My Reflection

During the past two years I was given the distinct pleasure of being seconded to the District Office to work as a Technology Mentor. Although I have since moved on from that role, I often reflect on my role as an educator of educators. My role was comprised of working on implementing new initiatives, doing class sessions at various schools, as well as developing and administering professional development workshops for teachers.

One of my favourite topics was a sessions I constructed on demonstrating twitter for teachers, and how they can implement it in their practice. Due to time constraints, this was often squeezed into short one-hour sessions during staff meetings or during professional development days.

As you can see below I have included the original link to my twitter for teachers 30 minute Lync Conference. In it I go over the basics of twitter use and introduce specific concepts that teachers can use in their own practice. Nevertheless, as you will see, it was a very didactic approach with no preactivity to gauge and probe for understanding, an no follow up for teachers to continue the dialogue or engage in meaningful dialogue with each other to build new knowledge.

In redesigning the lesson, I knew I needed to engage my participants more and start to probe for their understanding of the content before starting any instruction. I have done this a number of times, and the one area that is always in the back of my head is whether or not I am using dialogue or language that is above, or below my audience.

I decided to follow the problem based learning approach as described by Savery and Duffy (1995), but additionally kept in mind the conceptual change model as well (Posner et al, 1982). The topic of social media in schools can be a very controversial one; therefore, I felt that starting the workshop by getting the participants to post their thoughts and ideas about its use in schools would be a great way to see what exposure they have to this concept.

My main objective for the new workshop wasn’t just to show the participants what twitter was, but to give them a broader sense of how social media, the concerns that come with using it, as well as the benefits of using it as an educator in the 21^st century.

The first part of this workshop lays the groundwork for the whole session. If the participants don’t see the value of this tool in their own practice, they won’t be interested in discovering the features and functions of this social software. Introducing them to a thought leader in the world of technology and showing them a brief clip by Jesse Hirsh on how he feels about open data, and using social sites is sure to elicit certain feelings and beliefs in the participants that watch it. As Jesse contends, he is choosing to lead a moral life and as such isn’t worried about his footprint, however, prospective employers, corporations, judges and lawyers having access to this information is definitely a controversial topic.

My hope as a facilitator is to demonstrate that these sites have the potential to be very harmful to those that use it. Additionally, I included the one on one interview with Andrew Keen to highlight the point that although there are dangers, there are a lot of benefits to use this tool as a method of communication and self promotion in today’s knowledge economy. Finally, I decided to post an article I previously wrote and crafted for my teachers associations newsletter. In this article, I gave suggestions for how it can be used, as well as provided an example of a high school teacher that used it for a writing activity.

The purpose of this stage was to expose beliefs. These three selections all elicit different ideas and beliefs that can be explored by the participants. This allowed them to share their ideas before they actually got to collaborate together and use twitter themselves in the fourth activity.

The most difficult aspect of this session would be in the hangout on air. Demonstrating the site and its features and functions is important; nevertheless, collectively getting the students to craft a tweet using the #edchat hashtag would be a challenging and interesting experience. This would be a done to ensure they know exactly how to post a tweet, as well as the components that contribute to a good tweet.

Getting the students to then explore this site themselves and post their own tweets would hopefully provide a stimulus for them to modify what they learned and confront some of their beliefs by viewing the discussions on various hashtag conversations. Once they went through a few examples and saw some the various links and resources, I believe a lot of them would be challenging their preconceptions of this tool and they can integrate it.

Finally, directing the participants to post their ideas for either integrating twitter or not integrating twitter in their practice would be a good way to accommodate the new concepts they just learned. It would be a great way to foster debate and get them to summarize what they learned as well as argue its merits as an educational tool.

I have run this workshop more times then I can count, but I finally feel that I have crafted a session that will actually give educators something to walk away with. Implementing the CIM model and following the CCM phases has transformed this into something that has some real value.

References:

Posner, G.J, Strike, K.A, Hewson, P. W & Gertzog, W.A (1982). Accommodation of a scientific conception: Toward a theory of conceptual change. Science Education. 66(2), 211-227

Driver, R., & Oldham, V. (1986). A constructivist approach to curriculum development in science. Studies in Science Education 13, 105-122.

Savery, J. R., & Duffy, T. M. (1995). Problem Based Learning: An Instructional Model and its Constructivist Framework. Educational Technology 35(5), 31-38.

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