School Improvement Plan 2012-13

Nikki Robertson is thrilled that her school has made  ‘Building Your PLN with Twitter’ one of three three School Improvement Goals  for the school year. She ran a professional development session for the staff, complete with donuts and coffee. She described her experiences on Twitter adn the Twitter basics and terminology but has encountered resistance from staff afterwards.

This sinister underlying resistance was verbalized by one of our teachers at lunch the other day and has been echoed in one way or another by several other teachers.  So what is this resistance?  Well, here is a paraphrased quote:

“I’m not sharing my lesson plans or activities with anyone.  I worked to hard to make them to just give them away.”

In full

 

“But I’m a Busy Person. I Don’t Have Time for Technology!”

Ginger Lewman reflects back on this statement which she uttered in 2007.  Since then she started using social networks and says that her professional life is now completely different. She was using laptops in her classroom and had to learn from one of the 5th graders in making the most of using them, until she started using online networks and communities

All of a sudden, I was bringing tools and tech knowledge to my kids! Things they’d never heard of! It was me, not the 5th grader! How? I was spending HOURS in these networks, neglecting my family, lesson plans, and probably other things I didn’t even notice. But I did notice it was taking a lot of time. Looking back, I did it simply because Kevin told me to and he was the only support (beyond the 5th grader and the other kids’ parents) I was getting in building this school.

In full

What if school was more like Twitter?

Tom Whitby wonders what would happen if the discussion and sharing that forms part of a twitter learning network was tried out in a traditional school environment. He mentions the importance of being able to share ideas such as papers with links on them appearing in staff pigeon holes / mailboxes;  and how the breadth of opinions on twitter can help to understand more about a global perspective.Does this help bridge a digital gap?

The idea of being a “Connected Educator” is too foreign to too many educators. If this post is to be effective it will have to be printed out, reproduced, and circulated in teachers’ mailboxes in order to reach them. In this age of technology, that should be an embarrassment to the most educated people this country or any country has to offer

In full