It is particularly strange for me to realise that I am becoming a globally connected educator because until last Halloween I had never been active on social networks nor had I imagined that I would have enough to say as an educator to warrant building my own website. The real reason I joined Twitter is that there were other Eoin Lenihans out there and I wanted to take control of my own digital footprint so that my student teachers at the University of Augsburg and potential employers would not confuse me for another Eoin. It was only after I had joined that I realised the massive potential Twitter offered in giving my student teachers an authentic audience and a platform to feel as though what we created in the classroom had the potential to make an impact on some classroom somewhere in the world. I wanted to share some of my personal highlights of being a connected educator. This post is in part inspired by @s_bearden and @mrkempnz’s recent discussion on the theme on the @BAMRadioNetwork which you can listen to here.
Becoming a connected educator has been the most exciting chapter in my education career so far. However, getting there takes time. I set up my website and Twitter account over Halloween weekend in 2014. For the first month I struggled to get more than 10 followers. It was hard putting out blog posts that I knew no one would read but I just looked at it as completing my digital apprenticeship. The hardest part of these early days on Twitter was when I realised that there are a lot of supposed educators on Twitter who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time searching for new users to harvest for higher follower figures so that they can cement their place as “influencers” on the site. These people are not hard to identify; they follow you this week and drop you next week so that you are left listening to them but they are not interested in hearing your thoughts. It is cynical stuff and it negatively impacted my view of Twitter to begin with. It was only when I realised the power of chats that I finally discovered the real potential of Twitter. By becoming a regular contributor to several education chats I built up a Professional Learning Network (PLN) of people that I knew directly. I was proud to have them in my followers' list and I knew that by following them I would have high-quality and relevant information in my Twitter stream each day.
The chats taught me the value of managing my #PLN. I join chats that suit my professional interests and I only add those people that I can learn from and those that I know I can depend upon to respond if I need their expertise or feedback in the classroom. If you are new to Twitter you can rely upon @shyj @mrkempnz @Jen___williams, to name just a few, who will follow back and guide you as you find your way. In this post, I give practical tips on getting the most out of Twitter and suggest some great chats for you to join.
My PLN has had a very real effect on how I teach and it has helped me develop as an educator.
1. This past Friday (June 3rd 2015) Howard Pitler of McREL in Denver Colorado joined my seminar on Evidence-Based Teaching (EBT) via Skype. As a group we had discussed the theoretical elements of EBT but Howard was able to give students a depth of insight gleaned directly from thousands of studies and practical examples that I simply could not. The students left the seminar with a very real understanding of EBT and they felt more energised by having spoken directly to an expert in the field.
Becoming a connected educator has been the most exciting chapter in my education career so far. However, getting there takes time. I set up my website and Twitter account over Halloween weekend in 2014. For the first month I struggled to get more than 10 followers. It was hard putting out blog posts that I knew no one would read but I just looked at it as completing my digital apprenticeship. The hardest part of these early days on Twitter was when I realised that there are a lot of supposed educators on Twitter who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time searching for new users to harvest for higher follower figures so that they can cement their place as “influencers” on the site. These people are not hard to identify; they follow you this week and drop you next week so that you are left listening to them but they are not interested in hearing your thoughts. It is cynical stuff and it negatively impacted my view of Twitter to begin with. It was only when I realised the power of chats that I finally discovered the real potential of Twitter. By becoming a regular contributor to several education chats I built up a Professional Learning Network (PLN) of people that I knew directly. I was proud to have them in my followers' list and I knew that by following them I would have high-quality and relevant information in my Twitter stream each day.
The chats taught me the value of managing my #PLN. I join chats that suit my professional interests and I only add those people that I can learn from and those that I know I can depend upon to respond if I need their expertise or feedback in the classroom. If you are new to Twitter you can rely upon @shyj @mrkempnz @Jen___williams, to name just a few, who will follow back and guide you as you find your way. In this post, I give practical tips on getting the most out of Twitter and suggest some great chats for you to join.
My PLN has had a very real effect on how I teach and it has helped me develop as an educator.
1. This past Friday (June 3rd 2015) Howard Pitler of McREL in Denver Colorado joined my seminar on Evidence-Based Teaching (EBT) via Skype. As a group we had discussed the theoretical elements of EBT but Howard was able to give students a depth of insight gleaned directly from thousands of studies and practical examples that I simply could not. The students left the seminar with a very real understanding of EBT and they felt more energised by having spoken directly to an expert in the field.
2. Earlier in the day in this same seminar, as we were discussing the importance of effective note-taking, I tweeted out to my PLN for practical examples of how they encourage students to take notes in their classrooms. The feedback was instant. Within minutes my student teachers in Augsburg, Germany had practical examples of how to engage students in note-taking from educators in New Zealand, Singapore, several corners of the USA and Australia. Students were given an immediate overview of note-taking habits across the globe and we were given practical artefacts to deepen our discussion.
3. In a seminar on Internationally-Minded education some weeks ago we welcomed @Jen___williams into our classroom via Skype. She gave an inspiring interactive chat to our students on how to use technology to establish global connections. She spoke to the students about the importance of Twitter and walked them through the process of signing-up and the basics of how to use it. Out of this chat, two students, @kesselpa and @MCFZW, became particularly engaged with Twitter and decided to co-found Germany’s first student-led Twitter education Chat - #FutureEdChat - alongside Jennifer and myself.
4. On a personal level, my practice has benefitted greatly from Twitter. Thanks to my partnership with @Jen___Williams, I was recently able to speak at the “Superior Tech for Teachers” conference in Florida via Skype on the architecture of the classroom - see it here. It is a theme I hope to expand upon when I facilitate my first solo Twitter chat - #ArchLearn - @EdCampGlobal on August 1st 4pm CTZ / 9pm GMT. These opportunities would not have happened without being globally connected and more importantly, as facilitating a twitter chat can be a daunting prospect, it could not have happened without the support and practical advice of my PLN, particularly Jenn and @mrkempnz, both of whom walked me through the process of facilitating.
An important element in becoming a connected educator has been maintaining a blog. It is here I can expand on those Twitter chats that I find particularly interesting or where I think I can offer practical support and resources to my PLN. Choosing to begin a blog is daunting. When I began I set myself some guidelines:
1. I would only blog once a week so as to value quality over quantity.
2. I would write about what I know in the hope that it might help others.
3. I would use my blog as a means of giving my students a voice and promote their learning outcomes.
I have been involved in Twitter chats where educators ask how to begin blogging. I would simply say: Just do it. Do not worry about how long a post should be or what themes you should write about. You will find this all comes once you begin. At first I wrote about what I was interested in but I found that I was being a little too niche. I was writing about topics that were of interest to German public school teachers but it quickly became apparent that there was not a lot of interest in that, chiefly because there are not a lot of German public school teachers on Twitter. What I did was evolve. For example, rather than look at solutions to #EdTech problems in the German classroom, I simply wrote in general about tech problems in classrooms. I quickly found that teachers all around the world had similar problems. Because I use Twitter to advertise my blog, I quickly grew aware of what my PLN was interested in reading about and I responded to that mandate. My most enduringly popular post has been this one on educators getting the most out of Twitter. It is very rewarding to know that this has been shared in staff meetings and used in Professional Development globally. It is the blogging process that has most clearly marked my evolution into a globally-connected educator. When I track the evolution of my blog, I am in essence tracking my journey from being a nationally-minded educator to being an internationally-minded one.
The most satisfying outcome of maintaining a blog has been giving my student teachers exposure to a global network of educators. All of our student work is posted online on our website which we keep updated through regular blogs. Just as I began my journey to becoming a globally-connected educator as a means of controlling my digital footprint, I hope that through my blog and website my students will be encouraged to go global also. Even if they do not, they are guaranteed that when they sit in a job interview for their first teaching position they will have a positive digital footprint that showcases their teaching abilities.
My advice for any teacher that is new to Twitter is this: keep Tweeting even if you think no one is listening, blog even if no one hears. Be positive when you Tweet, manage your PLN and when you have amassed followers, give a voice to those who still have only 10 followers by Retweeting.
An important element in becoming a connected educator has been maintaining a blog. It is here I can expand on those Twitter chats that I find particularly interesting or where I think I can offer practical support and resources to my PLN. Choosing to begin a blog is daunting. When I began I set myself some guidelines:
1. I would only blog once a week so as to value quality over quantity.
2. I would write about what I know in the hope that it might help others.
3. I would use my blog as a means of giving my students a voice and promote their learning outcomes.
I have been involved in Twitter chats where educators ask how to begin blogging. I would simply say: Just do it. Do not worry about how long a post should be or what themes you should write about. You will find this all comes once you begin. At first I wrote about what I was interested in but I found that I was being a little too niche. I was writing about topics that were of interest to German public school teachers but it quickly became apparent that there was not a lot of interest in that, chiefly because there are not a lot of German public school teachers on Twitter. What I did was evolve. For example, rather than look at solutions to #EdTech problems in the German classroom, I simply wrote in general about tech problems in classrooms. I quickly found that teachers all around the world had similar problems. Because I use Twitter to advertise my blog, I quickly grew aware of what my PLN was interested in reading about and I responded to that mandate. My most enduringly popular post has been this one on educators getting the most out of Twitter. It is very rewarding to know that this has been shared in staff meetings and used in Professional Development globally. It is the blogging process that has most clearly marked my evolution into a globally-connected educator. When I track the evolution of my blog, I am in essence tracking my journey from being a nationally-minded educator to being an internationally-minded one.
The most satisfying outcome of maintaining a blog has been giving my student teachers exposure to a global network of educators. All of our student work is posted online on our website which we keep updated through regular blogs. Just as I began my journey to becoming a globally-connected educator as a means of controlling my digital footprint, I hope that through my blog and website my students will be encouraged to go global also. Even if they do not, they are guaranteed that when they sit in a job interview for their first teaching position they will have a positive digital footprint that showcases their teaching abilities.
My advice for any teacher that is new to Twitter is this: keep Tweeting even if you think no one is listening, blog even if no one hears. Be positive when you Tweet, manage your PLN and when you have amassed followers, give a voice to those who still have only 10 followers by Retweeting.
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