Networking with colleagues, peers and other practitioners

Living in Central Australia, and with the rest of my team in Darwin, I’m very conscious that my opportunities for local professional development and networking are limited. As a result, I have actively sought to build my own Professional Learning Network, primarily through social media. This includes actively participating in several weekly educational chats on Twitter (#AussieED, #digitaledchat, #IncludEDau), participating in live streamed conferences, Twitter backchannels and Google Hangouts and joining conversations on LinkedIn.

I find some of our staff are reluctant to share their work, even with their own colleagues, and feel that they have ownership of it personally, rather than the organisation, and in comparison, I have been amazed at the openness and willingness to share of the wider education community. I don’t think anyone has done any research into why staff feel this way; anecdotally they don’t trust the IT systems, they genuinely think their work belongs to them, they don’t want their colleagues to have it easy when they’ve done the hard yards and some don’t want others to be judging their work.

I’m excited to have three sessions in our Learning and Teaching Week this year to share with our staff some of the benefits of seeking out professional development through social media and to introduce them to Twitter chats. I’m hopeful that some will see the opportunities that being open provides and will start to apply that internally as well as externally. (Oh, and if you want to join us - look out for #AusVETchat on Wednesday)