Showing posts with label social-network. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social-network. Show all posts

Talking about pencils...


by Pinelopi Zaka (pinelopi.zaka@gmail.com, @paz11uc)

A combination of Friday night excitement, passionate change agents, twitter and of course lots of humour: this is #pencilchat. Once again, education tweeps from all over the world united their voices in a twitter chat, but this time they added big doses of irony and sarcasm. The topic is simple and its message is deep: imagine that you living several years ago when pencils were beginning to be introduced at schools. What are the benefits? Most importantly, what are the implications for teaching, learning and schooling in general?

As much simple as this may look like for today’s world, it couldn’t be that simple back in the day... Now, replacing the word pencil with the tools of today’s world, computers, mobile devices and other innovations that still don’t have a natural place in most educational systems, this is how peculiar and funny the whole debate about using ICT in the classroom might look like in the near future.

But this is our aim as change agents after all. We want future generations to enjoy teaching and learning in an environment that is meaningful and relevant to the real world. We want them to find difficulty in understanding why there was so much debate regarding the blend of ICT in teaching and learning, just because the seamless implementation of all these tools will be a natural and undisputable thing to do for them. There will be a time that discussing about educational use of ICT will be as funny and weird as #pencilchat.

You can follow and contribute to #pencilchat anytime. The community is growing with thousands of tweets sent over the last three days! Here are some of my favourites:

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Keep sharing...



by Pinelopi Zaka (pinelopi.zaka@gmail.com, @paz11uc)
If we look into a learning organization such as a school, teachers are often encouraged to collaborate with each other to improve their practices, support one another and further develop their professional knowledge. At the next level is sharing these learning experiences that the teachers are developing within their own contexts with teachers outside their own school. The benefits are priceless, including thinking outside our little box.
As part of my M.Ed. on e-learning and digital technologies in education at the University of Canterbury, I had the opportunity to collaborate online with many teachers and other professionals that were coming from various and different contexts, sharing our ideas, experiences and reflections and of course supporting each other in our learning journey. Experiencing the value of sharing in the ‘safe’ online environment of my courses, I was further motivated and encouraged to start using other social media to extend my learning experience, connecting with even more people.
This is where I realized the important role of social media in today’s world. It’s all about sharing our knowledge, our practice, our experiences with other teachers, other professionals, in other contexts; using blogs, wikis, videos, tweets and so many other ways, depending on what better suits the individual, this is what helps us to think outside our own silos and move our thinking and practice lots of steps further.
There are countless examples of teachers and other education professionals in New Zealand and elsewhere that share their educational practices, ideas, research and other resources through blogs, wikis, twitter, podcasts etc, not concerned about keeping their materials for themselves. Acknowledging the value of sharing, they consider other professionals that can be inspired from their own practices, engage in constructive dialogue, reflect on their own contexts from different points of view, experiment with new tools and approaches.
This plays an important role in changing what it means to be a good educator. In a society where knowledge itself has lost its previous ‘glory’, as the web enables instant access to what was previously held by the experts, teachers and schools have to offer more than teaching materials; it’s not about the resources, but about inspiring others and be inspired – moving beyond knowing the facts and creating new knowledge through collaboration. Isn’t this what we want for our students? Why not for us as well then? Practicing what we preach... so keep sharing!

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Do you need a social media detox

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