Professional Learning Plan

A professional learning plan is a reflection on the goals you've had in the past, those you are accomplishing now and those you would like to accomplish in the future. It lays out a specific plan of action of how these goals will be achieved. To listen to a podcast of my learning plan, click on the link below.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31577518/PLP.mp3

Here is a script for the podcast:

A major goal of mine going into CEP 810 was to find better games for my students to learn English. I made a lot of headway exploring Second Life and making a friend who offered to give me a fully formed English learning video game that I could tweak to meet the needs of my students. However, due to time constraints at my school – we run in two-month sessions and the death of my friend – I put both those projects on hold. More recently, I switched jobs to become the head teacher at a brand-new program to teach English to the Korean staff at all the military bases in Korea. As most of my students will not have access to computers, I’ve decided that the video games, while interesting and still fun, are not an immediate priority.

One major goals I did achieve was becoming more familiar with what technologies were available. Before starting at MSU, I’d only really known about the tools we used at our school: Moodle, Audacity, Hot Potatoes and Google Apps. Since then, I’ve learned about and begun using Voicethreads, Weebly, Glogster and Podcasts with my students.

The main skill set I would like to increase is learning more about how computers and technology work. It’s very frustrating to try to trouble shoot technology problems when I don’t understand what the problems are. I’d really like to learn some basic programming code and have a better understanding of how computers work. I’ll hopefully be starting my MA in Educational Technology at MSU in the fall, and I’m hoping to be able to take a computer science course as an elective. If not, several schools offer free online courseware that I could take advantage of.  However, with my new job, I know my time will be limited.

As for what I will accomplish this summer, I’ll be building an English program from the ground up. I’ll be hiring, training and evaluating teachers as well as meeting with our clients, performing needs analyses and developing curriculum. My main concern is that while Korea is a small country, roughly the size of Indiana, there will still be a lot of travel involved. Luckily, I’ll be able to implement a lot of the tools I’ve learned about at MSU. I’ve already built a website where teachers can upload and share lesson plans. I’m planning on using web conferencing to communicate with teachers and web cams to observe and evaluate their teaching. Having learned a lot at MSU, I now need to put the skills I’ve learned to practice. I suppose that’s why I’m so nervous about trouble shooting issues. I’ll definitely need help getting a lot of this set up, but unfortunately the school I’m working for has a very limited budget and no interest in increasing the amount of technology they use. Luckily, I have a few friends who are computer geeks and who are more than willing to help me with any issues that I’m having. I’ll be relying on them heavily for ideas and tech support. While the months ahead will be difficult, they will be easier with the tools I’ve learned to use in these classes.