Hi Everyone;
Sorry for the late post.
First of all, I have to say that Lenora impresses me. Despite her lack of experience with technology, she is passionate enough about creating culturally-relevant anti-bullying resources for her colleagues that she is willing to consider creating a website from scratch. However, as you have all discussed already, this may not be the best route for Lenora, considering that she is new to the process and has limited bandwidth at home.
The idea of using Cradleboard as a starting point makes the most sense to me. This established learning community would be an excellent springboard for a discussion about bullying in the classroom, especially as there are probably a lot more people interested in this topic than Lenora is yet aware of.
My suggestion would be to create a social media site on Facebook where Aboriginal educators from all over North America could come together to share resources and discuss relevant issues. Ideally, Cradleboard would allow her to have a widget on their site where she could post her Facebook (FB) link and invite members to join. (A simple email request to the site’s creator could get it started.) Lenora is a very busy person and although she is committed to this process, she needs a platform that runs itself.
The other reason that I like the idea of using Facebook, is because of the importance of communication around this topic within the community. Lenora herself is aware of the importance of reflective practice and a FB community would facilitate this. Bullying is a day-to-day issue in the classroom and it would be great if educators could share their challenges and suggestions with some immediacy.
As many of you have already suggested, once Lenora is ready to post learning resources, it may be wise for her to create a wiki. It could start out as a simple text-based site, but as Lenora improves her digital-literacy skills, she could upgrade the learning assets. It would then serve as a place that she could reference on the FB page and direct people to the resources that she, and perhaps others have created. I imagine that in time, her wiki could really take off. However, I don’t think that it would ever preclude taking advantage of the immediacy and convenience of FB’s social medial platform.
Hope everyone had a nice weekend.
Kind regards,
Tanya
Reference
Porto, S. (2015). The uncertain future of Learning Management Systems. The Evolllution: Illuminating the Lifelong Learning Movement. Retrieved from http://evolllution.com/opinions/uncertain-future-learning-management-systems/
Hi Tanya,
I really like your idea of using facebook as the platform for Lenora. As so many use the site daily it would be easy for the members to keep up to date on her posts or to help each other to come up with solutions for their own schools. There is also a very good chance that Lenora is already quite comfortable with the platform. The time investment for her to get started would be very minimal. She would however have to be very careful, and warn people to be careful, with confidentiality. If posting about problems at a school and having that tied to their name, it could present some tricky situations, even if the page is private. Perhaps she should check legality with her administration and make sure that she isn’t accountable if a problem arises. I find it interesting (though possibly unrelated) that a lot of new websites being introduced, model their interface off of facebook because so much of the world is already comfortable using the platform so the learning curve on the new site is very small. Great ideas Tanya, gave me a lot to think about!
Hi Amber;
Thanks for responding to my post.
I hadn’t really thought about the confidentiality issues. You are quite right, that she’d have to seek advice when it comes to her administration’s policies. I think I am still naive in thinking that a private page would be sufficient, but as you point out, this is not always the case.
I just loved the idea of having a familiar platform for Lenora to use where educators could quickly connect without having to go the extra step to find a private wiki or blog.
Have a great week.
Kind regards,
Tanya