Collaboration

Last night I took part in the #edchatnz meets #aussieEd twitter chat.  The questions were all based around collaboration and I actually found them quite challenging to respond to because of the many facets they could be applied to.  It was the second to last question that provoked quite a lot of response from my fellow educators:

Q6 What forms of collaboration have provided the deepest learning opportunities for you? #edchatNZ #aussieED #edchatNZquestion
— Danielle Myburgh (@MissDtheTeacher) October 30, 2014

It was debated whether Twitter was simply the "fire to spark collaboration" and to make connections rather than the place to fully collaborate and be critical. Then this response got me really thinking:

A6 Deep dive discussions with respected colleagues over crunchy issues that I'm dealing with right now. Meaningful & relevant #edchatnz
— KarenMelhuishSpencer (@virtuallykaren) October 30, 2014

And to be honest I have been thinking about this all day. The key word for me in Karen's tweet was the word respected.

I have mainly been thinking about this in the context of collaboration within schools. How many of us have a lot of choice about who we are paired with? Do you get to work alongside the person you respect or do you get put with someone who isn't really that interested in collaborating?

If we truly want to collaborate for positive change and critical reflection then I think it is essential that we choose our learning partners. May they be internal or external, there is room for both. I want to be able to bounce ideas off someone I know will ask questions and give feedback but also keep the momentum going not pop the balloon.

I am very lucky to have been selected to join the Virtual Learning Professional Development Programme (VLPD) for 2015. I get to be matched with a mentor and meet a whole lot of educators who, like me, want to collaborate. I hope that this becomes a place for me to discuss those "crunchy issues" and really push myself and my practice.

As for collaboration, out of a twitter discussion and a face to face meet up at ULearn, #WellyEd  has been born. The idea is for us to have our own connected educators network here in Wellington.  Again, another chance for collaboration.

Lots of exciting possibilities in my future...

Being connected

Connected Educator Month has been a smorgasbord of professional development goodness.  It has been an important event to get more people connected but it is also a great time for someone such as myself to reflect on what it means to be a connected educator.

Approximately 3 years ago I realised that my Twitter account had more potential than just being a newsfeed of culture.  Teachers were using Twitter to share ideas and connect with each other.

It seemed that teachers on Twitter were talking about the future of education.  I was able to keep up with current trends in education just by following the right people.  And by the right people I mean connected educators, for being on Twitter is an instant indication of someone who is interested and passionate about education.

I used a Evernote to store tweets and other resources. I was building up a bank of resources that I would some day need to use. Then one day, 12th July 2012 to be exact, I made contact.  I found this stored in my Evernote file. It's a conversation about a stylus with Allanah King and Anne Kenneally, both amazing educators that I continue to connect with.

And it's been full steam from there on.  Teaching tweets but also those tweets about life that connect you in other ways.  Including the #feijoafrenzy of 2013 where I introduced a whole bunch of educators to the delights of roasted whole feijoas including the lovely @mrs_hyde who then "live tweeted" the roasting.

Twitter has allowed me to follow multiple conferences without being there, be connected to information that is current and most importantly develop my #PLN (professional learning network).  Over the past 3 years I have met quite a few of these people face to face.  This in itself has been amazing.

So for me, being connected is about putting yourself out there and seeing what happens.  You have to invest your time and commitment but the reward is ten fold. Being connected means that I am never a lone nut, there is always someone "out there" to bounce some ideas off or gain inspiration from.

First steps towards digital collaboration

This week I ran a staff professional development session on how to set up a YouTube account and utilise this amazing resource.

I decided just to offer it as an after school activity for anybody that was interested. Taking the compulsory factor out of it and making it about staff making proactive choices about their own learning.  I had nearly every staff member present including our Principal!

No pressure Leanne!

My aim was to have everybody logged in and using YouTube to create playlists of resources that could then be shared with others. I found that some staff were using videos as resources already but were not using YouTube as a tool.

I had also created a Google site for the school. This holds the information from the session so that teachers can readily go back and find notes on how to do things.

One of my colleagues is a prolific user of YouTube and had never ever created a playlist before.  He was having the search the depths of his brain every time he wanted to re-watch or re-use a particular video.  In passing the next day we discussed the potential for connections and sharing within the team which then got us discussing sharing other types of resources too.  His playlists alone are going to be game-changers within the school.

And I guess that is the point I wanted to reflect on.  For me, presenting some information about how to set up a YouTube account was pretty straightforward.  As my colleagues 14yr old son said to me "so you basically taught them how to use YouTube? But that's so easy!". Well yes it is easy but actually to those who are new to the digital platform it is like reading a whole other language.  Their are new symbols along with new possibilities and I imagine the experience for some was quite overwhelming (in a good way). But what I have hopefully achieved through this small thing is opened a door towards more collaboration and sharing within the school. It may just be a very tiny opening to begin with, but I have plans in place for how to kick it open even wider.

Much kudos must go to the master of YouTube himself Jim Sill who inspired me at the GAFE summit in Auckland earlier this year. That man has so many playlists that I imagine Google created the "Ctrl f" search button just for him.