For the past 6 weeks or so... I've been learning about Personal Learning Networks. In fact, I've also been participating in this endeavor via Web 2.0 tools. What have I learned? Well... here it goes:
Let me preface my remarks by saying that I'm not 100% committed towards using Web 2.0 tools in my profession yet. That may change as I see more & more people in our profession under the age of 40 using them more frequently than older generations of my colleagues do.
For starters, I've learned that the actual act of communicating / interacting with someone about anything personally and/or professionally via the use of Web 2.0 tools has changed how we term our relationship status. It now seems that when I interact with someone in this arena... it's part of my "Personal Learning Network". Yeah, it's a cool title, and it sounds sophisticated, just like how we're expecting each other to talk to one another these days.
While I have participated in this realm, and have learned a great deal about how people like myself have dealt with issues in our profession, I yearn for the traditional method of communicating and interacting with others in my PLN: FTF (Face To Face) or VTP (Via The Phone). Why? It's easier to gauge and engage with your colleagues. While the feedback is instantaneous, and the convenience of this is awesome, I feel that FTF and VTP are more personable to me and my colleagues. Call me fickle, but Web 2.0 Tools in today's world are making us lose our ability to communicate FTF or VTP. That is not a good thing to me and to older generations of people. We've learned how to shut on and off who we talk to via a mouse click or via a thumb tap on our cell phones. I thought that these tools were designed to make our lives easier... in some cases, they don't. It is complicated... no doubt.
Conversely, I DO like how you can be creative, innovative, informative, and enlightening with these tools towards making our careers more productive and also more rewarding towards developing our acumen.
I guess I'm like one of those hybrids... I use traditional and also new technologies to get where I'm going!
Shawn,
ReplyDeleteI personally prefer talking to people FTF too, but if we didn't have our Personal Learning Network, I wouldn't have talked to ANY of you. Plus, I don't have the time to pick up the phone and have all these professional conversations every day. I can learn from you or anyone else in my PLN any time throughout the day or night. I don't think you have to give up one for the other. It's just one more avenue.
I don't understand why you are going to wait until more people in our profession under 40 use these tools before you begin using them more. I think you don't have to wait because more people in that age group use these Web 2.0 tools than people over 40.
I have really enjoyed your honesty throughout this course.
I share some of the questions & skepticism that you express. It seems in the education field that we grasp the "next best thing" until the "next best thing" comes along six months later! I do, however, think web 2.0 tools can help bridge the communication gap between all stakeholders. I've enjoyed your comments throughout this class.
ReplyDeleteShawn,
ReplyDeleteI loved your blog post. I loved it, in part, because of the elegance and humor in your writing, but I also loved it because I have some of the same reservations. If we, as educators, are going to use Web 2.0 (or 3.0), we have to do it right. I think that doing it wrong could be more destructive than not doing it at all. I think that we have to understand that not every teacher is technologically proficient, and not every teacher is going to feel confident blogging, Twittering, and podcasting. It is imperative that we not send them whimpering to the shadows, making them marginal, but to realize that we all have limitations. I may want to rebuild the engine in my car; hit a 100 mile-per-hour fastball; and win the Nobel Prize in Economics. None of these things are likely to happen (at least not as long as I cannot balance my checkbook!) I have enjoyed communicating with you during this course, and, oh yeah, War Eagle!!
Shawn,
ReplyDeleteI am not trying to convince you why you should be using Web 2.0 tools. I want to point out that if education is going to be revelant then we as educators have no choice but to integrate these types of tools. New Internet technologies have progressed more rapidly than most people imagined. These technologies have transformed banking, commerce, travel, communications,
and many other sectors of our everyday life. As a result, these types of technologies must be in schools if for no other reason than to
prepare students for their e-future. Educational technology is also a way for students to learn to deal with the rapidly changing e-society. Our students do know a lot about technology, but some of the 21st Century skills they lack include things like ethics and how to use the technology to maximize their learning, to name a few.
Education is also viewed as essential for the continuing development of our market economy. In the 21st century, the ability to use computers and digital and Internet technologies is a critical skill. If education is the “great equalizer,” as Horace Mann put it, then it is up to us to provide access, time and direction for students to learn to use these technologies for the full range of purposes our students will pursue in school, work and in the community.
One last point I want to make is this. The reason we, as educators, should embrace these technologies is that we have to model for our students how to learn. Most of the tools we are using now might or might not be around in five or ten years.