As part of the Fulbright DAT program, we teachers are encouraged to attend professional development while on the program. The Fulbright program even allocates funds for us to do so. It’s like the exact opposite of what educators are accustomed to: an unfunded mandate. It’s a…funded suggestion.  When I went searching for a conference to attend for my professional development, I started by asking my faculty adviser and by looking at what was happening with education in Singapore.

It felt a little strange for me to seek out my own professional development. I can’t say that I am always encouraged to do so. In the busy-ness and business of teaching, I can’t always find the time to seek out new conferences and new places to learn. I am aware of many conferences in the US and Chicago area as they come up because I am a member of different professional organizations. I usually hear of these conferences by way of email blasts, so I never have to discover them on my own. And, I attend them when I can. I also keep abreast of some goings-on by following other educators on Twitter. Twitter is great for digital connections and inspirations. As with any other social media platform, connecting online is not the same as connecting in person. Conferences are best for this. Again, as most teachers know, it’s hard to carve out time to attend them, even when we know how much they will inspire us and how much they can improve our practice. Everything else in teaching seems so immediate, so imminent, that’s it’s difficult to take time out to both find what else is out there and to attend those conferences/professional development/classes that are out there. Teachers know that we get caught up in planning for classes; grading classwork, homework, tests, quizzes, portfolios, projects, and other assessments; collaborating with teachers and administrators; communicating with parents; the school year is over in a blink of an eye. I am fortunate and grateful that I was given this opportunity to find some new PD and the time to take advantage of it. Being in a new country forced me to look in new places. I couldn’t rely on my old standbys.

In late January, I found out about a conference in Singapore that not only did I want to attend, but I applied to present at it. “Redesigning Pedagogy International Conference” will be hosted by National Institute of Education Singapore in late May/early June. Luckily, I happened upon this conference when there was still time for me to apply to present. When I consider what has *redesigned* my own teaching practice, I think about how changes in technology have positively impacted my teaching. In recent years, the online graphing app Desmos has done that to a great extent. In previous posts I have written about how I shared Desmos with the math teachers at my school attachments. So, I decided to submit a proposal, “Desmos.com Changed the Way I Teach Mathematics” and it was accepted. I get to present at an international conference before I leave! I am pretty excited. And, since I am a presenter, my conference fee was very low. I decided to pay for it myself and to request funds from Fulbright to attend another conference.

Related to how Desmos has affected teaching, I was interested in attending a conference on how to better integrate technology into my teaching. My school has been using the Google Apps for Education, aka G Suite, including Google Classroom, for a few years. And many teachers have been slowly adding different apps to their teaching each year. For my Fulbright Inquiry Project I am working to develop a summer Algebra curriculum and I seek to effectively integrate technology into that specific curriculum. I want this curriculum to employ some google apps and other technology tools. I wanted to learn more of them, and I wanted to learn more about the ones that I do employ. An integral part of engaging US students with mathematics content is the effective integration of technology.

Perhaps predictably, I did a Google search and discovered a conference in Australia – The EdTechTeam Melbourne West Summit: Featuring Google for Education. At first I wasn’t certain that travelling to Australia would be feasible and I was hesitant to take time away from my school visits. Then I realized that was the kind of mentality that usually kept me from attending professional development while I was teaching, so I didn’t want it to hold me back while I have this precious time away from teaching. I sent my application for the professional development funds to IIE and soon learned that it would be supported. I then paid my registration fees, booked my flights, booked my Airbnb, and planned my trip.

In order for me to attend my first day at CCSS on Monday, April 3, I booked a redeye flight that would get me to Melbourne on the morning of the conference. This wasn’t ideal and not part of my original plan – I wanted to be in Melbourne the evening before the conference – but I didn’t want to miss the introductions and welcome at CCSS. Of course, on the flip side, I felt bad that I was only meeting everyone for a day before I had to jet out (literally) again. I’ll be diving back into things at Christ Church tomorrow.

I was able to sleep a few hours on the plane before landing in Melbourne so I wasn’t a complete mess when arriving at Manor Lakes College, which is a K – 12 public school in a suburb of Melbourne. Most of the educators at the conference were local teachers, and many from that particular school. I soon learned that local teachers were attending this conference while on their Easter Break, for which they get two weeks off. It was a small conference and I particularly appreciated that I wasn’t one of hundreds of participants.

I attended several breakout sessions in the conference – all of them conducted by Google Certified Educators and Trainers. It was great to learn from educators who have done some of the ‘figuring out’ for me. That is, they have vetted the apps that they were talking about and knew how to work through some of the kinks. That’s the advantage of going to a conference, versus taking time to hack through some of the apps yourself. I attended sessions on dealing with data, Google apps from A – Z, Google Expedition and YouTube. All of these sessions were inspiring – I haven’t really finished processing all that I learned and how I will use what I learned. I also bought two books at the conference – “Dive Into Inquiry” and “Code in Every Class.” These books, too, are providing me with a lot of food for thought.

After the conference, my family and I explored Melbourne and the surrounding area. Melbourne was lovely. One of my favourite (not ‘favorite’) parts of the city were these ‘laneways’ downtown. Essentially laneways are like alleys in downtown Chicago, except they are not at all creepy or scary or dark or dingy or dangerous. They are only for pedestrians, have cute shops and restaurants lining them, and they lead you through to other streets and arcades and malls. We ate a few meals in these laneways and enjoying walking about the city. Perhaps these are the urban versions of the Australian walkabout.

We also got out of the city by renting a car and driving – ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE ROAD! – to the Twelve Apostles. Visits to Eureka Skydeck ScienceWorks and the Melbourne Zoo made us really feel like legit tourists – so did all of my communications mistakes: Is that really lemonade? What’s a jaffle? …thinking it was *spring* break when its autumn there…lemonade=sprite, an so on…probably more than I can recall right now.

We had a good time, but I missed Singapore. I missed the friendly people and the Singaporean accents, which are different than the Australian accents. I also missed Chicken Rice, but we took care of that as soon as we got back and off the bus home. I didn’t miss the heat and humidity, but I’m still happy to be back.