Week one - Internship project & workshops

Another semester begins! This is the final one for most of my colleagues that I have spent the last three years with. Many of them will be offered positions in the next 6/7 months as a qualified educator. I on the other hand still have one more semester to complete.

As part of these final subjects we all have an internship to finish over a six week period teaching in a school of a choice. During that time we need to engage in a research project of some kind. This project needs to be of benefit and use to the educational institution that we are working in. The purpose of this blog is to show the thought processes behind the creation of the internship project. In addition to this it will monitor the progress of the project and give reflective insights into any changes that may occur along the way.

This week

The lecture was about the teacher as a researcher and how we are always going to be learning. We now need to be in the frame of mind that this is who we are now as we move from student to teacher. I realise that this point of my teaching career is only the beginning as I will be learning every day in the classroom I am teaching in.

Our workshops created good debate as we were discussing our abilities with communication skills. In particular within learning communities and in a professional context. Having completed a Myer-Briggs test to show our personal style. My results were:

E - Extrovert
N - Intuition
F - Feeling
J/P - Judging or Perceiving

The description for ENFJ or ENFP were both very close to my personality.

Internship project

The initial idea for my project is to create a computer club at my school. I have already received permission from the appropriate departments within the school to do this. The next step in the process is what do I actually want to achieve from a compute club. I already have a list of unanswered questions:

Do I want it to continue after I have left the school? How and by whom?
What standard of computer literacy do I want to achieve with the students?
What do I think they need to learn?
What do other educators, parents and the students themselves think they need to learn?
How am I going to find this out?
What benefit will this give to the students overall learning?
How am I going to show progress and collect data on improvements to students computer literacy?
Am I going to get other people involved? e.g experts, parents, other teachers etc

All these questions need to be answered in the early stages of planning as they define how the project will work and evolve. I hopefully will have some answers shortly.

Thank You

Alun