Becoming a connected educator

“I learned more on Twitter in six months than in two years of graduate school. The connections I’ve made because I am online are crucial to my success in the classroom. I don’t know what I did before I was connected!” The Relevant Educator by Tom Whitby and Steven Anderson

At the just concluded World Innovation Summit on Education held in Doha, Qatar, I attended a thought-provoking session moderated by my good friend, Tom Whitby (@tomwhitby), and Steven Anderson (@web20classroom).

Last year I wrote on this column about my encounter with Tom. He retired from public education in the New York school system after serving 34 years as a secondary school English teacher. Today he works as an education social media consultant.

Steven Anderson describes himself as a learner, speaker, blogger, tweeter and dad. As a former teacher and Director of Instructional Technology, he is highly sought after for his expertise in educational technology integration and using social media for learning.

Both men are unapologetic evangelists for empowering teachers (at all levels) in order to transform the learning experience and outcomes in schools. They recently co-authored a book, “The Relevant Educator: How Connectedness Empowers Learning” which is the subject of this week’s article.

If you are a teacher or you are interested in helping teachers around you improve their craft, consider this quote from the book: “If we are educating our youth to participate, flourish, and successfully compete in a technology-driven society, then they should be learning with the very tools that they will be required to use.” In turn, this fact demands that educators are knowledgeable about these same tools. The book puts it bluntly, “Educators need to be digitally literate.”

In chapter 4, the authors advocate the use of social media tools like personal blogs, class blogs, Flipboard and Zite for professional development and professional learning.

Teachers can create a blog for their class or subject. Here, kids are taught how to properly and respectfully engage people on a platform that uses written expression. Children are able to explore critical thinking. Some schools have opened up such blogs to parents to give them a real-time glimpse of their children’s learning experiences. That is one way to schools and teachers can partner parents in today’s world.

Flipboard and Zite are tools that enable anyone to curate the blogs they want to follow from the millions of blogs out there. The relevant educator needs to be discerning about what they read and who they read what from.

But how do I locate blogs that are focused on education? Don’t lose any sweat – the book lists blogs like Edutopia, SmartBlog on Education, Edsurge, Tech and Learning, and Education Week. Subscribe to one of these blogs today and increase your connectedness.

In Chapter 5, the authors lay the framework for developing a “Personal/Professional Learning Network” (PLN). A PLN is a network of sources that helps an individual to personalise his/her learning. The big questiona Tom asks are, “Where do I get these sources and where do I store all this stuff?”

Teachers can find great sources of professional development through:

• Linkedin e.g. The Technology-Using Professors Group
• Twitter and Tweet Chats: A tweet chat is a moderated chat in which people agree to discuss a particular topic on Twitter at a particular date using a specific hashtag. During this time anyone can express his or her opinions or ideas. “#Edchat is the most successful and longest running chat. Each chat covers a particular education topic. The topics are determined by a popularity poll conducted two days prior to each chat. Today there are hundreds of chats covering almost anything you teach across all grade levels”.
• Podcasts

#Edchat Radio has podcasts for all types of topics. Some allow you to listen on the site subscribe to their podcast feeds.

• Skype and Google Hangouts

These two platforms foster face-to-face digital collaboration. Students in Australia and Africa have used these tools to collaborate on projects. Some students are using these tools but are they using it to learn and can their teachers use them effectively?

• Webinars

These are more formal web-based learning platforms that enable both the presenter(s) and participants to learn from anywhere in the world.

So, where should teachers start from?

• Cultivate the attitude of a learner

Teachers should be humble enough to start improving their ICT skills even if they have to learn from their students.

• Choose quality over quantity

Whatever social media platform you choose to use, focus on the quality of educators you follow and not the quantity. “The quality of information you get (from your network), as a professional educator, is directly attributable to the quality of the educators that you follow.”

Choose a platform or platforms that work for you. For instance, start with Twitter. Open a Twitter account. The number of people you follow is much more important than the number of people who follow you. The authors warn educators not to be caught up in the ‘My followers’ list is bigger than your followers’ list game. Numbers are for the ego and for learning. I completely agree!

• Follow! Follow!! Follow!!!

Follow #edchat, follow a school’s Twitter handle, follow an authority in your field. As you review tweets, you will come across hashtags (they usually start with the special character #). Click on the hashtag to read tweets containing the hashtag. You might find links to interesting articles and blog posts. Click on these links and if you find a blog post you like, you can subscribe to get updates from the blog.

Finally, join a tweetchat each week. If you have nothing to say, retweet something someone said that you liked or agree with.

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