Image (cc) kristineinindonesia on Flickr
In my current role in a City learning Centre, I have ample opportunity to meet and discuss ideas with enthusiastic, techno orientated teachers. They share ideas that sometimes lack the access to the necessary technology or have a bare bones idea but don’t know where to find the appropriate Web 2.0 site that will enable them to use it with kids. Sometimes, they are so inspired by the technology we have, they instantly and creatively think of ways to apply it in the classrooms. Of course this also happened in the past 5 schools I have taught at, but these edu-technologists were mere islands in the staffroom. Myself included.
Change is in the air thanks to predominant uses of certain web sites. It’s not that the web sites themselves are new (Facebook, Twitter and Google Wave more recently), just that the saturation point has reached a critical level that communication networks have arisen, grown and developed. In the case of Facebook, it is now easy to find former teaching colleagues and students and make social links. As a useful tool though, I think it is limited (for instance, communication only takes place with people I ‘know’ or ‘know me’). Twitter on the other hand marries the best aspects of the asynchronous communication with a potentially global network – yes, there are limits (users can choose to ignore you!) but a meritocracy of comments, resource sharing and interconnectivity can develop. Google Wave has the potential to add synchronous communication to this list as well as maps, video and other multimedia. It seems rather closed at present though.
The Twitter ‘edu-technologists’ have grown as a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) that participate in repeat interactions, form emotional ties and shared collaborative activities. Members share resources via shortened hyperlinks or personal blogs and have a system that determines how they can be used (such as creative commons licensing).
‘The ebb and flow of messages expressing new ideas, comments, reactions, jokes, reflections, suggestions, keeps the community engaged and draws out new people, as well as encouraging others to return.’ (Preece, 2000)
As a thriving online community, certain education ‘tribes’ have developed that include face-to-face (f2f) physical contexts. There are arguments for the joining together of these disparate groups (see Leon Cych’sThe UK Education Tribes and why they should join together to effect real change) in order to create a mutually beneficent CPD programme. Social presence (Short, 1976) adds value to the 140 characters of Twitter in groups like Ed- Tech Round Up (ETRU) and the highly successful TeachMeets. Both of which are essentially online learning communities, sharing all characteristics outlined by Palloff and Pratt (1999).
#movemeon – crowd sourced from Twitter available in print from lulu.com for £12.25 or free download from e-book link above.
It is interesting also that the limitations of the 140 characters of Twitter also form part of it’s strength (brevity, less space for egotistical waffle) and develop it’s own CoP creative output (see for example, #movemeon – a crowd sourced book created by the Twitter edu-technologists for new teachers, each comment being 140 characters or less).
Observational Participation
As in the title of this post, No One an Island, I believe in active participation in the online communities I have briefly discussed. My contribution to a joint ETRU/TM session is documented in another post on this blog and I frequently follow ETRU online discussions (asynchronously) and live web casts of TeachMeet events. I contributed several articles to the #movemeon book and have been a co-organiser of a TeachMeet f2f session at my CLC. The overwhelming responses of participants are of value, purpose, effectiveness and appropriate communication. Do people feel confident to challenge and question as well as listen and learn? I hope to find this out by micro-interviewing participants in the forthcoming TeachMeet at the CLC.
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Posted by damoward 
