The Educator's Guide to Creating Connections

Tom Whitby

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781483392905
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Technology

Blogging, social media, and PLN’s made easy!

Collectively, we’re all smarter than we are individually. In this expert guide, EdTech leaders help you harness the power of connected collaboration using the Internet and social media. You’ll easily leverage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and beyond for profound professional growth. Use real-world tips and tools to:

• Master and adapt to 21st Century teaching methodologies
• Build ongoing technology literacy for you and your students
• Connect and collaborate with education leaders across the globe

Get connected. Get engaged. Use this inspiring, step-by-step manual to expand your personal and professional network today!

Chapter 1 Personalized Learning

Tom Whitby @tomwhitby

What Is Collaboration Today?

Collaboration has been with us from the time people started learning. For many people, it is the method of learning that works best for them. Historically, collaborative learning had its limitations. For the most part it could only take place in face-to-face encounters. The collaborative parties needed to be in the same location at the same time for collaboration to be most effective. I am sure that there were successful collaborative efforts that took place through the mail, or over telephone lines, but that was costly in both time and money. The real game-changer, however, came with the advance of the Internet and social media applications (apps).

Technology has allowed us to bypass the boundaries of time and space, so that we can now collaborate anywhere in the world at almost any time with consideration of global time zones. Face-to-face applications like Apple Facetime, Skype, and Google Hangout allow collaborators to view each other, as well as source materials, for collaboration. Google Drive enables real-time collaborative editing of documents, spreadsheets, graphs, and diagrams, so that several collaborators may work on the same document simultaneously in real-time collaboration.

With the element of collaboration now so seamlessly woven into the fabric of learning through technology, it becomes more than just a consumption of content. Learning becomes a collaborative creation of content, which is also shared out with others. We no longer need to seek out that one educated individual who serves as a content expert, whose purpose is to fill our empty vessel with knowledge that he or she determines we may need. We can find and join many people to work together in creating the very content that we specifically need. We take control of our own learning. It becomes a group effort in sharing content that begins to fill that empty vessel, and not only do we get partake of our own learning, we also get to direct it.

Why Should I Collaborate?

It is through collaboration that we can personalize our learning to meet our needs using connected colleagues as sources for our learning. A connected colleague would be someone we connected to through social media, or it could be a face-to-face connection as well. These people become members of our personal or professional learning network. After several years of using this term, I now call it my personalized learning network (PLN). What I love about collaboration is that in a room full of smart collaborative individuals, the smartest one there is the room itself. Collectively, we are all smarter than we are individually. That is the power behind collaborative learning. We can direct our learning to whatever it is we determine we need to know, personally or professionally. An advantage of collaboration is exposure to the experience and knowledge of others. We don’t know what it is that we don’t know. Sharing experiences gives us access to the learning of others, who provide their experiences to expand our knowledge.

With Whom Should I Collaborate?

In order to reap the benefits of collaborative learning, one must first develop a network of collegial sources. Teachers already have established collegial sources in their departments, schools, and districts. For whatever number of colleagues as one may have “in house,” that number is dwarfed by the potential number of global connections. Many of the people available through the Internet include the very thought leaders, authors, bloggers, and lead learners that are driving education discussions around the world. In creating this network, each individual selects the people with whom he or she wants to connect. Select the best people in order to get the best results. Good people are vocal, articulate, informed, involved, and most importantly have a collaborative spirit. Titles are secondary to ideas. Just because a person is a superintendent of a school district, a director, or a principal, that does not ensure that she or he has great ideas in education. Many educators have a mindset that dwells in the 20th century. Moving backward does not work well when we are educating kids for their future. Great ideas come from many individuals, and some may not have titles or degrees.

Warning: Do Not Get Overwhelmed!

With an understanding of why we should connect with others for collaboration, we need to now get into how to do it. This is the part where many people have trouble. It requires the use of technology, a scary proposition for many. Do not be overwhelmed by the overview of how to connect presented in this book, and especially by those overviews given by enthusiastic (sometimes overachieving) connected educators. This can be daunting if you believe that it will all happen in a day. Becoming connected and developing a collaborative mindset are processes, not the result of reading a book. It will take time. You need to do one or two things well, and then move on to the next one or two. The worst advocate for being a connected educator is a connected educator. They scare people with their extensive lists of connected accomplishments.

And in the end it comes down to you—the user—the teacher. You live and teach in an amazing time. And your students learn in an amazing time. Using these new tools can seem like more work at times. Sometimes things won’t work the way you want. But that is true of traditional teaching methods too.

Collaborative people are found everywhere on social media. For most educators, entry into the world of social media was for the sole purpose of collaboration. It has been my experience that many, if not most, educators feel a moral obligation to share ideas. It is part of the makeup of an educator. They are collaborative, if not by nature, by a lifetime of learning and sharing as a student and then as a teacher.

Education blogs are a great source of connections for educators. Commenting supportively on blogs develops relationships, encouraging further connections. Conversing and commenting with educators on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Pinterest can yield contacts with any number of educators who will add great value to your network. On apps like Twitter, educators frequently recommend good educators to follow and connect. There are sites like Facebook and LinkedIn that host education discussions and education groups. These are also sources for connections. A collaborative educator on social media begins to look for opportunities to connect and develop relationships with other interested educators.

Becoming connected and developing a collaborative mindset are processes, not the result of reading a book.

How Do I Develop a PLN for Collaboration?

The key to directing authentic, collaborative learning for professional and personal development is to establish a PLN. Each PLN is unique to its owner. Since each network is made up of individuals that the owner determined would help in her or his personal learning, each of those PLN members is a personal choice. Additionally, access to those individuals can come from a myriad of applications that the collaborators share. Consequently, whom we connect with and how we connect with him or her forces each PLN to be unique to each owner. This makes for truly personalized learning.

There is one application however that is shared by most connected educators: Twitter. Educators have taken Twitter beyond the use that was envisioned by its creators. It has become more than just a whimsical sharing of social experiences. It enables educators to share in a concise form the information most needed for collaboration. Documents, articles, posts, videos, podcasts, websites, discussions, photos, diagrams, spreadsheets, and just ideas can all be instantly shared either individually or globally.

How Do I Get Started With a PLN?

For most connected educators, Twitter has become the backbone of the PLN. It is the primary source used to share information and content. There are Twitter strategies for increasing the number of connections to one’s PLN through recommendations from other educators. Twitter can be used to direct traffic to any site an individual wants to share.

I often tell people that trying to teach Twitter by explaining it is similar to trying to teach swimming in a gymnasium. One needs to get into the pool to learn to swim, as much as one needs to be on Twitter in order to learn how to tweet. The beauty of learning about Twitter while using it is that there are many people on Twitter who will extend themselves to help you along.

The concept of Twitter is simple: One shares things using up to 140 characters in a text message called a tweet. All users on Twitter follow (are connected to) people and in turn have people follow (be connected to) them. It does not need to be reciprocal. People could be followers without having to be followed back. Simply stated, the only people who will read your tweets will be the people who follow you. If you have 10 followers, your tweets will go only to them. If any of those 10 people put out a tweet, you will see it only if you are following them as well. If you are not following them, you will not see their tweets. You may follow or unfollow anyone at any time. There are no notifications sent to those whom you unfollow. Every tweet you send out is received by only your followers, but tweets may also be accessed by the public, since they are displayed on your Twitter profile. This requires a knowledge of getting around in Twitter, but it is easily done. You must be thoughtful about what you tweet.

The only private message is a direct message (DM). You can send a DM to those who you follow only if they, in turn, follow you as well.

Following people is how you build a valuable PLN. If you follow people that you value in education, then you will build a valuable PLN. If you follow entertainers, sports folks, friends, and cousins, then your network becomes something different from a PLN.

My Twitter handle is @tomwhitby. I use my name because I am using Twitter professionally, and people need to know who I am. Some educators select pseudonyms for Twitter. My Twitter profile explains who I am as an educator, and has my avatar, the displayed picture or animation used to identify the tweeter. I want people to see that I am a professional so that they follow me knowing I am there for education. I check out other’s profiles before I follow them to make the same determination.

Going to people’s profiles enables you to see the types of tweets they send out. You will also have access to folks that they follow as well as lists they may have made to categorize those that they follow. These are all sources for you to follow, building your PLN. Another great source for follows would be education bloggers whom you find insightful. Most bloggers have “Follow Me on Twitter” buttons on their sites for an easy follow.

Education chats are a very big part of the Twitter culture. There are hundreds of chats or real-time discussions taking place on Twitter daily (Google search: education chat schedule). Entering into these chats not only expands learning but also offers up more valuable people to follow for further engagement and collaboration. These chats are followed through the use of hashtags (#).

Hashtags extend the range of a tweet. One of the most common education hashtags is #Edchat. Educators will attach it at the end of a tweet to alert people that it is an education worthy tweet. If a tweeter has 10 followers, then her or his tweets go to only 10 people. When the #Edchat hashtag is added to a tweet, that tweet travels to thousands of educators who follow the hashtag #Edchat. This exposes the tweeter to more potential followers. It is also possible to do hashtag searches, or create a column to follow specific hashtags.

The very best way to build up a following of educators is through the use of the retweet (RT). When a really smart tweet appears in your timeline, you can tweet it out again as a retweet. It then is shared with people following you. It credits the original tweeter as well as you. The power of the RT is that if you concentrate on retweeting really smart or valuable tweets, people assume you, the retweeter, are really smart and want to follow you.

There are several applications other than Twitter that will enable better organization of tweets that may interest you. Tweetdeck and Hootsuite both allow the creation of columns to follow specific individuals, groups, or hashtags. The mobile versions of these apps seem far less efficient than the desktop versions.

These are the basics of Twitter. Once an educator is using Twitter, the very people that are followed become mentors. It is again all part of that collaborative mindset. Once they join Twitter, most people lurk for a short period of time, learnin...