Reading Writing Responding

Image by Amy Burvall http://tmblr.co/Zb8aBo19NdENy I recently got involved in a conversation about the best use of social media, in particular Twitter, to engage and gain traction with a wider audience. Often people are simply told to collectively tweet at a certain time and that will be enough to get something to trend, but really is that enough? For it is one thing to sign up to Twitter and put out a few tweets, but it is another thing to gain interest in your cause online. Fine you could simply write the same tweet hundreds of times and you might get something literally trending, however traction in my view is much more complicated than simply getting something trending. For who is watching? How are they actually responding? And most importantly, how will they respond if you use the same strategy again and again? The reality is that there is a fine line between engaging and disengaging someone online (and offline for that matter too). Many people seem to think t...

This post and associated slides are for my TL21C Reboot Session addressing the topic of: Becoming a Connected Educator (22/7/2014) Becoming a Connected Educator (TL21C) - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires Becoming a connected educator is so unique. There is no rule or recipe to follow and no two stories are the same. The reality is that it is many things to many people. The biggest challenge is continually defining what it actually means to be connected and why it is important. I don't wish to offer some cure, rather I hope to keep the conversation going. Instead of providing a recipe, my approach has always been to share some of the choices that I have made and my thoughts behind them. Although signing up to various platforms is important, it is the journey associated with this that matters most to me. As +Tony Sinanis   says , in reflecting on his own connected experiences, "the Twitter experience is a journey ... it is not an exp...

creative commons licensed (BY-NC) flickr photo by mrkrndvs: http://flickr.com/photos/aaron_davis/14557280205  I have been reflecting quite a bit lately on what I see as the importance of making online connections with other educators and developing dialogues to continue the conversation about education. Some of the push back that I have gotten is about who those teachers are that I am actually connecting with and what agenda is really being pushed? The question that it has me wondering is whether being a connected educator automatically equals being radical? If not, then where is the middle ground or is there something else going on that is being missed? The Good, the Bad and the Ugly There is something about social media as a medium which lends itself to extremes. Take Twitter for example, often it is a case of the loudest statements that seem to stand out the most. Too often though this noise equates to latching ourselves to the latest panacea to all of education w...

creative commons licensed (BY) flickr photo by Billy Rowlinson: http://flickr.com/photos/billyrowlinson/3515157369 I was talking with a coordinator yesterday and I heard a word that I hadn't heard in quite a long time - proxies. A few years ago, around the same time as the introduction of 1:1 devices in the school, there was a spait of incidents involving students using proxies to access websites that would normally be blocked. The answer then was two fold:  It was explained to students the dangers of using such means in regards to viruses. Students caught lost their laptops for an extended period of time. As time passed, it stopped being an such an issue. Less and less people were being caught out. However, what this recent situation highlights is that maybe it stopped being an issue for teachers, while for students the practise simply went underground.  Whatever the exact state of play maybe, it left me searching for a better solution. For the case i...

creative commons licensed (BY-NC-ND) flickr photo by sachman75: http://flickr.com/photos/sacharules/7431640808 I remember in Year Four Ms. Bates teaching us about how trees grew. She explained that they reach to the sun and it is for that reason that they are not always straight. I am sure there is more to it than this, but Ms. Bates story really stuck with me, maybe because of its simplicity, but I think because it completely changed the way that I looked at the world around me. Thinking about it today makes me think that learning might be the same. I remember when my wife and I moved into our house we planted a series of lilly pillies down the side of property. The thought was that they would provide some screening and a bit more privacy. Clearly we weren't going to let them grow to their potential height of 100 metres as the tag suggested that they could in their natural surroundings, rather we would mould and shape them. As a plant, they are not only hardy, but ...

creative commons licensed (BY-NC-SA) flickr photo by fredcavazza: http://flickr.com/photos/fredcavazza/278973402 In my previous posts, I spoke about connecting with people both in person and online . The problem that I found with both of these situations is that connections are often only ever as deep or strong we let them be. If we are unwilling to give back , should it be any surprise that people don't always want to share with us? However, what it took me a little bit of time to realise was that 'giving back' was more than just about ideas and information, it was actually giving a part of you. Taking more ownership over my online identify was therefore my fourth marker to becoming a more connected learner. A Digital Badge I had known that the only person I was fooling in trying to hide behind some sort of anonymity was myself. The reality was and is that if someone really wanted to piece together 'who' I was, there were enough crumbs left lyi...

I have been sent two separate challenges in regards to the 11 question meme, one from +Ian Guest and the other from +Steve Brophy . Although I have already engaged with this meme elsewhere , I just could not help but respond. So instead of choosing one set of questions over the other, I have decided to simply answer all 22 questions. Therefore, some of my answers may be shorter than you or I would like. However, I am always here to continue the conversation some other time ... 1. What teacher had the most influence on you and why? I would have to say Karl Trsek, my Year 12 English/History teacher. Not only did he have a breadth of knowledge, about history and the world - demonstrated by the fact that he wrote his own texts - but he also challenged the way I thought. 2. During your career, which student (without naming them!) most sticks in your mind and for what reason? I think that it is the student that doesn't necessarily fit in with the status quo, not n...