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http://www.canadianecology.ca/professional-development/teachers-mining-tour/

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In Doug’s 2013 article Technology Every Teacher Needs one of the first things you read in his article is “Good teaching practices should drive technology use instead of technology driving the practice of teaching.” This took me at least two years to learn, and I am still trying to dismantle my idea that technology in my classroom will propel my lessons, when really my teaching and learning goals will be propelled with the use of technology.

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Mentoring & Coaching: The Journey of a First Year Teacher

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I will make sure that as a department head I try to make it known that I would like to have a good balance of new teachers hired within the department. While experience is wonderful, we have to give new teachers a chance!

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This is probably going to be the main focus of my budgetting. It is important that we adapt to new curriculum and changes within our practice. That means buying new materials to ensure that we are on the cutting edge of science teaching.

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Make sure that at least $500 a year is available for this. I HOPE this equates to at least one outing.

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Maybe have some in school PD? Watch a video - discuss- and they try it out!

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Maybe have some in school PD? Watch a video - discuss- and they try it out!

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Astronomy For Everyone - Episode 67 - Hands-on Astronomy Projects December 2014

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Astronomy For Everyone is a TV series of monthly TV shows developed by members of the Ford Amateur Astronomy Club (FAAC) targeted to beginner and intermediate audiences as well as all amateur astronomers and sky observers. Please click SHOW MORE.

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How you will I overcome potential obstacles?

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How you will I overcome potential obstacles?

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I think the biggest obstacle that I will have to overcome is the perceived lack of time that often plagues departments. There is always marking that could be done, cleaning that could happen in classrooms (especially chemistry rooms!) and many other things - but what about events designed JUST to build relationships within the department. Of course, the day in and day out of working together will help buils that cohesion, but it is good to take time to build friendships that will help build

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How you will I overcome potential obstacles?

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How you will I overcome potential obstacles?

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As I alluded to above, the biggest obstacle will be the fact that people will not want to start planning a course from scratch, especially when they would have had may years of matieral in their arsenal.
I will have to overcome these obstacles by ensuring that I provide enough planning time and support that group meetings can be used to allow for redevelopment of classes. It is often very easy in these meetings to get off track, and so I will have to make sure that I focus the departments time and effort and that we take small enough challenges that are accomplishable, but large enough challenges that it envokes change within the department.

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How will you ensure that you are successful? What leadership skills have you learned from your explorations that will enable success?

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How will you ensure that you are successful? What leadership skills have you learned from your explorations that will enable success?

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The best way to be successful is to be prepared. I have practiced my leadership skills in this course, always going above and beyond what I feel that the assignment is asking for. The sense of accomplishment I get from this is very rewarding, and I would like to carry this mentality over to meetings. I would like to make sure that everyone in the meeting knows how much effort and work I have put in it. HOW will they know this? Because the quality of the content and the matierial I present will show this. It is not my intention to show off, but to make sure that my peers know how passionate about teaching I am, we share ideas, we collaborate on materials that I present, and we all leave the meeting feeling like we have taken something away from it.

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How will you ensure that you are successful? What leadership skills have you learned from your explorations that will enable success?

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How will you ensure that you are successful? What leadership skills have you learned from your explorations that will enable success?

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I will know that I am successful by having frequent check ins with the new teachers. I will also meet with their mentors, and make sure that both parties feel well supported. Since I want them to develop a relationship, I will make sure that there is ample opportunities for this to happen. I have alluded to release time many times in this assignment, but this time away from class is very important for both of them. It is difficult to focus on just new teacher mentorship when you might not always have the time to do this. By making the time, this is half the battle.

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How will you ensure that you are successful? What leadership skills have you learned from your explorations that will enable success?

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How will you ensure that you are successful? What leadership skills have you learned from your explorations that will enable success?

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The best way that I can make sure that I am successful in terms of professional development is that I make sure that I do a lot of the leg work - I develop my own professional development, I organize opportunities, and I make sure the funds and the resources are available to make sure it happens.

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How will you ensure that you are successful? What leadership skills have you learned from your explorations that will enable success?

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How will you ensure that you are successful? What leadership skills have you learned from your explorations that will enable success?

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I will ensure that I am successful by making sure that I clearly set goals and timelines for what I would like to accomplish. When I have this clearly established, I will delegate the different tasks and I will hold my collegues accountable. I am hoping that if they choose tasks that they are interested in or at the very least they choose they will be more lifely to complete those tasks.
In terms of this course, the skills that I have learned that will help enable my success involve the delegation of different tasks. I struggle with being in a place of authority, even within my own classroon. Being a department head you will have to delegate tasks and I have learned leadership techniques through this course.

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What obstacles may stand in your way? How will your plan take these into account?

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What obstacles may stand in your way? How will your plan take these into account?

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I think that the biggest obstacle that will stand in my way is the fact that many people have different priorities in their day to day lives in a school environment. Re-making or re-designing a whole class' content can seem daugnting, and many people will rather fix lesson by lesson than start fresh.
This is where I would have to step in and ask that we all work as a team to remodel courses and ensure that we are up to date with current technologies and information within our class.

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What obstacles may stand in your way? How will your plan take these into account?

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What obstacles may stand in your way? How will your plan take these into account?

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As a new teacher, I am in the NTIP program. I know that because the school year is so busy, I was not able to take any release time for my NTIP program. I would like to make it one of my goals to ensure that all teachers are able to take the time they need to take advantage of the extra PD training they are entitled to.

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What obstacles may stand in your way? How will your plan take these into account?

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What obstacles may stand in your way? How will your plan take these into account?

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The biggest obstacle, as with most things, will be time. I will have to make sure that I devote enough time and on a regular enough basis that I can create the meetings that I will be proud of. It will involve a lot of researching, meta-develping of the content, and finally thinking of new and interesting ways to present the data. And that's on top of teaching my everyday classes!

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What obstacles may stand in your way? How will your plan take these into account?

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What obstacles may stand in your way? How will your plan take these into account?

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Some of the obstacles include:
- teacher being reluctant to take their PD time
- administration not approving PD training
- funding barriers to attend the PD that we want to go to
The way that I can mitigate these problems is just by stressing how important PD is and to make sure that I advocate for it as much as possible.

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What targets will you try to reach? How will you know you have been successful?

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What targets will you try to reach? How will you know you have been successful?

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I would like to make sure that all of my collegues will get the opportunity to attend professional development if they want to. I also feel that many teachers are worried about leaving their classrooms and so then turn down opportunities to take part of PD. I would like to make sure that everyone feels as if they can make the most of these opportunities, especially of STAO which is a conference that I love!
I know that I will be successful when I see people using their release time and I head about their experiences at staff and department meetings.

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What targets will you try to reach? How will you know you have been successful?

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What targets will you try to reach? How will you know you have been successful?

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The targets that I would like to reach with my staff meetings is that every time one is conducted, they provide tools and advice that can be immediately applicable to the classroom. All too often I will sit in a staff meeting and be very bored, because these meetings go against our own pedagogy. We sit down and listen as passive students in the seminar. I would like the teachers to become active students and will have useful tools that will allow them to feel like they are taking away something from each meeting.
I will now I am successful because I will ask for feedback from teachers, and look for input. I will try to make it a collaborative exercise where everyone will feel like they have contributed and taken something away from the meeting.

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TED Talk about using Technology in the classroom

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TED Talk about using Technology in the classroom

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Technology in the classroom | Ethan Dickens | TEDxPascoCountySchoolsED

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What is your changed vision of science education? What important features do you want to communicate through your innovations in the future? Why will these changes be better?

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What is your changed vision of science education? What important features do you want to communicate through your innovations in the future? Why will these changes be better?

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- My vision of science education has not changed in a monumental way, but I would say that it has been strengthened and solidified. I know that I like to DO science within my classroom, and this is very difficult to do as often as I would like to. This course has shown me items such as PBL - project based learning - which will help me to impliment more activities in my class. As well, this course has shown me new demonstrations and has shown me how to structure them so that students get the most out of the material.
-       The important innovations in the future that I would like to communicate is the need to use technology within the classroom as it is part of our new society. Very seldom will we encounter a student that will not have any part of the technological world when they leave school. This means it is our duty to make our work as technology driven as well. I would like to demonstrate to my peers that we can make technology useful, engaging and allows students to think more critically as they can use the internet as a tool to learn more about the world and what interests them.

-       These changes will be better in my own department as we do not use technology as usefully as we could. We see it more as additive to our teaching, rather than a part of it. I think if I take the initiative to develop new tasks, labs and activities that blend technology with science, it will help make the transition within my department easier.

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Want to learn about effective team building exercises that will help your team? Here, see great ideas for exercises that you can do together.

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As a department head, I would like to develop a sense of cohesion with my collegues. This will mean that I have to give opportunities to collaborate as a team.  This can be done through:
- developing curricula together
- going for meals together
- team building exercises
- using PA days to do science with one another