Sharing Basket

Louise Gaughran
Killarney Centre

As tutors we rely on the ethos of sharing best practices and information to continuously improve our teaching methods so that we can give the very best education to each of our students. But, as we all know, and not withstanding the excellent resources we have in our centre resource rooms, it can sometimes be difficult and time consuming to come up with exciting, relevant and authentic learning materials. The good news for our students is that each and every tutor already works tirelessly to achieve this despite the obstacles of time etc. But, perhaps there is a way of making life a little bit easier on ourselves?

Most of us probably do this informally in one way or another already, but I recently put forward the idea to the ALO of the Killarney Centre, Mary Concannon, that we set up a Sharing Basket in our resource room. This will be a place where tutors can leave copies of unique worksheets and/or materials that they have created themselves so that other tutors can get new ideas for their own classes and even photocopy any items that they feel might be useful in their own sessions. This sharing of ideas works not only as a time-saving initiative for busy tutors but also works to promote team work and good feeling within the centres.

Mary advised me that this is something the Killarney centre had used successfully in the past and so she has agreed to reinstate the idea by setting up a basket in our Resource Room with immediate effect and so we look forward to telling you our good news stories as it gathers momentum. It’s a simple idea really but we hope that this is something that all the centres might find useful. And, with that in mind, happy sharing 