The Procrastination Community

Most of us have been here... We put off tasks until the last possible moment when they just can't be put off any longer.

I'm into the last component of a 32 week post grad course. I must say I was defying all the odds I had previously thought about myself. I was getting work completed (and not at the very last minute) and to a high level (according to the grades, I received). If I'm completely honest with myself and you, it did help that I had another colleague doing the course and we had to go along for weekly sessions... and we could do collaborative assignments.

If I'm being even more honest with myself and you... it also helped that I went along feeling great about the new professional journey I was taking until I felt completely out of my depth in response to all the 'genius' sounding techie banter that went on between my classmates and the lecturer, and that was just Week 1. This brilliant banter included my dear colleague, whom at the time I thought was my 'sister-in-arms' and would be in the same boat as I was. That was the turning point, it changed me from procrastinator to all out achiever in the eyes of the great goddess of knowledge, Athena.

16 weeks passed, the first two modules of the course, and unfortunately so did my 'all out achiever' status. In fact, almost to the day the face to face component finished.

After a trip overseas which resulted in assignment extensions, and hurried submissions to get them in on time, I got through the 3rd online module by my fingernails

And here we are, the last 8 weeks, the 4th module, again online, and I find myself 4 weeks behind. Right now, my first blog is supposed to be about my community of practice, however instead of doing what I am supposed to be doing I have found this really great TED talk by Tim Urban...about procrastination... Enjoy!.

Urban, T. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/arj7oStGLkU (2016)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dealing with Data

Image
This week in our DFI we learned all about Google Forms, Google Maps and Google Sheets. Google Forms are a great way to gather student pre and post data about a topic or gather feedback about an area you have taught. I like the idea of using Forms to collect student names and year levels for extracurricular activities or workshops and then having the Form collate the responses into a Google Sheet. What a time saver! In Google Maps we learned how to layer different locations, even using the information gathered in a Google spreadsheet to do this. I can see advantages to using Maps in Maths, particularly for area and also it could be used in a lot in Inquiry or Reading so students can think about context.  The Google Sheets aspect of today's session was particularly useful for analysing blog posts and is something I hope to use this week in class as a challenge to students. Can they better their number of 2018 blog posts by halfway through this year? Today we foc...
Read more

Changes in Practice

A good educator will change and adapt their practice to suit the needs of their individual learners. They will also keep up with changes in the educational sector at a global level. They will continue their professional development actively, knowing that they need themselves to be life-long learners, in order to teach this to their students. They know that their students need to be 21st century learners in order to succeed in the world beyond school, therefore they adapted their teaching before 21st century skills even came up for debate. Most importantly, good educators reflect upon their teaching and their learning and they are self-aware. Self-awareness is the key to being a good educator, a great educator in fact.  Over the last 8 weeks, I have reflected over different topics within the educational sector and I have found that it has not only consolidated my ideas and opinions but given me the keys to being able to describe my thoughts and views in a clearer way....
Read more

Ubiquitous Learning

Image
Ubiquitous Learning allows students to learn anywhere, anytime and at any pace. Making learning visible and connected allows for this. Ubiquitous allows students that are absent or need extra support to access their learning through rewindable learning. This could be a video, a site, a slide etc, that children can access any time. I was really excited to see the Woolf Fisher data from the Summer Learning Journey. My school has signed up to do this after the slump we saw last Summer holidays.  The gains were incredible. I will be using some of these infographics to share with parents on the 'why' of encouraging their children to do this. Today was the last day of the DFI course. I have thoroughly enjoyed moving my own teaching and learning towards being more visible for my students and their whānau.
Read more