I read a post by Bron Stuckey on Facebook advertising Connected Educator month 2014. I feel like I have been thrown another challenge because I am not sure how “Connected” an educator I really have become. Not being a Twitter fanatic I am going to look at the ways in which “a connected educator” works. I just downloaded the Starter Kit for Connected Educator month – I will follow the guide! One page for each day! And I will participate and look for badges. Looking through the Connected Educator’s Guide for Day 1 I have realized that I have a few more purchases to make but was reassured that I am already on the right track with some of the titles I have recently acquired which are recommendations from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach – Mindset has been one of the main drivers of my recent wish for change for students. I will definitely be looking back at these. The really great thing about this Connected Educator month is that it all starts at the same time as the ACEC 2014 Conference!
Alec Couros kicked off the conference on October 1 with a keynote entitled “Beyond Selfies, Likes and Pokes.” Alec made several really important points in his well-structured narrative which centred around three key concepts: Identity, Intimacy and Imagination. Identity online is an issue for students, in fact it is an issue for all of us. As educators we become part of global networks – Alec mentioned the way in which the open source movement has expanded through community connections which all related to the concept of making something useful to everyone. The issue for educators is the blurring of the lines between personal and public networks. The maintenance of identity across all networks becomes a significant factor once an educator has an online presence. Generally those networks we develop, our PLN’s (Personal Learning Networks) are built through connections with individuals and groups who have specialised interests. We tend to gravitate towards those who have similar ideas about how things can and should work and extend our personal narratives through conversations with our PLN members so that we eventually become cognizant of what it is we are trying to verbalise and how it can be brought into being in Real Life terms. Basically, Alec tells us that kids don’t need to wait to learn anymore – in fact nobody needs to wait to learn any more if they know who to ask or how to search and how to look for answers! An interesting needs hierarchy diagram he showed us had the whole hierarchy with WIFI underpinning it! His main point here was that the presence of tools changes the environment in which we learn. Another point I picked up from Alec was that it is more evident in this day and age that the tools we now have at our disposal are allowing us to match the constructivist style pedagogy promoted via the work of Vygotsky. I went back to have another look at the Vygotsky theory and how it has been compared with Piaget’s work and there are four main differences as can be read from the link. The social factors and the existence of the “more knowledgeable other” are significant aspects which I can relate back to the games in education journey I have recently travelled. Again it is the existence of the ability to connect and learn within situated contexts which is more available to students and learners of all ages today.
Alec gave some ideas for Capturing participatory networks through Twitter such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. He also recommended the power of teachers modelling the use of the technology, for example a Twitter account for a class is one way of teaching kids about how Twitter works and what are appropriate tweets. If kids are responsible for weekly school tweets or reports they are making the critical selection of information to pass on. The early work of Marshall McLuhan was also cited by Alec, particularly in terms of the power of media. As presented to us in Wikipedia, McLuhan is known for coining the expressions the medium is the message and the global village, and for predicting the World Wide Web almost thirty years before it was invented. Due to the explosion of content on the internet these days, Alec recommended some curation tools such as Feedly for news. He also mention The Slow Web Movement. I have seen tools like Scoopit used as curation tools, and have tried LiveBinder as well. Pearltrees is a social curation tool which creates a taxonomy for how we structure knowledge and allows the user to share collections with others.
On the subject of Imagination, Alec told us that there are ideas out there such as 50+ ways to tell a story but in reality, because we digest so much information and consider this through our PLN’s, everything is a remix of things we have heard or read. What we are creating are digital essays about things that matter.
In wrapping up his keynote, Alec reminded us that we are trying to cultivate and develop positive digital identities, remembering that cultural contexts are very different, but we can debate and discuss the issues. We can have a situation for students whereby portfolios can be developed about their learning experiences through their own individual domain over which they have control. In this way they are being allowed to develop their own identity which they want to present to the world. Another thing he reminded us about is that actions speak louder than like buttons. An example of this was the videos he showed of second language learners being connected with older community members who had volunteered to be mentors who would allow these students to practise their learning through making a connection. Alec mentioned the work of Shirky and how the simple act of connection permits us to humanise the technology. He closed his keynote reminding us : I am part of all I have met.
On October 1 I also connected Face to Face with a few people I have “met” previously through online spaces. Joyce Seitzinger and Chris Betcher ran the two workshops I attended at ACEC that day (posts to come soon). I have made connections by messaging on Facebook and following on Twitter and had further conversations with both of these people during the remainder of the conference. I reconnected with two members of my professional association ECAWA and discussed future staff development opportunities through ECAWA in our education district. I also connected with Bhavneet Singh and will have further conversations with her regarding TeachMeets in 2014.
Another conversation I had today was with a teacher from another primary school in my region who bewailed the loss of use of technology in her classroom and the school’s following of a particular philosophy which, although developing capable academic students, did not espouse the idea of independent problem finders and solvers. This is a phenomenon of which I have previously stated I am very wary. I am firmly decided on the opinion that in primary school we need to have Literacy Block, Numeracy Block and Inquiry Block as major blocks within each teaching day. This would give students the opportunity to become independent thinkers and enable them to begin to make choices and find innovative ways of working – something we will need to remember and develop because:
We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t yet been invented in order to solve problems we don’t yet know exist! — Richard Riley