**If this post had a theme song it would be to the tune of REM’s Losing My Religion. It keeps popping into my head as I write the title, random I know, I think the mere thought of the Institute if Teachers makes me a little crazy**
I like to rant about the Institute, I do it often. This is not one of my rants (though it does contain a recap if past rants).
For any non teachers who are still reading, the institute is a government body responsible for overseeing the accreditation of teachers in NSW. You have 3 years after graduating to become accredited (by compiling “evidence”) and after that you must maintain your accreditation every 5 years by completing 100hours of professional development (half in registered courses and half that you do yourself, attending meeting, unregistered courses, reading etc)
My main gripe with the institute is that they haven’t extended my 5year accreditation due to my 2 lots of maternity leave and 18months of working part time. I should have an extension of 3yrs and 1 term. So despite several phone calls, emails and a letter signed by my principal, the institute still say my accreditation period ends in April 2013.
The problem is I am short 40.5 hours of teacher identified PD. Given I am returning to work in Feb 2013, this is going to be very tricky.
I have a plan- firstly pull out my old teachers diaries and log the meetings I went to that covered things like ICT, ESL, G&T etc. I can probably get 15-20hrs there.
The idea for the second part of my plan came from a friend. During my last Facebook rant about the IofT she asked “do you do any professional reading eg blogs, RSS feeds, twitter, journals etc?”. While the answer should have been yes, it’s was not. BUT I’M STARTING NOW!
So I’m going to start doing some professional reading and post my reflections here on my blog.
Now because many of us are stuck in this awesome system – I’m going to help you maintain your accreditation as well. I’ll link the reading and also include the standards that it addresses, so if you read it too, you are also maintaining your accreditation. Teacher collaboration!
Help me out, if you follow a good blog, follow someone insightful twitter or read an interesting article – send it my way!
Stay tuned the first one is going to be about the National Curriculum.
Mum Wife Teacher Nerd 
Assuming the professional reading can be anything scientific/mathematic, i’d highly recommend the excellent QnA style site http://what-if.xkcd.com/
The guy who runs it is an alpha-alpha nerd. Qualifications in mathematics, physics and robotics, he also draws humerous and helpful web comics to make things easier to understand. He even uses Mathematica to create hand-drawn looking graphs (http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/11350/xkcd-style-graphs)
Congrats for kicking this off! (So cool to be quoted in your blog too!! hehe). Looking forward to reading your selection, esp. re Australian Curriculum. Especially if you’re mapping readings to the standards for everyone too! Sweet 🙂
Happy to share my list of feeds, though the vast majority are TL, digital literacy, search engine and ICT related, rather than Science. You’d probably enjoy Richard Byrne’s “Free Technology for Teachers” – it’s one of the best generic ICT in edu blogs (and comes emailed daily, rather than via RSS, if you prefer): http://www.freetech4teachers.com/.
It’d also be worth following some Science hashtags on Twitter, which you’re possibly already doing. eg. You could experiment with #scichat, #scied, #physicsed, #biology, #chemistry, #science etc.
And here’s a couple of interesting former Science colleagues (and really nice people), who you might be interested in following: https://twitter.com/matonfender & https://twitter.com/beccollett
Oh, and TeachMeet!! Free PD, facilitated/shared by teachers. An awesome grass-roots initiative. Lots of informal online sharing via Twitter etc. Some f2f events too, and the occasional virtual TeachMeet. Always has great stuff. eg. http://www.teachmeet.net/ and follow #TMSydney. If you want to up the ante on accreditation, even offer to present something at an upcoming TM…? They’re often bite-sized, 2 minute presentations, Pecha Kucha style. (PS, if you’re going to a meeting, let me know and we can go together!)
Your school library presumably subscribes to some Science and education journals too? Speaking of which, if your school hasn’t subscribed to ‘Scan’ yet, they really should 🙂 http://www.scan.nsw.edu.au #ShamelessPlug
Good luck and happy reading 🙂 xox
PS. Ironically, I discovered your post while checking feeds today, lol. How appropriate 🙂
Hi there, found your blog via Mummyhood 101 on With Some Grace (Flog your blog friday). I have a site for parents of teenagers, and if ever you felt up to a guest post on the national curriculum for my blog, I’d love to read it. We’ve been trying to do an article on it but we are finding it hard to get info. Good luck with your new blogging venture!
Hi – I’m a retired K-6 principal who’s been blogging for 2 years. Am in Sydney & am very up to date with what’s going on Accrediation wise as well as Teach Meets etc. follow me on twitter as @denwise1 or my new handle ( mostly related to parents of school kids) @readyset2school . There is much happening out there. Hard with the kids I know but am always happy for you to chat with me …. I like finding more teachers who blog! There’s not many. Denyse
Just found your blog through Mummyhod101 and thought I’d say hello!! My husband is a teacher so have hear a few accreditation/institute rants over the years. Hope you get your hours up 🙂