Archive for social media
- Teachers use Twitter to help Professional Development
- Companies to switch from email to twitter
- Holy Trinity of Social Networking
Teachers use Twitter to help Professional Development
Twitter, the social networking and microblogging service, has been the forum for teachers to discuss issues and topics within their profession and help with Continous Professional Development (CPD). While twitter is a 24×7 service, teachers meet online at a certain day and time and discuss a set topic with others. By including the hashtag #UKEdchat all twitter posts can be grouped to give an overview of the current discussion.
Lucy Tobin’s (@lucytobin) article ‘Twittering classes for teachers‘ provides a great introduction to the #UKEdchat group. It began when Colin Hill (@colport), a year 2 teacher at Birkdale primary school in Southport, saw US teachers tweeting about their work at a particular time every week. The UK group has formed due to the time differences between the UK and the original US group, #edchat. “The time difference made it tough to actively participate, but I was keen to attract UK educators to a similar chat session, discussing subjects and policies more related to our side of the Atlantic.” says Colin Hill.
Colin conducted an online poll to gage the best time to catch uk teachers and suggested the #ukedchat group meet online every Thursday between 8-9pm, with an overview of discussions being posted on a UKedchat blog (http://ukedchat.wordpress.com). “The impact has been amazing,” says Hill. “It’s surprising how colleagues from primary, secondary and beyond share similar issues or problems. “Each week a volunteer moderator picks five questions for a poll on the UKEdChat website. Then over the course of an hour, teachers talk around the question, sharing best practice as they go, in what has been described by one participant as “Formula 1 CPD”.
“In addition to providing advice and examples of good practice, #ukedchat can also serve as a rapid introduction to some of the most interesting education twitterers around. An hour spent in the company of these practitioners will give the novice a great many ideas as to whom they might follow for regular suggestions and advice.” says Alastair Horne.
Online Collaboration
Alastair Horne writes about his trip to a BECTA (#BectaX) conference where the discussion focused on how technology might be used to create an environment in which teachers were encouraged and rewarded for continuous learning. The discussions lead to two key positives that already existed in the teaching community;
- Teachmeets, those informal but organised meetings in which teachers share good practice, particularly with regard to using technology. Alastair states that the consensus around them, at least in the group, seemed to be that they were exceptionally useful, but that they’d be far more effective if better attended, since it was often those who would benefit most from ideas and assistance who were notable by their absence.
- The other key positive was Twitter, and the way in which it too facilitated the sharing of best practice between teachers, by allowing them to swap ideas and links to useful tools quickly and publicly. Even more than teachmeets, though, Twitter tends to be the preserve of those already at least reasonably comfortable with new technologies.
#UKedchat helps teachers keen on CPD share best practice, http://ukedchat.wordpress.com
This led to probably the most realistic suggestion: each newly-qualified teacher should be taught how to use Twitter, and given a list of tweeting teachers they might follow for advice and examples of best practice. New teachers would thus find themselves connected to good practitioners from the very start, while innovative teachers would have the opportunity to circulate their ideas beyond a sometimes small and already well-informed audience, in a kind of virtual teachmeet.
“I still get people wondering why I take part in CPD outside of normal hours, but you know what? #ukedchat and Twitter make me think a lot harder about my teaching than any course I’ve ever attended.” Ian Addison, http://ianaddison.net
“Twitter is a brilliant way of bringing innovative and inventive teachers together,” says Jackie Schneider (@jackieschneider), a primary teacher in Merton, south London. “Most schools have a really dull, top-down culture in which the senior management try to ‘manage’ learning. But on Twitter there’s a huge generosity of spirit where teachers help out complete strangers with lesson resources purely for the love of learning.” Jackie Schneider - http://poplarday.blogspot.com
Glen Gilchrist, head of science at Newport high school, says he “instantly fell in love” with UKEdChat because “schools hold their cards close to their chest and LEAs [local education authorities] are inefficient at spreading good practice“. He explains: “I have Twitter running on my laptop all the time. When faced with a question about pedagogy during an ‘out of specialism lesson’, like maths, I tweet the question and within minutes have the answer. Whether you need inspirational classroom management techniques or want to discuss Bloom’s Taxonomy, there’s always an audience at UKEdChat.”
I tweet the question and within minutes have the answer
Just because this new technology is called ‘Social Networking’ and was initally used within the public domain, doesn’t mean that it is off limits during our working environment. Through the wider positive recognition of groups such as #UKedchat and of the teachers that participate in out of hours CPD, social media can move from a technology that is restricted or alien to teachers, to a dynamic tool for learning, development and support in real time. The use of technology should not be restricted by ‘Old ways of thinking’ and institutions need to be able to adapt to future trends to fully realise the possibilities. Educators need to lead by example and learn together to create the collective, and dynamic education system of the future..
A simple network such as Twitter could transform all aspects of education as staff turnover is reduced due to real time online support, staff recruitment and team integration times are reduced as teachers may already know each other from social networks and discussion forums, improved quality of education as ideas and best practice are disseminated from a number of international sources and available in real time, the list is endless. Why treat each school as a lone education citadel when it could be part of a dynamic (international) education community?
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Filed under Companies to switch from email to twitter
Many companies utilise live internal chat applications such as Office Communicator, to reduce the number of emails sent internally. While I am quite happy to use it to fire off quick questions to people, most people simply use it as a quick guide to see if someone is in a meeting before giving them a call (as the Communicator links into Outlook calendar).
While I am happy to wait for a response that might come within a few hours, most come within a few minutes thanks to the social conditioning of existing real time chat applications. Those happy to communicate via chat will treat messages as urgently as if they were on the phone with the person. I am happy to know that I’m not filling up their email box with short questions and messages, that they have to waste time deleting.
During a conversation about “How the next generation of employees will work“, I had to admit that this generation should get up to speed and get to grips with Twitter (@SystemsFunking and @Cyberdefence 
. In the dynamic interweb 2.0 of social media and networking, email has started to feel as slow (and out dated!) as regular old, physical snail mail. There is a significant reduction in the amount of information available to employees who rely on email and standard information sources. Users can find out what is happening around the globe, but not what Sales team or Jim in the other building is up to. What is Sarah, who mostly hot desks between London and local offices currently working on?
Twitter is the bridge between real time chat and more static forms of communication such as email or forum messages. Blogs and webpages provide the delivery of static essays, forum and direct Personal Messages (PM) such as email deliver shorter content to the reader. Live chat provides instant content and situational awareness, but limited to the active participants. Twitter provides the ability to chat and update a status in real time, with the message history searchable at a later date to allow others to review and comment.
Visualise how email has enabled employees from different departments, offices and countries to quickly communicate and share ideas/resources, then imagine the same occuring a hundred times as fast!
The phone call was replaced as the main long distance form of internal company communication by email and I can see some form of Twitter replacing email. Based on the secure company network, tweets (larger than 140 chars?) could provide personal updates on tasks and projects to line managers and working groups using hash tags ( #myproject or #systemsthinking). There will always be a place for email, but I can see a place for a more connected real time corporate messaging network – even if only to reduce the amount emails!
Holy Trinity of Social Networking
The rise of social networking has been great for keeping up with friends, stalking what ex’s and old school mates are doing, and has generally lifted the need to keep in phone or IRL social contact. Since the early days of social networking we have been added/following others, sharing ever more information about ourselves and becoming more attached to our online presence.
While many will slate online social networking as a negative force, encouraging us to have superficial relationships, I have always taken the view that as we post pictures and status updates about what we’ve done, or are planning to do, others are motivated to join in activities (because they know about them) or arrange things themselves. I often ask people if they feel they do more because of social networking and the answer is more often positive (but this might be due to superficial reasons, such as updating a profile with more pictures and updates).
As most of us have an account on one form of social networking site, enough companies have paid marketing consulants that have suggested they utalise social networking, what was once a relatively private form of social expression between friends, has now become just another online public platform where you are a customer to be sold products, a potential employee to be checked, etc.
Holy Trinity of Social Networks
What do we do when our Boss, Lecturer, or Mum wants to add us? That cold sweat appears and you take a long pause as you weigh up the social faux-pas of rejecting them or the fall out that could happen if they have access to ‘those pictures’. You might spend the next hour scanning through and deleting dodgey photos or links to you profile, but you only have the one profile that now has your friends, family and work colleages – you now have a world of stress balancing and managing your contacts.
The answer is obvious, you need to completely separate your social spheres. There are usually some security settings that allow you to group contacts and set particular rules to sets, but it sounds like more work. The profiles people should think about are;
- Closed (Family)
- Searchable (Friends)
- Open (Public)
Closed Profile (Family)
This profile will have maximum security settings applied, it will not appear in searches and will be locked from public viewing. This is the most secure profile you have to communicate with close friends and/or family. Depending who you add or how you use it, you might share information freely and share all those funny pictures from holiday.
Searchable Profile (Friends)
This will be the profile you will add the majority of random links from your school days or new friends of friends that want to add you. Still locked from public viewing, and free from pesky family you might use this as your sociable profile. The odd member from your closed or public profile can be included as you want.
Open (Public)
Due to the changing nature of the internet it is advisable to have a public profile available to allow professional connections. This would be the profile you actively share and link to online. As relationships form, you can ask/transfer them to your ‘friends’ profile. While Linkedin has done well to capture the business social networking market, any public profile should be professional.
Risk Management of your online presence
- You are not special. You are not beautiful or a unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.
The saying goes that you shouldn’t post any comment or image online that you wouldn’t like to see printed in the local paper, attributed to you and read by your mum or employer. Just as chatty friends and neighbours might gossip about what you’re up to in real life, online people will link, share and tagged you in photos. To remove any risk of cross contamination between personal and professional life requires separate instances of online profile. You might want to just use linkedin for your business and facebook for social contacts, if you can make that distinction. More often we become friends with colleagues or contacts, but not to the degree that you’d like them to see your messy holiday photos or the pictures of you going to the Rocky Horror Show.
It may seem like effort when you’re used to checking one profile six times a day, but for a bit of effort you can minimise a lot of risk. You might have become attached to your profile and feel that it is an extension of you into cyberspace, but it isn’t. You might have a favourite social network, but you shouldn’t. You should be able to switch profiles and social networks with ease depending on your needs.
You are not your profile, or the social network you use….