ALT

ALT / Leadership — No Comments
12
Sep 10

Should teachers tweet? Social media and education PART II

In my first response to Robyn Evans (Head of Marketing and Stakeholder Relations) request for opinion on Twitter and Social Media I focused on the use of these tools for teachers, teaching and learning. Since then introduced by Yr 10 and 11 English classes to Tweetories in English and enjoyed a brief email exchange with Prof Dylan Williams on the topic of feedback in the classroom. Twitter, or in this case Analogue providing a feedback back channel.

The second sub title proposed by Robyn Evans focused on Twitter and Social Media for school management and parental engagement. At the end of August I met with hyper-connected Assistant Headteacher @Stuartridout. During the informal meeting he used the term ‘socially enabled’ to describe his school website – covering its use of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Is this Parental Engagement? IMHO, sharing information and publicising the the inner working of the school / classroom is great exploitation of the social media, published to the world rather than ‘the corridor,’  but its only one aspect of engagement.Social media permits the sharing of information and content however tools such as  Twitter, Facebook and Youtube have yet to be re-purposed for convey the information ‘we think’ parents want about their childs education, attendance, behaviour and academic progress.

To this end, technology has already made progress, there are a number of school exploiting ’gateways,’ ‘sharepoints,’ and ‘portals’ to access data. Yet, I am still not sure that this alone constitutes engagement. What I am looking for, aspiring to, is an academic conversation about and including the learner.

The evidence for Twitter and Social Media for Professional Development is overwhelming? In fact the online conversation has  CPD from continuous professional development to constant professional development. Communities #edchat, #engchat, #lrnchat, blogs, Nings, iTunes University, NCSL, Teacherstv, Teacher forums - if anything, any new ideas will find themselves in the shade of the innovators. Classroom 2.0 for example  has over 47,000 members, Facebook literally hundreds of connected teacher conversations, school fan pages, hundreds of shared, collaborative resource focused wikis, Microsoft Learning Partners and Google Certified Teacher programme and we have not touched upon Youtube, Last.fm, Mind maps, RSS, blogs and photo sharing sites. Should teachers tweet? Should teacher use social media? If we set aside the inertia of getting started (and that is a debate in its own right) if you are not modelling learning yourself are you being an effective practitioner?

Popularity: 5% [?]

#Fail / #Success / ALT / Teaching — No Comments
2
Sep 10

Who? What? Why? When?

Who? The ALT are ‘a professional and scholarly association which seeks to bring together all those with an interest in the use of learning technology.’ So that’s me, you (you are reading this post after all) and the colleagues we engage with.

Seb Schmoller: A technology colleague whom I respect. One of the first professional blogs I followed when working in post 16 education. The first person / body to give me the opportunity to share my passion for technology with an audience. The power of wikis – The BlendEd project was presented at the ALT/QIA ‘Making e-learning work conference back in October 2007.

Morag Munro:  Head of Learning Innovation at Dublin City University and the editor of the ALT Newsletter.

What? A ‘mini series’ considering the use of  technology in schools. Short posts about the #successes and #failures of this endeavour. The focus has yet to be defined, but I expect the mini posts will include series such as…

  • Teaching with technology to smiling faces. How the use of technology  changes when the students are facing you for a change.
  • The interface of technology and teaching – teachnology.
  • How IT Services impacts on Technology uptake.
  • Moving from bruised to enthused (hopefully) – developing the use of technology from within an English Department .
  • The truth first hand: Technology from the trenches.
  • The budget (whether we like or not, it will be a topic).

Why? The ALT have a quarterly Newsletter (and of course @A_L_T) through which they share all manner of papers, conferences, articles and events. The newsletter was looking for new content. Why Kristianstill? You would have to ask the editor.

When? Now. Today and for the forthcoming academic Year.

Each year, for the past 3 years, I have record my academic and career aspirations. The teaching and IT projects and products I intend to investigate and experiment with. The courses, books and events I wish to attend and all things education. Through the year I review the progress I / we make (some aspiration require the support of the teams I work with) and  typically sum up in the summer. Today is the day.

This academic year I aim to do the same, but with a more open style, here on the blog under the ALT category. That way you can just subscribe to just that element of the blog (if you wish) with Morag will hopefully digesting and selecting any posts worthy of being published in the Newsletter. I am realistic, it may in fact be an audience of very few, but it may just be interesting for ALT members and ICT or Technology specialists to ‘piggy-back’ someone else’s journey into the trenches. In fact, it may be a relief that it is in fact, just someone else.

Popularity: 1% [?]