students, (grin) and for the other 0.3 (one and a half days) I am in the office doing management and leadership tasks.  I do not do any planning or classroom prep. during my 0.3 release, this is all done after the kids have left for the day or in the weekends (like any normal teacher).

The Requirements: As a part of my involvement with the First Time Principals Programme, and as specified in my job description, I am required to engage in self-review.  In fact, I have been advised by my mentor and my appraiser to keep a professional journal.  I would like to use this blog as my professional journal; I can easily keep any sensitive posts private or password protect them (save the trees!)

The Question: Is it appropriate for me to set aside time from my 0.3 release to reflect in my professional journal (this blog)?  Or should I be engaging in this reflection outside of school time, in my own time?

The Guilt: The reality is that I just haven’t done it at home because I am just so tired when I finally get there.  I would like to do it during my release time but I don’t know if this is ok?  Can I justify this as a good use of leadership and management time? Shouldn’t I be using my time for the benefit of the students learning?  But what about me, should I also be making sure that I am the best possible leader I can be? (and not burn out with the effort).

The Ideal: What I really want is to know that it’s ok for me to add regular self-review entries to this blog, which is all about my experiences as a 21st Century Learner and Educator, during my release time and not allow my professional life to invade my personal one.  I want to stop feeling guilty.

]]> http://maramastewart.com/2010/06/16/self-review-the-guilt-post/feed/ 3 http://maramastewart.com/2010/02/23/up-here-where-the-air-is-clear/ http://maramastewart.com/2010/02/23/up-here-where-the-air-is-clear/#comments Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:51:37 +0000 marama28 http://maramastewart.com/?p=184 Breath in deep and taste that country air!

Up here at 600 metres above sea level you can see for miles, no wonder it has taken me so long to sit down and write a post!  I mean check out my view …

Though I guess I should admit to being a fairly slack blogger during the summer break (well in general really).  I am not actually a big fan of writing, I would much rather curl up and read a book, so I really must force myself to sit down write.  In fact the only real reason I do this at all is because I know I have an audience. An audience who is choosing to read my thoughts and opinions.  Maybe even gaining a bit of advice or a few new ideas from my natter about all things great and small in the world of eLearning.

Yep, I write this solely for a purpose, the purpose to connect with my ever patient and kind audience. This of course does make me wonder … do my students feel that there is a purpose behind what I ask them to write? Does ones teacher and class mates make an authentic audience?  And if I have answered ‘No’ to both question (which I have),  why am I making them do any writing at all? Hmmmm

This blog has helped me find a purpose and motivation for writing, it has given me an authentic audience.

If I give my students a blog, will they also find theirs?

I must say, all this oxygen deprivation is making my head spin!

Soooo … I have a bit of a challenge ahead of me.  The teaching part will be as sweet as a nut, but I now need to learn all about the compliance stuff!  The paper work, administration, budgets, pay-roll (eek! I have heard many a horrible tale about pay-roll!), and water-testing will definitely be a challenge for me.  Yes, you did read that correctly, I do have to test the drinking water once a month!  But what is life without a challenge?  I say bring it on because I also get to do the exciting stuff, and by exciting I mean super-sized-geeky-fun exciting stuff! I now have a blank slate to create a personalised elearning environment for my school community. Woohoooo!

I thought I might share my ever increasing ‘To Do’ list with you:

1. Obtain Domain Name details.
2. Sign up for Google Apps.
3. Sigh and stare at my tiny budget.
4. Re-assess our ISP – InspireNet, Telecom, or Vodafone? (we have very limited options in Kiwi-land)
5. Spend at least 17 hours fixing internet connection problems or just waiting while I am on hold.
6. Create a new (official serious stuff) school website  – Self-hosted with Joomla or hosted by InspireNet with Wordpress MU or use a hosted site like Weebly or Google Sites.
7. Up-load all policy documents to Google Docs and link to school site.
8. Write the elearning policy.
9. Sigh and stare at my tiny budget.
10. Start applying for Trust Grants to up-grade the current elearning infra-structure.
11. Set up school accounts – Flickr, Voicethread, Delicious, Edublogs, GlogsterEdu, etc.
12. Sigh and stare at my tiny budget.
13. Decide if I should go to Learning @School or Ulearn10 and/or the NZPF National Conference.
    
14. Create a school/class learning blog (for the fun learning stuff in edublogs) am thinking I might get the students to create a school mascot to host the blog.
15. Create an ePortfolio for each child (in Edublogs) and set up their school email accounts.
16. Clean out the old school room (currently used as storage) and turn it into an awesome Creative Art Space!
17. Feed the chickens.

As you can see, I have quite a lot to do and a few decisions to make before the beginning of the new school year.  I will be blogging as I go to let you all know how I go.  Hopefully I will have plenty of tips and tricks I can share with you all as I bumble along.  I would also appreciate any wisdom and in-sites you could share with me

Images sourced gratefully under creative commons licence from:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33852082@N00/323568343/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sflovestory/3746500354/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/themonnie/2735689978/