SELF-DIRECTED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

A. TECHNOLOGY & TPD

Why teachers need to keep up with technology? Why don't we just let the students work with technology themselves and just give them assignments to do? Aren't they familiar with technology already? But how will we ask students to do something with technology if we do not know what technology is available and the potential of it? Even worse if we do not know what might be the potential danger that can possibly be brought about by technology. So, learning technology continuously is a never-ending effort that should be performed by teachers. It is part of their professional development (PD) as well since learning technology and how to use it will eventually enrich their knowledge, hone skills, and deepen their understanding of how actually students who have been immersed with technology learning today. It is important to always remember that without sufficient knowledge on how technology can be used in the classroom which very often offered via professional development activities teachers will never be optimally implemented technology into their daily instructions (Skogerbo, 2013). 

Professional Development does not always mean attending standardized and official TPD hosted by the government, or teacher training institutions. It does not also mean a site-based one that includes many teachers and scheduled rigorously to meet the expectation of the teachers on site. Yet, it can mean just a self-directed teacher professional development (TPD)(Gaible & Burns, 2005), initiated and conducted by the teacher themselves. The last type of TPD probably the most feasible one for us. since it requires only our will and intention to be a better teacher. Through the use of technology self-directed TPD nowadays is just a click away. But how we can start our TPD? and what tools available on the Internet that assist self-directed TPD? Check the followings:

1. Electronic Mailing List (E-Mail List) 

E-Mail List is a special use of email for delivering electronic mails to a number of email recipients that belong to a group. For example, if we are a member of an e-mail list, then we can easily send an email to members (that can be hundreds or thousands in number) of the e-mail list with one single click. in returns, we can also receive email from all members that are sent to the e-mail list. This email list comes in very handy especially when we want to have a special group on the internet and we want the group members to discuss things over the internet. what we can do then is just set up the group in an e-mail list provider, invite people to join the e-mail list, and we can start doing discussion online by sending emails.Two examples of e-mail list provider that is well-known are Yahoo Groups and Google Groups.  In Yahoo Groups you can either start your own group or find an e-groups that most interest to you. You can start your class groups, works for groups, or maybe your clubs' group. 

Now, you can try by clicking here Yahoo Groups, and search for topics/groups of your interests e.g: search for 'ESLGroup' or "ELTIndonesia'. Once you can find the links to the groups join the groups by clicking the join buttons. You will notice there that the ESL group is Public and therefore, needs no approval by the group owner to join. However, the ELTIndonesia is a restricted group and that's why when you click the join button you will need to be approved by the owner in order to be the member of the group. Once you become a member of the groups you can then start receiving emails from the members and you can also send emails to them as well. 

You may try other topics/groups that are interesting to you, you may try scholarship, technology or if you cannot find one you can start making your own group and inviting people to your group. What about Google Groups? It is just the same as the Yahoo Groups. If you want to try Google groups, all you have to do is just follow the on-screen instructions and you should be ok.

2. Online Forum (Message Board)

In addition to the e-mail list, an online forum is basically similar to it. It is also a place where people can discuss things online either directly over the web or via email. An example of online a forum can be found here:

• One Stop English Discussions
• ELT Community
• EFL Classroom
• VOXoPOP  ( A voice-based discussion board). To use this you need to sing up and then log in. Once you are logged in you can start searching for a discussion topic of your interest, for example, you may try English Language Teaching.

3. Social Media

Almost every internet users nowadays probably are familiar with that term social media and have an account in one of the social media sites. Social media is a place where people share and exchange information. It is built on the idea of web 2.0 that promotes the creation and exchange of user-generated contents (Kaplan & Haenlien, 2012). Social media is gaining more and more popular today as a kind of medium for social interaction and communication. It has been proved effective to attract internet users because of the features that social media offers. Some features are content sharing ( e.g Instagram and youtube), microblogging (e.g. Twitter), social networking (e.g. Facebook), professional networking (e.g. Linkedin) and also features like mobile device friendly. 

With those features people in social media do many things like shopping, marketing, discussing, chatting, conferencing and still many other real-life businesses. Using social media in education is not an exception.

Check the example of discussing "speaking matters":