After reading the first two chapters, I am finding a couple of things. One thing is how much things have changed since my first teaching experience in 1983. As fast as technology is changing now, I think I have learned more in the last 5 years than in all the years before. I wonder what changes those of you who are just beginning your careers will see. Will you be fighting to keep blogs and twitter accounts like some of us veterans are fighting to keep our paper copies instead of going digital? And now I want to keep a laptop instead having to do everything on my iPad too.
I feel fortunate that in Missouri, we have a very strong state business education department that is an extremely useful network of teachers. Our listserv keeps us connected daily. We share articles, websites, resources and use it daily to ask questions of other teachers around the state. Today I connected with another teacher about course offerings and curriculum that we are both working on for next year. Our state supervisor does an amazing job of connecting with us through her blog and twitter account to share resources and information about our discipline. This network is great because not only do we use technology to communicate but it is great to finally meet people at the conferences that you feel like you already know.
The tools discussed in Chapter 2 (that we are all quickly learning to use) can provide so much information. I checked the copyright of the book which is 2011 and find it interesting how even since then, Twitter has become more of the communication tool of choice for my high school students. I think they even use it more than Facebook now. Since I have set up my twitter account, it has spread all over school that I have the account! They want to follow me but I am setting my account to private. I am trying to explain to them that I can get to all of their tweets and so can anyone else. I can tell I am going to have to spend time teaching the proper way to use these tools for learning. After setting up my Diigo account last semester - I love having the lists and organization. I guess based on the length of this post, I am kind of getting into the idea of blogging. I feel like I am just "getting started" and I know that I am "jumping in". As fast as technology is changing, if you are not a lifelong learner, you may be left behind.
You are right! Educating our students about safe practices with their technology, even when it is used outside of school, is imperative. It is also important to protect ourselves by ensuring we have chosen wisely with our privacy settings as well as with our postings. I certainly don't want to be left behind, and I continue searching for new ways to learn and keep up-to-date with technology, but I certainly want to keep safe and make good choices to role model expectations.
ReplyDeleteWorking part-time in Illinois, I'm not familiar with whether we have a similar support structure over here; but it sounds a very worthwhile system. And you're right about Facebook and Twitter, we think we're so cutting-edge now, but who knows what is about to come along and replace them. We better be ready!
ReplyDeleteI'm still a member of the Missouri business education listserv too. I like to stay connected even though I'm not a business ed teacher anymore.
ReplyDeleteI know you are apprehensive about keeping your Twitter account public, but I really wish you would consider opening it up. Using Twitter with your students can be a great communication tool. Twitter is the preferred social network with teenagers right now, so why not use that tools they like? Maybe you will become more comfortable with it after you spend some time using Twitter in this course. Happy tweeting and blogging! Hope you are having a good weekend.
I know the students are obsessed with Twitter, but as an archdiocesean employee I am only supposed to communicate with my students through my school accounts. I talked with our school president and was told that my Twitter account should not be available to students. I emailed our class and several have already requested and have been accepted as followers. So I hope that will work.
DeleteI did get my parents moved back home and set up their house. They had been gone since August. I just hope this works for them and I'm not moving them back next week.
That will work. I understand employers have certain rules. Your school president is going to have to be open to change in the future and start thinking differently!
DeleteI completely agree that teachers must continue to learn or they will get left behind! It seems like every month there is something new or different and if you do not make an effort to keep up, you will miss out! Our students seem to pick up on new technologies so quickly and they can be a great resource and help when trying to figure out some new piece of technology. There have been several times when I have been taught how to use a piece of technology by my students -- they can be great teachers when given the chance!
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