Teachers Using Technology to Advance Their Training (and Themselves!)

Teachers today have to navigate different ways to develop and hone their skills, along with the new digital media world we live in. Normally for trainings & conferences you'd have to find a time to go, and work out the funds to also get yourself there, but now teachers don't have to go to training conferences far away. Instead the 'virtual workshop' is right in their phone. Social Media & Networking! This tool can help teachers build a network of other educators to help develop their skills, adjust & change curriculum, and have autonomy in their development.

Social media helps give teachers the tools to pick how they want to do the training, when, and how to implement it back into their classroom. While the set up of the classroom is for the most part the same as back in ancient Greece when philosophy was the main subject, the way teachers use that space has changed just as rapidly as the technology has.

There's another great benefit for teachers using social media and virtual spaces for their development and networking: fighting isolation. Sometimes teachers can feel isolated without a network of teachers in their field or subject to get & bounce ideas off of. Being able to tweet at another history teacher about how to set up a lesson on the Victorian Era that's successful can help grow the network & grow the ways a student's curriculum is taught to them.

This digital dexterity of teachers will not only allow them to develop and achieve better outcomes in their teaching, but also help get better outcomes for students and the school overall.

Resources

1. Flores, G. (2022). How New Technology Has Improved Training and Development. MadCap. Retrieved from How New Technology Has Improved Training and Development| MadCap Software 

2. Goodyear, V. A., Casey, A., & Kirk, D. (2014). Tweet me, message me, like me: using social media to facilitate pedagogical change within an emerging community of practice. Sport, Education & Society, 19(7), 927–943.

3. Harvey, S., & Carpenter, J. P. (2020). Chapter 3: Genesis and Change in Physical Educators’ Use of Social Media for Professional Development and Learning. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 39(4), 445–453.

4. Media sources: Ancient Greece - Virtual Learning