Reading Writing Responding

creative commons licensed (BY-SA) flickr photo by mrkrndvs: http://flickr.com/photos/aaron_davis/14285217903 This post was first shared on +Peter DeWitt 's blog Finding Common Ground on the 30th May 2014. There is a documentary series called Who Do You Think You Are? , the premise of which is to to trace the journey of a celebrity back to their genealogical roots. From the odd episodes that I have seen, the show works because it takes someone whose life is seen as extraordinary and it finds their story in the odd and the ordinary.  This idea of tracing our identity back to the roots got me thinking about being a connected educator. There is often so much written about getting people connected. However, one of the biggest hurdles that I have found is bridging the gap between those in the shadows, lurking in the background, to creating a more engaged community which includes commenting and collaboration. One aspect that I feel is missing are the stories of h...

'Your Association Needs You' by Aaron Davis (Flickr) While attending the recent Teachmeet at Lt Markov , +Roland Gesthuizen  posed the question, what do you expect from +Digital Learning and Teaching Victoria ? It is a part of a bigger question that I don't believe we ask very often, what we actually expect from an educational association? It got me thinking about how these expectations have changed in the last few years. I remember when I started teaching over ten years ago, the association was the first place you went to for information and resources. However, in the last few years this pride of place has gradually been dissolved with the development of various sites and spaces. So here then are my thoughts about the place of associations today. I remember as a graduate being inundated by my subject association with an array of sessions for this and that, I thought that every event was worth going to, probably because that was all that was on offer. The p...

When we think back through our learning, there are always those aha moments, those situations, that have a lasting impact. Such moments come in many shapes and sizes, maybe an odd passage in a book or a random video seen online. So often though they have an impact that is far beyond their intended purpose. A recent moment that has had such an effect on me was +Alec Couros ' simple suggestion made during an interview with the +Ed Tech Crew  that everything can be a resource online. By approaching resources in this way, our understanding moves away from being an actual object, lets say a textbook, to a resource as being a way of seeing something. In this sense, a resource stops being a noun, something named, ordered and categorised, and instead becomes a verb, a way of approaching something, interpreting it, questioning it. In much the same way, PLNs can be thought of in much the same way.  So often we limit ourselves by seeing PLN's as something made - conta...

In response to the PLN Challenge that is going around at the moment, +Peter DeWitt broke with the traditional by simply posing one question,  "What inspired you this year?"  and an open invitation for anyone to answer. So here is my response: Do Extraordinary Things I think that the first thing to consider is what it actually means to be 'inspired'. The Oxford Dictionary defines inspired as: "of extraordinary quality, as if arising from some external creative impulse." I think trying to capture what is 'extraordinary quality' is a very personal thing. It makes more sense though by reasserting it in Peter's original question: "What encouraged you to do extraordinary things this year?" In many respects, I think that 'being inspired' and doing 'extraordinary things' is a way of viewing the world. A lens to look through to reflect on everything around us. Here then are some of things that encouraged me to try a...

As I have written about elsewhere , a small amount of furore erupted on Twitter last Saturday in response to Johanna O'Farrell's tirade against 21st century learning habits in The Age titled ' Splashing Cash won't Fix Australia's Broken Education System '.  One of the things that I really notice whilst following the conversations through a medium like Twitter is that moments like this really draw a line in the sand and bring the tribe together.  Three questions that arose out of the ashes was:  Do moments like this further the wider conversation in anyway?  What is the role of the connected tribe in regards to continuing this wider conversation?  What does it take to move an idea from a point of change to evolution? Connected Learning At the heart of all our connections, whether online or not, is our PLN. There are many different definitions for PLN's including: personal learning network, professional learning network or personalised le...

In a post I wrote a few months ago I spoke about what I called the ' hidden professional development '. That informal learning that occurs unplanned and on the fly, whether it be at lunchtime, while photocopying or even when swapping over on yard duty. Basically anywhere, anytime, simply where two or more passionate learners meet. The big question then and the question now is how do we encourage this? What structured opportunities do we provide for this? Tinkering Teachers In a fantastic discussion as a part of +Ed Tech Crew Episode 240 focusing on what it takes to be an IT co-ordinator, +Ashley Proud spoke about the demise in tinkering amongst students. Although +Mel Cashen and +Roland Gesthuizen mentioned about taking things a part, giving the conversation a more mechanical theme, I feel that tinkering is best understood as a wider curiosity into the way things work.  I believe that one of the reasons for such a drop-off belongs with teachers. Althou...

Often when we talk about education, the term ' hidden curriculum ' is used in reference to all those elements that are not necessarily accounted for or made explicit, those elements that are between the lines, inferred. I think that much the same can be said about professional development. Often there is a hidden professional development that happens, often when we least expect it. In a recent blog +Ian Guest  spoke about the differences between professional development from the 'personal' to the 'organisational'. On the one hand, professional development can be self directed and based on the needs of a teacher. This is learning that can be classified as 'googleable'. On the other end of the scale is the learning that is often dictated by somebody else. Maybe it is a whole-school approach or nation wide program. Below is a table that Ian created to represent this continuum of sorts. This is a fantastic description of the different ...

Tom Whitby stated in a recent blog post addressing Connected Educator Month that: "Being connected is not an add-on or a luxury for educators: it has become a necessity". I could not agree more, there are so many benefits to being connected with the wider world that were not possible in the past. The question that constantly comes up though is why are there not more people connecting? Why are there not more people sharing their ideas with the wider world? In a previous blog I wrote about what I perceive as being some of the benefits of blogging. However, what is often missed in these discussions is why more teachers do not jump on board. Some reasons that come to mind are that teachers do not see any direct benefit for them and their teaching. They do not really use the internet 'like that'. They connect enough with the people that really  matter and they are the teachers in their team. The biggest difficulty though, in my view, is finding ...

There seems to have been a few blogs bouncing around in my feeds of late. These include  Deb Hicks ' 'Why Blog', Tom Whitby's 'Why Blogs and Who Needs Them Anyway' and Peter DeWitt's 'The Benefits of Blogging'. I t kind of occurred to me that I hadn't really ever stated, nor really thought about, why I have chosen to blog. I have therefore decided to have a go at providing some of my reasons: Scratching an itch . Often while reading, there are things that stick out, that prop the ears, the spike the imagination, that remain like an itch. A blog is a way of  responding to these things, somehow alleviating the irritation. Being connected . I love being connected, following various threads of thought, commenting, tweeting and reaching out to others, but sometimes a responding needs to be something more substantial. A blog is one avenue that allows this. Critical engagement . I read on the wall in a coordinators office the other day the st...