‘The unexamined life is not worth living’ (Socrates)

Socrates famous quote seemed to resonate through my mind as reflection of the facilitating or teaching practices in any classroom should be an everyday, every lesson practice. Why just limit it to lessons and not extend it to life on an ongoing basis?

Reflection gets one to understand the big picture, it links ideas, helps to find missing links and clarifies ideas. It helps one to be a lifelong learner. Social reflection is equally important

Another learning point today at the IB Workshop Leader Training at Chiangmai, has been that there is a lot to be learned by co- constructing knowledge. The process itself helps to clarify doubts, strengthen ideas and explore new ideas. Being aware of the big picture and specialization into an area would be very helpful as often learners, young and adult learners just want to know tons from work shop leaders.

Often being involved in all three IB programmes as a PYP exhibition mentor, a Personal project mentor and an EE supervisor there is a lot of presumed knowledge which may have changed over the years or have  been streamlined and developed. So keeping an open minded approach will be appositive approach to learning besides of course keeping up with the changes in each of the programmes.

The various critical thinking and reflection strategies were stimulating and I am waiting to try it out in my own classes. Simple things like using postcards were fun. Tops on the list were all the thinking routines from Harvard’s project zero and I just feel great that I could see the application of the thinking routines in the various sessions were very powerful. What could be more wonderful than that I am doing the Visible Thinking course alongside the WSL training?

Being back on Twitter not just following tweets, but actually tweeting felt good. The casual comment by a participant member that Facebook is great for social networking while Twitter for professional networking was the much needed icebreaker.