Today's episode focuses on a tool to help you cultivate your own professional development through the use of Flipboard. Next week will be a return to a full episode
Today's episode focuses on a tool to help you cultivate your own professional development through the use of Flipboard. Next week will be a return to a full episode
Welcome back to education matters. I'm your host, Wayne Ackles. And it's a February 12, which means we're only a few short days from Valentine's Day. Hopefully you've taken care of all the sweethearts in your life. And this week's episode will be a shorter reclaiming your life episode. Next week's episode will be a full episode with either a guest or look at the current news as it relates to New York State education and education across the nation. So let's get into today's episode, which is cultivating your own PD. And I chose cultivating your own PD is our next topic because it's often difficult to find the time especially time to work in meaningful PD, whether you're in the teaching ranks, or the administrative ranks, even pre COVID during the days of workshops, etc. Many of us find it difficult to break away during our responsibilities during the school year, in order to attend those, those different conferences, etc. because of, you know, putting out fires when you get back and the preparation of your teacher, for sub plans, etc. So looking for that way to stay current is always a challenge. And especially when you're trying to find meaningful PD that relates to areas that you're trying to improve. So I'm going to share a tool that I found helpful and a focus for that tool when I was an administrator. And it's something that you will be able to use for yourself as well, in terms of staying current and getting some perspectives. So the tool that I'm referring to is Flipboard. And what I like about this particular application is it's a free app you can put on your smartphone, you can personalize it, when you first open the app, it will ask you to personalize and you can choose both from topics such as leadership or innovation. There's a whole variety of topics that you can choose from, as well as news you can cultivate new sources, you can also cultivate various sources, in terms of journals, magazines, new sources, etc. And what I found is that the focus that I had for the use for Flipboard, for me was I didn't use it necessarily for trends in education per se. I did get the occasional article about that within Flipboard. But what I found I used it for, and this will probably something that many of my administrators, especially those that are in charge of full departments, or in charge of a building as I was with two principal roles, is that one of the things that you often find is that you are looking for different ways to be a better building leader. And sometimes that is also some managerial skills. And what I found with Flipboard is there were a couple of sources, Inc Magazine, and another one called Ladders that had great insights on how to lead a large organization that were really helpful. One of the things you have to become when you're a building leader, especially of a building, is you become much more of a generalist. And that comes from needing to not only do evaluations, but you're also looking at programming, running the day to day discipline. In some cases, especially if it's a smaller school, you may have to do a lot of hiring on your own or in concert with your superintendent, especially for your smaller district. And anything that you can help become that better middle manager. And that's a hard thing. Sometimes, you know, you don't want to become just a manager, you want to be a leader. But it's important to find those resources to help you be an efficient manager as well because that is something that you have to do in those roles. And so that was where I spent a lot of my focus is getting better. I understood the pedagogy, I could see good teaching I understood good teaching could cultivate good teaching. That part was was the easier part for me. But being that manager where you're again keeping an eye on programming, keeping an eye on your hiring, how to do those things and tips for that I found incredibly useful. And I would recommend Flipboard for that. So as promised with these reclaiming your life video of episodes, not videos, but episodes. This would be a shorter version and have a great rest of the weekend. Enjoy whatever your Valentine's Day plans are and enjoy the Super Bowl. Oh, I forgot the Super Bowl in the mix. I don't know how I did, but enjoy the Super Bowl. And we will see you next week on education matters.