Participate Actively in the Profession
Demonstrates the disposition for life-long learning and continuous professional development.
Because of my training as an instructional designer, my interest shifted from language teaching methodologies to technology integration in language teaching and learning. Over the years, I have been active in presenting in different professional learning communities, of which I may or may not be a member. While in the LDT program, I have given talks, presentations, and workshops. Although these professional development activities targeted a specific audience (i.e., language educators and administrators), I designed these professional development activities based on instructional design principles. This was the most notable change in the manner in which I presented the information.
Click on the link below to view a list of professional development activities. Then click on the arrow to view the reflection.
In my most recent professional development endeavor, UruTESOL 2021, I was one of the guest speakers. I spoke to English language teachers from Uruguay about creating digital content and gamification. In this talk, I introduced The Three E’s: Engagement, Efficiency, and Enhancement (Leustig, 2019) and the SAMR Model: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition (Puntedura, 2014). Because of the pandemic, many teachers found themselves modifying or redesigning existing curricula to fit online instruction. There are TESOL Technology Standards in place, and they are straightforward. Adding additional frameworks would help teachers understand at an activity-design level. These frameworks were well-received.
My presentation on the process writing approach in June 2021 inspired me to develop this further and became my project for EDCI 564 that same month. I was able to modify our existing methods of teaching writing using transformative tools. Through carefully selected applications, all stages of writing became concrete, therefore, measurable. In promoting communities of practice, I invited one of my students to co-present. He benefited from further understanding how interacting in Google docs helped shape his writing skills.
The other two on the list were workshops on assessment. These allowed me to explore educational technology's and instructional design's roles in assessment. In the 2019 workshop, we looked at tools that would help language teachers be more efficient in providing feedback. We took it further by looking at the overall design of their lessons (curricula for administrators) and employing some Backward Design techniques. (Wiggins and McTighe, 1998). Because of the success of this workshop, my colleague and I conducted another workshop in 2021, delving more into creating feedback templates. Crafting productive and constructive feedback takes time, effort, and thoughtfulness.