Bonjour les amis!

Practicum News

On Tuesday I found out that my first practicum will be with a K/1 Immersion class!
#kinderchat #1stchat and #frimmchat will be a few of the communities that I look to for support.

#BCStuTeach

On Tuesday evening I took part in the #BCStuTeach chat on bullying, hosted by the founder of the #IAmAntiBully campaign.

#yyjignite

I was very much looking forward to attending the #yyjignite event in person. Unfortunately I was not feeling healthy enough to attend. (In the end, I still participated a little bit via Twitter, and ended up in the Storify about the event.)

My FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) did not win, though. My feelings around missing this event prompted me to do a bit of reading about burnout, including this article with 7 Strategies to Prevent Burnout.

#PDPPPosseRC
On Thursday morning, I used BlueJeans in the #tielab to connect the #PDPPPosseRC with @h_james for a video conference. Here's my blog post about that meeting. Despite fumbling around with the remote, I got it working, and I'm already looking forward to my next video chat!

-Britney (@MlleBallen)

Get Connected

Video Conference Tutorials
I am putting together a couple of video conference tutorials about Blogger and Twitter for my colleagues in #edci336. If you are interested in attending one (or both) of these sessions, what sort of topics/questions would you like to see covered?

I will be using BlueJeans for these video conferences. Tomorrow afternooon I will start learning how to host a session using BlueJeans. On Thursday morning I will be using it to host a meeting between the PDPPPosseRC and a local teacher. Hopefully by the time I host the aforementioned tutorials, I will be able to use BlueJeans without getting David Bowie's song "Blue Jean" stuck in my head!

Twitter
By all accounts - and certainly by my Twitter account - I have been tweeting up a storm lately. I have expanded my PLN, increased my engagement in some great communities, found some terrific resources, and just generally been quite inspired by what I have found.

Today I started using Hootsuite, and I think that I am starting to get the hang of it. It certainly didn't take long for me to tweet a pun about it.

One particularly fruitful connection was with the Royal BC Museum. Because of this connection, I have been given the opportunity to be part of a creative team for an outreach project that combines science and comics. What an incredible combination of Science Education and Art Education! 

Face-to-Face Learning
I am so excited to be taking part in these fabulous opportunities for networking and professional development in the near future:

• #yyjignite on Wednesday,
• A national science outreach conference in Ottawa in 1.5 weeks, where I will be sharing what I have learned both while working as a STEM outreach instructor/coordinator, and while taking last term's courses in Indigenous Education and Education Psychology,
• A public information session at Pacific Institute of Inquiry and Innovation (PSII) on February 7th, and
• #edcampvic on February 28th.

Will I be seeing you at any of these events? Are there any other great events coming up? Let's get connected!

-Britney (@MlleBallen)