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Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook make sharing easy, much easier, in fact, than reading the full content or discovering the real source of the post.
There is no human to complain to when that goes wrong.
Facebook makes money through likes and shares. It wants you to be engaged and share what you see. Critical thinking, truth, facts, none of these factor into the profit equation.
In what is now referred to the Post-truth era, it is disturbing to think about how much false content is circulated as fact. Students struggle to determine the difference between truth and fiction.
As parents and educators, how are we modelling practices that promote facts and reliable sources over clickbait and sensationalism?
On social media, liking, sharing and retweeting shows others the content that is meaningful to you. It is a reflection of who you are, and what you believe in.
A decade ago, I used to retweet fairly indiscriminately. If it looked like a good resource, I shared it. Then, Ira Socol took the time to question my retweet. I realized that retweeting is actually a form of curating. If I want to create value online for others, I need to critically evaluate resources and ideas, and share them with descriptive comments.
What I choose to share reflects my professionalism. What I choose to share is the value I am creating for others. Before sharing, I carefully evaluate the source, and I often highlight (in my comments) the part I find most valuable.
Fortunately, I have a loud PLN that will quickly question almost anything I share openly.
Other curators help me sort through the unfathomable amount of information on the web. Stephen Downes, Doug Belshaw, and Audrey Watters are examples of thought leaders who filter, curate and share information regularly. I know that there will be value in their curations.
More importantly, what do we do when we encounter colleagues and friends sharing misleading information or sheer fiction as though it were factual? Do we just turn our heads the other way, or do we take the time, like Ira Socol did for me, and challenge the source or the thinking?
Barack Obama said that we can’t move democracy forward if we don’t have a common set of facts to refer to. Now that we have seen the impact of the propaganda spread through social media, what will we do as educators to shut it down?
How do we ensure our students can critically evaluate information, triangulate sources, and distinguish between belief and fact?
What is your vision of effective mathematics teaching and learning in elementary school?
This is a new question for me. This blog is Learning About Learning, and I have a lot of learning to do about mathematics education.
I am hoping you can help me.
Here are a few of the things I am thinking about right now. What can you add to this? What have you learned in your own practice? What do you think about when you consider a vision for teaching and learning mathematics?
I think that efficacy is critical. Students have to believe they can achieve at high levels. Teachers have to believe that students can achieve at high levels and that teachers have the capacity to get students to that high level.
Is mathematics skills (as I was taught), or is it ideas (as Dr. Marian Small suggests)?
Is math about making connections? Is it important that we work with big ideas rather than teaching skills and concepts only in isolation?
I think students have to be able to choose the tools and strategies they need to help them solve problems.
It isn’t up to us to tell them what tool to use, but to teach them how to use many tools effectively so they might pick the one that is right for them in each context.
Math needs to be fun. Kids need to be the ones doing the thinking. Teaching through problem solving can be very effective (problems are not add-ons).
Teachers need to collaborate with other educators, to share their thinking openly, to challenge the thinking of others, to read and write blogs about their work. Isolation is a choice, and isolation is unprofessional. Kids need the thinking of many professionals, not just the one assigned to them.
As I work through #mathleaderNEO over the next few years, I plan to grow this thinking.
This post is part of a 10 day posting challenge issued by Tina Zita. You can’t be a connected educator if you don’t contribute. Sometimes we need a nudge to remember that if nobody shares, nobody learns. Thanks Tina!
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Who can help me answer my inquiry question?
Today I worked with my colleagues to support educators in establishing inquiry questions.
Part of our work has been finding the resources to meet the individual needs of each educator. The TBCDSB leadership team asked me to join the group to share the process of becoming a networked learner.
I spent the morning getting to know the needs of the learners in the room, and then created these resources tailored to their requests.
I leveraged my own PLN to find the resources.
In learning that several of the educators were teacher-librarians, I asked my colleague, Mark Carbone, about where to find the work he has been doing with Carlo Fusco.
This post is part of a 10 day posting challenge issued by Tina Zita. You can’t be a connected educator if you don’t contribute. Sometimes we need a nudge to remember that if nobody shares, nobody learns. Thanks Tina!
How can we enable our colleagues to access the rich professional learning opportunities available online?
We want to own our own learning.
We want to self-direct our learning.
In 2016, it has never been easier to do this. The abundance of open, accessible resources is overwhelming. Learning to manage and organize the information is a new competency. Learning to reflect, to share, to find, to converse, to connect, to adapt – we are doing this.
Or are we?
We all know colleagues who don’t participate in learning in digital spaces.
For those who provide learning opportunities online, the sphere of influence has a definite, distinct boundary. They cannot reach the individual who does not engage in digital spaces.
Online teachers struggle to help students who refuse to log into the course.
In the same way, it doesn’t matter how rich, how engaging, how simple to use or how valuable online learning is for educators if they don’t know where to look for it or how to use the tools that will allow them to access it.
I think that we have done very well in providing digital resources and learning opportunities for teachers.
Thanks to Julie Balen for collating this year’s #ontwordont
How, now, can we work to enable the educators who still do not access the rich professional learning environment online?
As someone who self-directs their own professional learning online, how can you help one colleague this month to see some value in engaging in online learning or using online resources?
Leverage your PLN to ask for help. What is the best starting point for one colleague? What can you show them that will help them see the value in engaging in online, self-directed professional learning?
So many educators reading so many books that impact their practice!
That was my takeaway from #satchat this morning, and #ontedleaders last week as we were challenged to share the reading that was impacting our work at this time.
I can’t possibly read all of those books, but my colleagues in my PLN have made me so curious about what is in those books and how it might impact my thinking!
What if we all just blogged about our reading?
We ask students to write book reports.
Why don’t we model the importance of sharing our learning in an open, searchable, collaborative way?
If we read a chapter, then reflected, summarized and shared, with appropriate tagging, how could we impact student learning as a community?
Thank you to those already doing this, such as Stacey Wallwin (@WallwinS) and Brenda Sherry (@brendasherry).
If you haven’t considered it, OSSEMOOC can help you get started with creating a blog. and with viewing the blogs of other educators as examples.
As you think about your own PLN, consider what you are learning, AND what you are contributing to the learning of others.
The title of this post, “Are Teachers Taught About Creative Commons”, was one of the questions from the group of educators we were learning with. This brings up another issue about who owns the learning when it comes to teacher education, but that question is for another day. For now, it is important to understand why being fluent in using Creative Commons is very important to the maker culture in the classroom.
There are many resources for educators to learn about how to use Creative Commons. We wanted to focus more on the “why“.
Last week, George Couros shared his work on the innovator’s mindset. He suggested that innovative practice requires both networking and remix.
How do we encourage “remix” with our students and educators?
Image shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share-alike license by Monday’s Child.
We talk a lot about the importance of openly sharing and curating resources.
One pushback I often hear is, “I just don’t have time”. I get that. The job of an educator never ends. There are always more opportunities to look for that next practice that we could adapt for a particular student need. There is always one more possibility to try to help a learner move forward.
But what if we could organize our own resources, making them easier to access, and share with others all at the same time? We could save time for ourselves and for our colleagues – and isn’t that one of the things technology is supposed to do for us anyway?
Earlier today I stumbled upon this fabulous “how-to” video for teachers to help them use Pinterest to organize and share resources. It is worth your time to watch even if you are using PInterest already. There are several helpful tips here.
(The video was posted on this blog for primary teachers. Check out the blog for even more tips on curating, organizing and sharing with colleagues.)
At OSSEMOOC (@OSSEMOOC), we have collated a number of resources on how Pinterest can be used for educators, including for school and system leaders. I have posted them below for your reference.
Here is a quick look at some resources for education leaders:
Do you need further help in getting started with Pinterest for Professional Learning? Fill out the form here, and OSSEMOOC will add it to the agenda for the 2015-2016 plan for learning.
This is the quote that first attracted my attention:
“… digital literacy across generations..”
I immediately thought of Ontario’s Renewed Vision for Education.
“Our children, youth and adults will develop the skills and the knowledge that will lead them to become personally successful, economically productive and actively engaged citizens. They will become the motivated innovators, community builders, creative talent, skilled workers, entrepreneurs and leaders of tomorrow.”
When children attend a school, their experiences should not be limited by the knowledge and skills of the adults in the building. The educators, as digitally literate, connected professionals, should be able to bring the world to the children.
[Edit: Please see the comment below suggesting a rephrasing of the above statement –
My thinking: “The educators, as digitally literate, connected professionals, SHOULD BE ABLE TO FACILITATE THE CHILDREN’S LINKING THEMSELVES TO THE WORLD.”]
The school building can be a community hub for all to access the world outside the community. This concept of connected learning is well-explained in the short video below.
The recent report (Driving the Skills Agenda) from The Economist states that only 44% of the students surveyed (ages 18-25) feel that schools are providing them with the skills they need to enter the workplace, and while teachers report that technology is changing the way they teach, 77% of students report that schools are not effective in using technology for instruction.
Online every day I see what appear to be amazing things that educators are doing in their classrooms. As a connected leader and learner, I tend to be quick to praise, to share, to encourage and to promote practice.
But is this my best practice?
Do I know enough about what I am encouraging?
Recently, I have been exploring the impact of the “enthusiastic amateur”.
The term “enthusiastic amateur” refers to educators who have “emerged from the cave” and who have embraced the power of technology in the classroom. The are often loud with their enthusiasm. They are excited about their learning and they share share openly.
This can be a step in the journey to understand the power of technology to change learning in the ‘classroom’. We are all on the path of learning as we integrate the use of technology into our school system. However, at all times, student learning must be at the centre of our practice.
What do we do about the educators who refuse to embrace change?
This question keeps bubbling up in conversations, on Twitter, and in blog posts, in different formats, but essentially this is it: “How do we convince educators that they need to change their practice?”
Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share-alike license by Krissy Venosdale.
We have names and categories for those who resist change and cling to the status quo.
But have we articulated what the “change” is leading to?
Have we co-constructed the success criteria of what this will look like when we are doing it well?
Simon Breakspear, at the 2015 Ontario Leadership Congress, challenged participants to think about what Ontario classrooms could look like three years from now. What would we see, hear and feel as we walk into our students’ learning environment in 2018? What is our shared vision for the future of our children?
This is not a hypothetical exercise. He wants us to set this out exactly as we expect to see it. What are we looking for, and how will we get there? It is only by doing this exercise that we can clearly communicate to educators what the path forward is, and what we expect to accomplish.
Over the past 1.5 years, I have been working relentlessly, with my OSAPAC co-lead (@markwcarbone) on a project to help education leaders become adept in the use of educational technology.
Why?
Because in Ontario we have a “renewed vision” for education, and that vision includes using technology as an accelerator to change where, when and how learning can take place.
And if we are actually going to see this happen in our “classrooms”, then our leaders have to have a very good understanding of what technology enabled learning and teaching looks like, sounds like, feels like for learners.
Image shared under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial share-alike license by Alec Couros (@courosa)
The world is changing rapidly and if our students are going to thrive, they need very different skills and abilities than the ones that worked for us. It’s easy to forget how fast the world is changing when we are immersed in our bricks and mortar schools each day.
Are we leading and teaching for where the puck is now, or where it is going?
So how do you provide learning for leaders to keep up with the changing role of technology in learning?
We think we understand the learning needs of leaders who are already pressed for time. We need many different entry points. We have to appeal to a range of styles of learning. We need learning opportunities that do not require a lot of commitment because of the varied schedules of those in leadership roles. Small chunks of learning have to be available so they can be accessed at any time.
We looked at a way to provide very, very simple access to opportunities to learn to become a connected leader. That simple access includes:
on that website, links to the blogs of formal and informal school and system leaders in Ontario so that this one site allows anyone access to the visible thinking of educators throughout this province.
on the website – a new post nearly every day, Tuesday evening open conversations,
on the website – a program to become connected in only 10 minutes a day
on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, and other social media, a stream of information on learning and connected leadership
If any education leader in Ontario has the DESIRE to learn to become connected, OSSEMOOC (Awesome MOOC!) is just sitting there waiting for them to start.
It is free, open and simple with 1:1 support for anyone who WANTS to learn.
Our question is, what more can we possibly offer?
Image shared under a Creative Commons attribution license by Alan Levine (@cogdog).
Is the missing piece the desire to learn?
This is an interesting problem, because leaders openly wonder why educators in their systems won’t embrace change.
We hear that the world is changing, the nature of education is changing, what we know about learners is changing, but some classroom educators refuse to change their practice. How can we help them change?
Will they change if they don’t have the desire to learn?
So let’s solve this! Why is it not a priority for leaders to become connected? What is it about this learning that leaders do not buy into?
If leaders personally reflect on why they don’t see the value in becoming connected digital leaders, why they don’t take advantage of opportunities to learn to lead in digital spaces, will it reveal some understanding about the challenges in helping resistant classroom educators change their practice?
Sometimes we refer to educators who are resistant to change as “fundamentalists”, based on the work of Muhammad, in Transforming School Culture (2009) (nicely explained here by Nicole Morden-Cormier).
What would we say about leaders who:
refuse to learn to use collaborative documents so that they can work asynchronously and at a distance from their colleagues?
don’t take the time to learn to use technology to download their own videos and make their own presentations shine, and even say “oh, I don’t do tech” (they would never say that about math!)?
don’t build a strong professional learning network so that they can reach out and find the experience and understanding they need to make evidence-based decisions around technology purchases, capacity-building and planning?
have not learned the skills needed to supervise and learn with teachers in online learning environments?
Shared by Kaila Wyslocky (@kwyslocky) from her presentation on how she is transforming her online teaching practice, OTRK12 2015.
Are education leaders who preserve the technology status quo, “fundamentalists”?
Would we refer to leaders who refuse to make digital leadership a priority as “fundamentalists”?
Not likely, as we know that education leaders are learners. We might say that they don’t have time, or that they have other priorities and interests. But we see them as being learners.
Do we see resistant classroom educators as learners? Are they only labelled as fundamentalists because they are not learning what we think they should learn?
Maybe what we need to do is find out what it is they want to learn, and start there. Recognize that they ARE learners, and that what they are learning is valuable, and let them bring it to the table.
Find the mindset they already have – where learning is sought instead of provided – and discover what learning they are seeking, and harness this.
Brainstorming Professional Learning
Fundamentally, our job as educators is to ensure that every single child in our care is learning. There might be all kinds of research on what best practices are, but none of that research was done on that student in that classroom. Only that teacher has the responsibility to ensure that child is learning, and once their repertoire of strategies is exhausted, it is that teacher’s job to connect with others to find the next best practice, to be the scientist for that child to find what will work.
The classroom educator is the researcher to find best practice for every child.
They need to know how to find out what others are doing, and how to adapt practices to each learner.
The shift is from a mindset where learning is provided, to a culture where learning is sought (David Jakes, 2015).
But since learning will only be sought where there is a DESIRE to learn, maybe that is the place we need to start.
I leveraged my own PLN to find the resources.
The educator inquiries are around Technology Enabled Learning and Teaching.
ur reading?
Learning About Learning 