Education is a bit like the sand on a beach. No, I don’t mean that it is moved along the coast via long shore drift or that it gets into your ‘sandwiches’ or even that it has that annoying habit of getting between your toes and seems impossible to remove! Education, like sand, is always shifting. There are always new proposals and initiatives which are being suggested, implemented or measured. Whether you are already teaching, currently training to teach or even just thinking about teaching, it is important that you keep up to date with what is happening with education. This can support your practice within the classroom, your assignment and even your answers at interview. So how do you keep up to date? Well here at York St John University we have some ways to help you.
RSS Feeds – There is a lot of information and updates across the internet. Rather than spending time visiting a range of websites, there is a way of getting all those websites to come to you! Using a free application like Feedly you can add the RSS Feeds to the application and put all the articles you might be interested in in one place. Feedly will then present you with the new stories and a brief description of these allowing you to quickly decide whether they are of interest to you and warrant a more in depth read. You also have the option to Tweet them or save them for reading at a later date.
Twitter – Talking of tweeting, the ‘Twittersphere’ is full of interesting articles and blog posts. You don’t have to be a tweeter in order to engage with these tweets, just start a Twitter account and then start following either official twitter accounts or hashtags. If you want to know what we are doing in Primary Education here at YSJ then just search for #ysjprimed. Many people might say it is not necessarily what you know but who you know, and you can easily increase your professional network by watching the hashtag and following the people who tweet to it. Before you know it, your twitter timeline will be full of interesting articles and comments – as well as some great images.
Blog posts and videos – If you are reading this blog post then you have already found a really good blog 🙂 but there are many more out. Many of these have a regular schedule of posts so you can look out for their content every week. If you prefer to be told when there is new content, then you can add their RSS Feed to your Feedly application or even subscribe to the blog to receive an email when something new is posted. Of course, I can’t let this opportunity go by without giving a quick plug to my own YouTube channel which provides not only teaching ideas but also a weekly update of news items relating to education in the Website Roundup – subscribing to any YouTube channel will keep you up to date with the content.
Although frequently misquoted, Sir Francis Bacon’s quote from his Meditationes Sacrae (1597) -“Knowledge itself is power” I think is very poignant within education. It allows us as practitioners not only to keep up to date with developments within education and learning, but allows us to engage with the knowledge and reflect and develop a critical approach to it – both of which are important skills for assignment writing and personal development. As the sun is shining and we are trying to remove the thoughts of work and assignments from our minds, remember that keeping up to date is as easy as reading a newspaper or watching a video and takes but a few minutes out of the day. So grab that coffee or your preferred beverage of choice and settle down with the internet and see what is out there!
Footnote
In the words of Julie Andrews (Sound of Music) why not start at the very beginning since it’s a very good place to start – so here is something to get you going…
Currently working in higher education as a senior lecturer in education. I have a keen interest in e-pedagogy especially how technology and social media can be used to support teaching and learning.
