STOP. Hammerti-- Reflection Time.

Reflection. The 1-million dollar word in Education. The ideology is that the only way to grow as a professional is to continually review, critically think, and reflect on your progress as a teacher. Learn from your mistakes, take the best parts of your success, make new goals, and keep going.

So now that I've presented, the WestCAST proposal is in it's editing/revision stages, and I'm starting to get ramped up for the next wave of assignments... lets reflect.

Presentation had an overwhelmingly positive reception, which I'm very happy about. Never really know how a topic such as EAL will be received in a Computer Science class. Looks like soon-to-be new teachers will be more conscious to the needs/demands of EAL students in the classroom - something I'm very excited about.

Since the presentation though, and because WestCAST and my CS Professional Development Plan are following the same EAL/Technology theme I've found a few more resources to share and some links to things I wasn't able to share during the presentation. Here we go:


LOTS of EAL Resources from Manitoba Immigration
First website of many I've found for my Professional Development Plan. Lots of things to look at invloving EAL instruction.

Manitoba Labour and Immigration & Manitoba Labour and Immigration: Immigration and Multiculturalism Division
Provincial government websites discussing all the fun gritty details of immigration law, statistics, and other information. Actually, that's a bad summary. There is some worthwhile information on here, if you can avoid the black-and-white legal documents. Take a look if you're curious.

Manitoba Immigration Facts: 2007 Statistical Report (PDF)
This document was used during my CS Presentation. Provides all the immigration statistics for Manitoba in 2007. Really great facts/figures to see how MB immigration influx has increased over the past 10 years.


Over the next few weeks I'll be posting all the links to websites and products I'll be reviewing/demoing for my CS Professional Development Plan. The plan is to find and critically review EAL resources for teachers to integrate technology in the classroom. As well as make connections between the resources and the concepts I've discussed in my presentation last week. Should be fun.

In other news, been keeping busy with the Manitoba Affiliated Schools program. By "keeping busy," I mean gathering letters of reference and other documents so I can teach overseas next year. If your interested in having your first teaching position outside of Canada, I recommend you to check it out. There is no hidden tricks, no hidden fees, and no "the sink is also the bathtub and toilet" horror scenarios you've heard about. It's exciting.