In
a previous reflection of mine, I analyzed an in class activity we completed regarding a re-invention the high school education system.
One of the key components we discussed during this activity was around
curriculum and teaching instruments and our desire to make them both a bit more
modern and relevant. The activity
was rather exclusive to the student’s point of view, but what about the
teacher’s?
I
read an article on the Canadian Education Association’s (CEA) website about the
growing popularity of educators using social networking, specifically Twitter,
for developing their curriculum.
Thousands of educators across Canada and beyond are “Edu-tweeting”. Essentially what this means, is that
educators are sharing their knowledge and best practices regarding education,
and employing Twitter as the vehicle to do so.
In
yesteryears, a teacher had resources and other teachers inside of the school
they taught at and might engage locally with other educators, but there were
certainly some limitations in networking.
The swell in Twitter usage inside of the education world, has allowed a
teacher in a rural town or village to interact and learn from the Tweets of a
teacher in a large city or metropolitan area. Also, public school teachers and university professors may also interact with one another, through this steady stream. These interactions are allowing teachers to acquire teaching
methods, ideas and innovative approaches to teaching that will help them be
even greater teachers, by engaging and inspiring their students.
There
was a pretty common theme in this article around collaboration, which got me
thinking about Ken Robinson’s RSA video we watched. His suggestion was that children should be presented with
opportunities to be more unified in their approach to learning and apply more
of a divergent thinking method. It
is true that great innovation is most commonly produced amongst a group of
people.
But
why should this collaborative and divergent approach to learning only be thought
of towards students? With
Edu-tweeting, teachers are adopting Ken Robinson’s suggestion as well. They are working together through the
parallels of technology and lending a virtual helping hand to one another. They are drawing on each other's experience and offering suggestions and other sorts of feedback. There is a comment in the CEA article
that talks about one educator being able to attend conferences about education,
without physically being there.
The beauty of social media is that the educator is basically linked to a
constant online conference of likeminded individuals with the same common goal,
of teaching students and helping them learn and succeed academically.
This is interesting because as you said, the emphasis on technology in education is almost always based on the students and the connection between students and teachers via sites like facebook and twitter on the internet. While I feel that it can sometimes be valuable for students and teachers to be able to communicate over the internet, face-to-face interaction is very important for developing social skills.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the sharing of ideas between teachers who are in different places who might not have the opportunity to meet each other is amazing. Time could be saved by teachers not having to travel to conferences that they can "attend" online. Money could be saved by teachers not having to buy activity idea books, as they can share ideas amongst themselves. I know you've mentioned twitter as an excellent site for teachers to communicate, but I have recently started exploring the site, www.pinterest.com. This site is essentially an electronic bulletin board where people can post pictures of their favorite things, cool ideas, anything that interests them really. There is a whole category on the site dedicated to education where teachers, parents, students, etc. can post ideas on how to make a certain topic interactive, different games and activities, crafts, etc. Each picture has a link to the instructions on the activity, and each participant can pin (or save) their favourite ideas to their own board for future reference. I think this is a valuable tool for teachers to communicate their ideas and their comments on which ones were successful and which could be improved!
Here is the link to the education section on pinterest!
http://pinterest.com/all/?category=education Check it out :)
Tweeting can most certainly promote professional development for teachers. I think this is a great article and a very revolutionary idea over all. Face to face interaction is most certainly important, and in some circumstances today with the emergence of social media can sometimes be forgotten, but social media is also many students, and teachers main form of communication so incorporating it into development in my opinion is a force to be explored and applied. I once had a course where my professor posted the course materials on facebook as opposed to blackboard and where I almost always have facebook open on my phone I always knew what was going on in the course within the second of something new getting posted and it was much easier to gain help from fellow students as people were more often online. Also, as mentioned above, the ability to share information when distance otherwise may not have facilitated this collaboration opens the door for great advancement in the field of education and resource sharing. Great article Eric!
ReplyDelete