My journey as a teacher started a decade ago, but as a member of the IB community for the last three years the entire meaning and existence of my profession changed. I realized that teaching was more than just delivering content from the book. As my new role of being a facilitator the course of my journey changed and at this juncture I can ascertain that I am in a phase of unlearning and trying to understand and become one of many 21st century educators.
Being in India, with the lack of awareness of integration of technology in education (concluded from my observation and interaction of IB teachers of few schools of India with whom I interacted, I soon realized that I have to do a lot of self study and learning on my own and for that connectivity of mine with the world outside was highly needed.In this venture of mine I have been using wikis, blogs, facebook and twitter as tools to connect.
In the past few months the use of twitter has really accelerated this process and now recently I have started publishing my own enewspaper The IB News-Daily.
I felt that if the IB teachers with whom I interact are not on twitter or google+, still with a glimpse of this they can remain updated. I also started circulating this in the network of educators that I had got through twitter, facebook, google+, linkedin and soon saw that people started liking it and my followers on twitter are also increasing. Everyday I do feel the kind of resources and learning I get from others, I should also give back something to the community.
In my school due to the various role profiles that I have to deliver, and with no common platform available for connectivity, I felt a huge need to connect teachers as well as students from my school with themselves and then introduce them to the vast world.outside. Being a TOK teacher I feel that knowledge can be generated only through the interaction of creative and critical thinking. For this the "interaction" was highly needed. I introduced the platform of Edmodo. This helps all of us to stay connected in various groups, resource sharing , maintaining virtual classrooms and professional development. As an MYP PP supervisor I am always connected with the MYP PP supervisors and MYP PP students. Its amazing to see how students even advise each other and come to some constructive conclusion.
I have also introduced Scoop.it to my students and teachers which is really becoming very popular and helps a lot to be referred back for bibliography in TOK, EE essays and for sharing research work.
As a new TOK Coordinator, I feel all our TOK supervisors and students need to connect and enhance their knowledge by interacting with like minded people throughout the world. In this endeavor of mine I created a TOK page on facebook to connect everyone and share resources and stimulate discussions.
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