Like many people my first foray into the virtual world of connectedness was through Facebook. I connected with family and friends. This led me to consider making some professional connections out of necessity. I began my connected collaboration as an educator over a decade ago. I realized as an adult learner that I learned best through collaboration and that collaboration could only take place if I was in some way connected with other educators. I feel that I had grown to a point where my teaching colleagues, whom I had face-to-face contact with, seemed to somehow no longer have answers to my questions. It was apparent to me that their own profession was getting away from many of them. They depended too heavily on what was taught about education years ago rather than what was currently being taught. They had no connection to the latest and greatest in education. Their knowledge and experience was losing relevance. My building connections no longer served me well enough to meet my needs. I needed to expand my collegial base to more educators who were more in tune with education demands of the 21st Century. My building limited me.
I began connecting with educators virtually on LinkedIn. It was considered a social media application for professionals. I found that I could create groups of educators that had interests in education similar to mine. Educators would come to these groups to discuss topics that we were all interested in, but were not being discussed in faculty rooms or faculty meetings or not even in the provided Professional Development sessions. My frustration with this however was the time involved waiting for people to get back to me. Discussions were not in real-time. Questions were answered when participants returned to the discussion. Through LinkedIn I discovered Twitter.
Twitter was more in real-time. I followed educators wherever I could find them. I used Twitter only for educators. The interactions took place in real-time, so there was instant gratification. I began to identify which educators had expertise in specific areas. My problem was getting together with the right people who were interested in what I was interested all at one time. That is why #Edchat was started. I could come up with a Topic of interest for discussion that was not being discussed in schools, but had great impact on educators. The topics were well received because they began to be referenced in Education Blog Posts. The Twitter Chat model flourished creating hundreds of education chats here and around the world.
My big takeaway from Twitter was that people were accepted for their ideas and not their titles. Teachers, administrators, authors, politicians, and thought leaders are equals on Twitter.
Through Twitter I was exposed to many relevant Blog Posts. I was amazed that educators were sharing great ideas on blog posts it opened an entire community of education thought leaders to me. I followed many of them on Twitter for further one-to-one interactions. I discovered that Blogs were interactive. I could engage bloggers not only to agree, or disagree, but also to expand their ideas. These discussions of great ideas ran through a number of connected venues, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Blog Posts. These connected discussions proceeded any discussions of similar ideas taking place in school buildings. Edcamps, One-to-One initiatives, Flipped Class, BYOD and connected collaboration were all topics discussed and vetted long before they were even recognized in the brick and mortar world of education.
It was through these discussions and interactions that led me to a path to begin my own Blog. That was a scary step that in hindsight helped me grow more as a professional than any other individual step I have taken. It has forced me to question more, investigate deeper, reflect more thoughtfully, and share more openly. The Blog was well-received and brought requests from many educators for connected face-to-face connected collaboration. This led me to both SKYPE and Google Hangout. This was a further expansion of my connected network of educators, but the ability to see the person I was connecting with was the new dynamic.
One element of my real world connectedness that I was privileged to have, was my attendance at local, state, and National conferences. Most teachers in our education system do not attend conferences because most school budgets do not make allowances for teachers to attend them. I presented and held office in organizations in order to meet that goal to attend as many conferences as I could. A great benefit of conferencing is the networking done to make real connections. Each year educators can meet other educators for professional exchanges and if they are fortunate enough to go a second year, they can renew those connections as long as their connections were fortunate enough to attend the second year as well. Connected educators have no such constraints. They are connecting and exchanging with conference participants before, during, and after the conference takes place. They are also sharing the conference content through their connectedness with educators who could not attend the conference. Virtual relationships are made face-to face as conference participants actually meet up with their connected colleagues. Social media for professional relationships has added a whole new level to any antiquated model of educational conferencing.
Now, here is why I refer to this connected journey model, which I have openly shared, as “whistling in the wind”. This is what is referred to as a PLN, a Professional Learning Network. I have modeled here how professional connectedness can benefit any educator, yet a majority of educators fail to take advantage of what is being offered. Is it because they did not get this information in their teacher preparation program in college? Is it because they have no time to spend beyond their workday to make professional advances? Is it because they lack a digital literacy to do the basics of social media interaction? Is it because they are not what they profess that they want their students to be, Life Long Learners? Is it because they feel that their college preparation was enough to carry them through a forty-year career without needing to learn, change, and adapt to a quick-paced, ever-changing, digital world?
I do not expect anyone to accomplish what I have done in my journey to connectedness. I have been doing it for over a decade. I do expect however or at the very least hope that, as professionals, which we claim to be, educators begin their first steps to connecting and proceed at a pace slightly out of their comfort level. Comfort levels are the greatest obstacles to change.
The world we first learned in is not the world that we teach in and it is sure as hell not the world our students will occupy to thrive and compete. If our comfort zones take precedence over our students getting a relevant education, we are failing as professional educators. The fact remains however that it is a great struggle to get educators to connect and grow. Most educators will not see this blog post, let alone interact with it to defend their on of non-connection. Those of us who are connected may need to do a better job of modeling, and speaking to the benefits of connectedness for the sake of our colleagues and our profession. As I have always said, “If we are to better educate our kids, we need to first better educate their educators.”
Some colleagues flatly refuse to use Twitter others beg me to stop sharing resources — they say they are overwhelmed. I feel like a modern day Gulliver, instead of dragging ships I’m trying to drag my fellow “life-long” learners into the 21st century. But I’ll keep trying, as you stated: “Those of us who are connected may need to do a better job of modeling, and speaking to the benefits of connectedness for the sake of our colleagues and our profession”.
I promote PLN to teachers all the time & most seem interested; however, they either state they don’t have the time or they’re not on social media (because they believe it’s evil or a waste of time). I have presented to teacher colleagues at a couple of schools in the past 2 years & although they are all very excited to learn about it & I get amazing feedback, the actual uptake of Twitter is always surprisingly low and those that last more than 2 tweets is an even smaller percentage. I don’t get it because Twitter used as a PLN is supportive, collaborative, fun & sometimes is like PD!
This happens because we too often fail to mention that creating a PLN requires time, commitment, constant nurturing, participation, and interaction. If teachers start using Twitter at a workshop and don’t commit to engaging with the network they’re seeking to form, it won’t become a practice that’s meaningful to their professional learning. So, as Tom says, we need to more realistically present to colleagues the level of commitment required in order to truly develop a learning network. There are levels of participation where one finds comfort, and I always think of Steve Wheeler’s engagement pyramid http://www.steve-wheeler.co.uk/2013/05/just-how-far-can-they-go.html and various other graphics out there depicting the variety of ways in which learners engage with networks. When I run a workshop on using social media to enhance learning networks I am very honest about the fact that my ability to rely on my PLN to learn so much is because of years of cultivating that network, and of giving back to it.
I enjoyed reading your post. As a connected educator on several of the social media sites, Twitter has to by my favorite means of connecting with a diversified group of professionals. This school year I’m going to speak up during our staff meetings and share the importance of being a connected educator on Twitter.
This Blog is of great interest to me. While I would not argue your points in your Blog at all I would love to see a follow on Blog about time management directed toward the teacher. I would love to dedicate much more time to the Social Media in attempt to connect with educators worldwide. My problem is that I really have a hard time with finding the time to make such a venture effective and rewarding. As teachers I believe we all understand the complexities and dedication of time that is required to build lesson plans, teach those lessons and then grade the methods by which our students show they have an understanding of the key material. Add to that faculty meetings and extracurricular activities that we must be a part of such as sports or clubs. After that we have family and social commitments that cannot be left unattended. Again I cannot argue with your statements and I truly would love to give much effort to developing and learning from the ideas of my peers through Social media such as Twitter. A Blog on time management for teachers might be the key to helping me and others like me become more involved in the social media world. Judging from the comments of other responders on this Blog I can see that I am not alone in this regard.
Excellent insight as always. I created a Continuing Ed course at Capilano University three years ago on how to create a PLN – but no teachers signed up, how ironic. That proves your point about how far behind current trends in education so many educators are – because they don’t leverage twitter and other related tools. It’s ironic that rather than leading students into the 21st Century, so much of education is still pulling students back to the 20th. Irrelevancy writ large.
Hi Tom
I follow your blog with interest, and am also really interested in finding out why more teachers don’t take advantage of a PLN. I am so interested that I am currently completing my doctorate at QUT, studying how teachers experience learning through PLNs in order to find out more about what type of teacher is a connected educator and why they are and so many are not. I’ve been tweeting, blogging etc since 2007, and have gained so much over the years, and want to find out ways to encourage others to have the same great learning opportunities. Hopefully the outcome will be something concrete, that I can leverage to raise connectivity among educators :). I’ll continue to follow your work, and if you are interested, you can read up a little more on my areas of interest and research at linkinglearning.com.au .
Cheers :).
Nice writeup Tom. Very thoughtful.
I too like Twitter for the combination of randomness in opportunity to meet educators from all over and for the “real time” focus of many of the PLN discussions- only starting with Facebook now- really! However have encouraged and been encouraged by student online participation and student enjoyment of using SKYPE and student pleasure at sharing websites they “discover!” best to all; Alison
I’ve thought about this post over the last few days. I felt like, as a young excited teacher, I was taught to be quiet and show respect to veterans, and even after completing my admin degree and 10 years in the classroom, I felt I had to listen in my building in order to form relationships that would be the foundation for even suggesting something new…reserved for conference days. Why do we feel the need to silence excited teachers who have so much to share?
I love Twitter for the same reasons you stated- what a world of knowledge to connect with, that I found in only small “subversive” pockets in my schools. However, I think our buildings have much more potential that is hidden due to social norms. When I finally had the chance to observe other teachers- I was blown away by the cool things going on THAT NOBODY TALKED ABOUT!!
I thinks some schools are changing this, but it takes a lot of courage, confidence and trust. Wonderful attributes to model for our students.