From Twitter...
Over the past two years I have been challenging myself to become a more connected educator. Why? Because becoming more actively involved in online communities has provided me the opportunity to interact with teachers from across the country who have a similar passion for teaching, learning and ICTs. These educators are people I would otherwise not have met and learnt from.
Initially, I was cautious about the public nature of social media. I was hesitant about sharing myself with the world and worried about digital safety. While I am still conscious of the digital footprint I am leaving, I have found the benefits of being connected have outweighed my concerns.
My online journey started when I joined Twitter. With suggestions from my school principal and other teaching friends, I began to follow educators who shared fantastic resources, helpful teaching strategies and inspiring classroom successes. My experience with Twitter was, the more I persevered by following and sharing with others the more others followed and shared with me. I began to receive answers to questions and links to new resources to use with my students. This saved me a huge amount of time and reinventing of the wheel. Next I joined in Twitter chats about education-related topics, following hashtags such as #nzleaderschat, #chchprincipals, #edchatnz, #edtech, #mathschatnz and engchatnz. I have enjoyed these professional conversations and have been introduced to new ideas and viewpoints about educational theory and practice. Twitter has even helped me arrange for staff at my school to visit other teachers.
... to Google+
My next digital step was to join Google+. This has proved to be another powerful online medium and has, for me, fulfilled a slightly different need. Google+ has a fantastic feature called Communities where you can invite others with a commonality or similar interest to interact. These communities can either be public or private. Staff working within our local cluster of ECEs and school have been invited to join and contribute to a private community. We now have 70+ members and the forum is becoming an increasingly utilised way of sharing meeting minutes and upcoming professional development opportunities as well as organising events, promoting useful resources and teaching strategies, sending requests for help and much more.
A 10 day challenge
To build an awareness of Google+ and grow our Burnside Learning Cluster online community, I recently worked with Tamara Bell from Cobham Intermediate to design a 10 day Google+ challenge. This series of bite-sized activities was planned to introduce others to the features of Google+ in just 10 minutes per day. Initially it was shared with our newly formed cluster DP/AP/Senior Leaders network. Several teachers from locals schools took up the challenge and the response was positive. Some are now on-sharing it with their staff to help up-skill others and further grow connections between ECEs and schools.
If you are interested in using the 10 day Google+ challenge to up-skill yourself or your staff, follow THIS LINK. Enjoy!
