1.When I began
this course my personal learning network consisted of Facebook friends, and the followers of my church blog www.hallmemorialcme.blogspot.com.
In the course of this course I’ve created a new blog, A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
and created a twitter account. I also
created a podcast, but I’d been podcasting on a weekly basis through www.hallmemorialcmechurch.podbean.com
.
I’ve learned about a number of educational blogs, twitter
accounts, podcasts, and other professional learning network opportunities. My awareness has grown of how mind-bogglingly diverse are the opportunities
to interact with educators whom I’ve never actually met. That has been intriguing, encouraging,
slightly intimidating, and very, very cool.
My plan is to expand the use of A Word to the Wise, and twitter.
In particular I’ll be blogging
about RtI and my idea for re-conceptualizing the principles of the
pyramid.
2. In Elmore
County schools, the policies on social networking range and fluctuate from a
total ban to open season. The biggest challenge
to incorporating social networking tools is the apprehension some have with the
technology tools and legitimate concerns that they’ll be misused.
As this course has delineated some of the approaches and
uses of social networking, I’ve come to believe that the best approach to
policing the use of social networking is to ignore the technological aspects of
social networking.
Yes, that is what I meant to say.
Technologies emerge, trend, disappear, and evolve too
rapidly for any school system to say what technologies are and are not
worthwhile. Some school boards just got
around to writing policies on MySpace usage.
. Besides, it isn’t the tech that’s
the problem. It’s the content in the post and the context of the upload that really
matter.
I’ll use my blog to promote a tech-blind policy. Forget about chasing brand names. (It’ll be 2015 before most anybody’s district
policy mentions Instagram.) Focus on the content of posts regardless of the
medium.
There are certain kinds of things that a teacher should
never ever say in any kind of recorded, repeatable, or public medium. So, when Mrs. Soandso calls little Johnny “a whiny
little butt-munch whose white trash parents should just hitch to a plow because
he sure can’t pull his weight in algebra class,” the administrator in charge of
her formal reprimand won’t have to decide whether she posted, tweeted, blogged,
texted, emailed, painted it on a t-shirt, or wrote it on post-it note that’s
pinned to the bulletin board in the teachers’ lounge. The administrator only needs to determine
that the statement made its way from Mrs. Soandso’s head and into the ears or
eyes of the general public. That kind of content is unacceptable for a
public conversation, regardless of the technical means by which it became
public.
Context of the upload is the other consideration of a
tech-blind social networking policy. Again,
regardless of the means, if the activity involves the teacher transmitting information
to persons outside of the classroom when the teacher is supposed to be
supervising within the classroom, then the teacher is wrong. The A.P. need to much concern himself/herself
with whether the teacher was sending personal emails instead of monitoring the
progress of students doing research, texting his/her spouse when he/she should
have been listening to group presentations, uploading photos to facebook
instead of making sure kids weren’t making out during the classroom movie, or venting
about a friend in his/her diary instead of posting attendance. If the information was transmitted when the
teacher should have been doing something else, then for those moments of
transmission the teacher was negligent of his/her duties.
Of course content and /or context could also absolve a
teacher. If the post was to the class’s
blog, if the text was a digital “note to
your mother,” or if the status update
was a “3rd period is awesome” on the class facebook page parents
follow throughout the day, then despite the use of technology, the content and
context was completely appropriate and relevant to legitimate instructional ends.
With a reasonable policy in place, educators would be able
to find the collaborative uses that are content and context appropriate and
instructionally beneficial to them.
3.I also see the
new blog and professional learning network as a means for educating parents
about parenting. I want to engage
parents, especially parents of unsuccessful students in real conversation about
some harsh realities and real solutions.
It’s been difficult to use the traditional/ real-life parent conference
format. The parents of the “worst” kids
don’t generally join the PTA, and the typical parent-teacher organization isn’t
exactly a good format for frank discussion.
I’ll be developing a PLN that serves that purpose.
Through my PLN I will be able to say what my administrative
colleagues who still occupy a school office can’t say but oh so desperately
want to. I want to give voice to
assistant principals who bite their tongues when what they want to say would
really help but isn’t, professionally speaking, “their place to say.” The PLN will be their place to say. That may even be the name of a feature, “My
Place to Say.”
When you have finished your blog post, post the URL of your
blog in the class wiki so that your colleagues and facilitator can respond.
- Anderson T. Graves II
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