Within the context of Connected Educator’s month, October 21-25 is digital citizenship week. After recording an earlier Google Hangout session on the topic of Digital Citizenship with staff, I thought it would be interesting to record a second hangout to gain a parent perspective on this topic.
Earlier today, I was joined by Susan Parr, a parent from our school board community and Chris Vollum, a social media consultant and parent to share some conversation on this topic. If the notions of online safety, openness, academic honesty, integrity and social success capture your interest, then this conversation is for you.
Many thanks to Susan and Chris for sharing their time and interest in supporting this important topic. Until next time …
After 2 days of being immersed in conversation about technology enabled learning, focusing on using technology to get to deeper learning, and engage the relationship aspect of the possibilities with George Couros, I was thrilled to hear how WRDSB teacher Ryan Wettlaufer is using Google Hangouts with his students.
To me, this is a perfect example of the SAMR model. Ryan has thoughtfully and skillfully created real life opportunities for his students by leveraging his personal learning network (PLN) giving his French language program a whole new meaning. I was able to connect with Ryan for an interview via Google Hangouts. Learn about Ryan’s insights in our interview.
Thank you Ryan for taking time to share your leadership and best practices, and a perfect topic for Connected Educators month.
As part of our Board capacity building program, we offered 2 full day sessions for our school administrators and instructional leaders with George Couros. George’s session aligned perfectly with our system plan and Ontario school improvement framework. The timing of our sessions also support the global work of Connected Educator Month.
George is very personable in front of a crowd, and that in itself helped drive home one of the key messages of the day – the human connection. His approach captured and reinforced an important message in my recent blog post providing a perspective on technology enabled learning. It is NOT about the technology itself. It IS about the human connection: how we connect, develop relationships, learn, support the learning journey of others and reflect. Technology plays a powerful role in the “C’s” – communicate, collaborate, citizenship and character development, creating and critical questions.
The “C’s” provide connectors for us to learn, tell our story or tell the story of our school or system. The “C’s” help us connect beyond our school and system. We gain a wider perspective on innovation and best practices from educational counterparts around the world. Who can better tell your/your school story than you, the administrator and instructional leader?
Through personal and heart warming examples, George shared a journey that connected the dots on the benefits of becoming connected. In the end, the tools themselves, and the technology involved, was simply that – a mechanism to get to the relationships and the story. Tools that supported the journey included Twitter, Google tools (docs, hangouts, youtube etc.), Ted Talks. Use the tools to make your job more streamlined. Deal with information once: Google doc vs word processor to pdf to email for example.
One can not under estimate the value of developing a personal learning network (PLN) to give you access to sharing, resources, problem solving, exchange ideas, thinking and best practices and asking questions – all part of telling your story. I really enjoyed George’s analogy to using your PLN to ask questions and source the wisdom of the PLN crowd to lighting up the “Bat Signal” – a call for help, information, collaboration etc. – awesome!
Dovetailed with blogging, you have a powerful method of communicating your story to a real world audience. This journey certainly does require one to step into the role of the learner and that in itself may be one of the most powerful things that you do as an instructional leader. People around you will benefit from watching you learn, ask critical questions, share through blogging & other means, and shape your thinking.
Sounds like this could be messy – right? So what – learning is messy, and that is simply OK. Why wouldn’t it be messy? Process vs end result. This journey does require that you put your self out there and demonstrate transparency in what you are doing. And just like the first time skier on the 60 foot run (reference to video) – go for it — it is just a little longer and faster than the 20 foot run.
You can do it.
Take action.
Start building your network by spending a few minutes a day on Twitter. Commit 10-15 minutes daily – that is all it takes to get started. Commit to contributing to your board/district hashtag (#edwrdsb for us).
See you online in the “Twitterverse” and “Blogosphere”.
The countdown is on — only 15 days to the official kickoff of Connected Educator Month. What’s in it for you? EVERYTHING! FREE PD!!! Learn more about online connecting tools such as Twitter, starting a blog, collaborating online with wikis and Google Docs and much more. There is an activity per day throughout the month of October. Get a jump start and preview the resources.
~ Mark's Musings ~ blog.markwcarbone.ca 