I AM CONNECTED

Objective:  Demonstrate how I am connected with other educators online.

Twitter

Being a connected educator online consists of real-time conversations and longer, reflective thoughts bounced around the community.  Twitter is the most common tool currently in use amongst educators for the real-time conversations.  Though I had a Twitter account before this class, I significantly increased and improved my usage of the medium during the semester.

Usage Stats:

Fall 2015 (before this course): 11 tweets/month, 10 likes/month, 10 replies/month

Spring 2016 (during this course): 100 tweets/month, 178 likes/month, 103 replies/month

Throughout the semester, I followed new people that I continue to interact with and increased the number of people following me.  The primary increase in usage and engagement came from weekly Twitter chats through the course (#WSUCohort1) and the school district (#ByronEdChat).  A secondary surge came from the lingering responses and follow-up dialogue from those regular chats later in the week.

I also honed my ability to follow others on Twitter using a variety of tools: Tweetdeck to monitor hashtags and my main feed, Tweetchat during live chats, and mobile to respond to direct interactions throughout the week.  The combination of tools helped me be more others-centric instead of only posting when something was on my mind to share (previously my dominant approach).

Blogs

Though Twitter is essential to facilitate conversations and live interactions, 140 character-chunks do not facilitate deep thought.  Blogs are where I and many others online pull back from the speed and excitement of Twitter to process ideas and offer a more complete reflection to be shared.  Though I had been blogging for two years before this course, my monthly rate of writing new posts tripled with the added structure of assignments.

My blog, Fair Early and Often, was named after the entrepreneurial philosophy that many poorly-designed small attempts with frequent feedback will be more effective than one large well-designed attempt with minimal feedback at achieving the end goal.  When I design new things, I take time to think through my vision and goals, but after that, I just start building.  As students work through curriculum, I adjust based on their success and struggles, comments and complaints.    Though there are exceptions to this general philosophy, it tends to permeate most of my thinking, and thus makes an apt blog title.

In addition to using my own blogs to share my thoughts, ideas, and reflections with those around me, I am getting better at tuning in to the teachers around me by reading their blogs.  I used to believe that I was too busy to read what other bloggers had to say most of the year.  However, by being more selective of which blogs I follow consistently and taking advantage of my natural tendency to read email, I set up my favorite blogs to come direct to my email using either a direct subscription or the popular website IFTTT.com to turn RSS feeds into emails.  With a help of Google Now which automatically checks my Feedly account, and blog posts that are linked in Twitter, I also continue to be exposed to material that I don't regularly subscribe to.  The increased reading, writing, and commenting has been important for helping me improve project designs, rethink the purpose behind Algebra, more effectively teach functions, bring more joy and goofiness into my classroom, and other ideas that help me do a better job with my students day to day.

Reflection

Since I started teaching, I have been open to the idea of being a connected educator.  However, with all of the daily work of lesson planning, curriculum design, and working with students, I was totally exhausted and didn't prioritize any online connections.  Like anything good, a personal learning network takes time to build and takes time to learn how to use effectively to advance your classroom practice.  I don't know where the right balance should have been in those early years, but I know now that I was probably too far on the disconnected end of the spectrum.

Now, nearly five years into the classroom, my practice has matured and I need to look far beyond myself and my local team if I want to make significant improvements in how I/we teach students.  Over the years, I have steadily grown my number of Twitter followers, and have built up enough relationships within that group, to the point that I can ask nearly any question and expect to get a response throughout the day.  More importantly, I know who is passionate about what and feel like I know who to reach out to for specific ideas or feedback on a variety of new ideas.  In my network, I am a contributor, not simply a consumer -- I comment on at least 30% of the blog posts I read, looking to continue the conversation that was started by the original post writer.  I feel more confident jumping into conversations taking place in front of me when I have something to add.  I reply to open questions and feel comfortable with chats.

Going forward, I plan to continue making regular posts at a high frequency, forcing reflection to happen in more regular intervals.  The benefits of synthesizing scattered thoughts gives me the ability to move forward with new ideas and have sufficient mental closure.  Beyond my own mind, my blog has generated substantial traffic amongst my local and distant network, meaning that others are seeing my ideas and thinking about them as well.  I have excellent conversations in person with people on topics related to my blog, even with people who I had no idea would be reading it.  When others ask me tough questions or get me thinking deeper about my own ideas, I grow and improve what I am doing.

With an intense new course in the 2016-17 school year, Grand Challenge Design, I am planning to build personal learning network on multiple levels that can support my ideas, implementation, and students throughout the year.  Details are shared in this blog post.