What’s Next?

The long sun filled days have drawn to a close, the leaves have turned orange and brown and the nights feel long, cold and dark. The Christmas and New Year countdown have begun, time to look back and look forward.

I have been thinking about the next season, what professional challenges do I want to explore? How should I map out my next steps? What educational challenges do I want to prepare myself for?

In this past year I have had really wonderful opportunities to attend educational events and training seminars. Such as the rise of HE in FE, Sessions from JISC and a Quality Assurance event from the QAA with a great keynote by Geoff Petty who was right on form. I have attended mini training sessions on at ResearchED ranging from supporting the arts to the use of raspberry pi tech in school clubs.

I went to a conference on Socially Mobility and learnt more about the importance of setting high expectations for students from an early age. I have participated in sessions on Learning Design and emerging technologies which were fascinating. I then topped off all these session by attending the 2nd Unconference by WomenEd. Where I saw my fellow attendees ‘virtually popping’ sharing personal progress and experiences in education.

On all these informative occasions I took copious notes, reading materials, ideas, images, web links and new Twitter contacts away. Going to these events has been great, fun, learning informative but what do you do with the sound bites you heard, the data or fancy visuals that were displayed. How do I use what I have learnt to inform everyday practice?

So maybe that’s my New Year challenge to myself, don’t let these great development opportunities get lost in the professional and personal day today. At the end of the WomenED Unconference we were set the challenge to be 10% braver. so what does that mean to me? What’s my response?

So for me I am embarking on study at Master’s level, I am excited about the new challenges that will bring, the much needed diary management and the skills of prioritising my time and saying NO to anything that might distract me from my study. I also want to embrace the fun of learning, the enjoyment of being a student again and learning new things.

What’s does your New Year bring you? What new challenge or educational experience will you set yourself?

This was a blog originally posted on my previous blogging platform