Applied Practice in Context Activity 6 - Professional Online Networks

Applied Practice in Context Week 30 Professional Online Networks

Activity 6. My Professional Online Social Networks

Social media - Headache, Hindrance, or Helping hand?

I admit I quite like my Facebook. I like that I can connect with friends and whanau all around the world at the click of a button. Some days I find the inspirations I need in life. I am not a huge Tweeter, or TWIT as my kids tell me. I don’t have snapchat or instagram. I belong to some online professional learning networks.

I am also a bit cautious with Facebook too.

I have joined several FB groups with an education related focus. Sometimes these pages do my head in with the seemly logical and common sense type posts. The HEADACHE!

I can get caught up in what is going on in these groups and FB becomes my HINDRANCE, my tool of PROCRASTINATION! Especially around assignment deadline times.

Then along comes a post shared of something wonderful and engaging that has worked in a classroom, a link to resource or PLD that sparks my mind into creation mode for my own class. I connect through Pinterest, You Tube and blogs with professional learning, especially changing from NE’s last year. HELPING HAND.

Now that I am teaching Y8’s, I have had to learn how to use a different set of tools to use. Right now I ‘push’ learning activities out to my tauira using Hapara Dashboard, I share google docs with the groups so that they can link to the videos, learning experiences, texts, response activities, and we can all feedback to each other as comments. I get emails from tauira and their parents. This is all in it’s beginning stages, so no major impact can be seen easily right now.

One of the Innovating Pedagogy 2016 components I have started to implement is Teachback. I have asked my high achieving Maths tauira to work out how to teach me how to multiply using exponents. They have a week to come up with a teaching plan before ‘teaching me’. I am rusty on this, so the task has an authentic context. It is active and constructive learning. I will know if they know by their effectiveness to teach me. "In learning you will teach and in teaching you will learn" Phil Collins

I work in a collaborative team who plan together - we are part of a digital sharing network. Any PLD that is presented to us has been scrutinized by the Senior Leadership team. The SLT are presenting us with the vehicle to self direct our learning. Melhuish (2013) says that ‘collaboration, connection and conversation online only provides pre-conditions for professional learning’. I have to get involved myself, I need to make the change myself. The online PLD I have engaged with during the past 30 weeks has really opened my eyes and my brain to what the possibilities could be. PLD drives my Inquiry, and it is a vital component of my self-directed learning journey.

We have a school FaceBook page which is mainly used for getting messages out to the school community. Anything we want to post has to be checked, of course. As yet we don’t really know what to scope of future posting will look like.

I haven’t yet gone all in with social media in my class… mainly because I am not so confident and unsure about how it will help the tauira in my class at this point in time. Therefore, I am going to take time to set up what we will use together and seek guidance from the Digital team leaders. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.

With my Professional Learning, I belong to several VLN groups, a National Aspiring Principals Programme group, a Blended Learning group, a Literacy and Maths group. I continue to seek advice and guidance even if the PLD has been completed. I search for online PLD that can support my teaching inquiry. I value the comfort of being connected within a collaborative and supportive learning network. Fullan (2012), says that ‘people are unlikely to change if it is voluntary, and does not go deep into the learning’. At the heart of everything I do is the consideration - Will it impact on student achievement? So does my connection to social media do this?

Not yet… I have a ways to go to have social media and networking embedded in my practice.

References

Phil Collins. (n.d.). Retrieved March 13, 2017, from https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/32942-in-learning-you-will-teach-and-in-teaching-you-will

Fullan, M. (2011). Choosing the wrong drivers for whole system reform.Melbourne, Australia: Centre for Strategic Education. Retrieved fromhttp://www.michaelfullan.com/media/13436787590.html

Melhuish, K.(2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrieved on 05 May, 2015 from http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/8482/thesis.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

Sharples, M., de Roock , R., Ferguson, R., Gaved, M., Herodotou, C., Koh, E., Kukulska-Hulme, A., Looi,C-K, McAndrew, P., Rienties, B., Weller, M., Wong, L. H. (2016). Innovating Pedagogy 2016: Open University Innovation Report 5. Milton Keynes: The Open University. Retrieved from http://proxima.iet.open.ac.uk/public/innovating_pedagogy_2016.pdf