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)

Preparing for Learning and Teaching Week

I'm currently working on developing three sessions for our annual Learning and Teaching week at Charles Darwin University. Each year it's a focused week of professional development opportunities with in-house presentations, panel discussions, webinars and guest speakers.

This year we're opening it up and, with a couple of my colleagues, I'll be hosting a series of sessions for lecturers interested in exploring the use of technology, digital tools and social media for professional development and networking.

The final session in the series is a Twitter edchat on the topic of "Industry engagement in VET", and we’re inviting VET practitioners from other Registered Training Organisations and representatives from industry to join us as we discuss why industry and RTOs need to engage, and some practical approaches to making it happen.

Please join us on Wednesday 14th from 1pm - 2pm ACST on Twitter #AusVETchat