Literature Review
Literature Review
Rather, we have learned from our work with teachers making their practices public that the most powerful result of going public with teaching is a new kind of conversation about teaching. -Lieberman & Mace, 2010
Amanda tried to (unsuccessfully) inspire her staff to use Twitter almost two years prior. HTeNC was brand new, with a small staff of ten, and Amanda was a new school leader. She figured if she could get everyone to create profiles and start tweeting, the teachers would realize the power of Twitter and be hooked instantly. They would make our work visible for each other, parents and the community. Amanda planned out a professional development session in which the entire staff would tinker with Twitter and create an account. During the session, each staff member dutifully created an account. A couple teachers tweeted that day and a few after. Most accounts remained dormant. Their work together as a group stalled. The National Education Technology Plan calls for educators to improve learning through “connected teaching” and “connect to content, expertise, and activities through online communities” (Office of Educational Technology, 2010, p. 42). The value of Twitter remained, but we needed to restructure our supports so more teachers would get involved.
There is a grassroots movement toward teacher-directed professional development through their own curated Professional Learning Networks via Twitter (Lieberman and Mace, 2010) . Teachers use Twitter to post pictures from their classrooms, ask questions of their followers, connect with authors, participate in conversations around a set hashtag, and share education-related articles and research.
Connectivism
“As our world grows smaller and the people in it more inextricably connected, the world itself comes to resemble one vast, inclusive schoolhouse.” Sal Khan.
One way that students are successful in a Project Based Learning classroom is through the connections that are made with outside experts, practitioners in a particular field, students who are sharing similar learning experiences, and one another. In Seeing the Future: A Planning Guide for High Schools, adult world immersion is powerful for its contributions to both process and content. It confronts students with unpredictable situations, new perspectives, and invaluable lessons in dealing with people in the world. Workplaces and other field sites also offer a rich context — richer than classrooms, in many instances — for acquiring academic skills and competencies that will serve students well in college or careers (Riordan, Roche, Goldhammer & Stephen, 1999, p.11). It is not possible for our students to learn in a silo, so our teachers should not be teaching in one either. Connectivism is a learning theory developed around the premise that learning and knowledge rest on a diversity of opinions and the formation of connections; learning is interwoven within social constructs, is social, and is associated with the creation of knowledge through multiple inputs (Killion, 2011, Mackey and Evans, 2011, Siemens, 2005). As individuals share knowledge, those who receive it are then impacted by that knowledge when they provide knowledge elsewhere (Siemens, 2005). In our networked and connected learning environments, contributions to and information from Twitter can have direct impact on the practices in our classroom.
A Community of Learners
An important component of the Project Based Learning classroom is the element of feedback, reflection, and revision. In an Ethic of Excellence, Ron Berger addresses the need for kind, specific, and helpful critique in order to make progress through multiple drafts (2003). As a PBL teachers who want to incorporate that work into our classes, Twitter can provide the just-in-time, real world examples of this work in action. A Twitter search of #peercritique provides a teacher with pictures of critique in action in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. In addition, teachers are then able to connect and ask questions to those who are providing the information. Twitter is highly interactive on a variety of levels, including direct contact with the person who posted the tweet. Social media affords a level of timeliness and immediacy that is not present in many other learning alternatives. Twitter is timely and immediate, meeting the personalized needs of the learner (Demski, 2012, p. 45).
Collaboration
The National Education Technology Plan calls for educators to improve learning through “connected teaching” and “connect to content, expertise, and activities through online communities” (U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology, 2010, p. 42). In a school with multiple classrooms per grade level, it is typical for teachers to touch base with their grade level partners. The depth of that collaboration varies, from sharing classroom practices and lesson studies, to looking at year-long pacing and lesson plans. It is a natural fit that teachers in a school who teach the same grade level would meet to discuss their work. This assumption leaves out many other groupings that would be beneficial at schools. What about teachers who are the only one who teach their subject areas or grade levels? What about teachers who need outside inputs for their dilemmas- the knowledge of their school-based professional learning community (PLC) is not able to inform their current wondering? If the knowledge of the teachers within the school rests within the school, how are ideas evolving and changing with the rapid changes we are experiencing with our students in a connected world? While the structures for PLC meetings in the school might allow for grade level collaboration, the ability to meet with other teachers in different grade levels or areas of expertise is limited.
When teachers make the practices in their classrooms public, through Twitter and other venues, they are able to collaborate and share ideas without limitations. A teacher in Michigan, Pernille Ripp, began a Global Read Aloud project five years ago that now has over 570,000 students participating in sixty different countries (personal communication, October 25, 2015). Leveraging the work she was passionate about in her classroom and making it known publicly has allowed students and teachers to now connect to this project. When learners are connecting and sharing knowledge, they are creating additional meaning together (Ross, Maninger, LaPrairie, Sullivan, 2015, p.57).
Learning as a Social Endeavor
The Global Read Aloud is an example of of the shared learning experiences written about by Etienne Wenger in Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (1998). Wenger points to three key elements for significant learning experiences: the learning is social, is in real time, and it is work that matters. Wenger goes on to describe that most people learn in “communities of practice” and this form of learning is everywhere in our lives. When we look at our practice of teaching through this lens, we see that sharing our practice and viewing it as a contribution to be shared, used, and shaped by the community allows us to be involved the social learning Wenger describes. As he puts it, “such participation shapes not only what we do, but also who we are and how we interpret what we do” (1998, p. 4).
Nicholas Provenzano, @TheNerdyTeacher on Twitter, is a technology specialist in Michigan with a specific focus on social networking platforms in schools. “(Twitter) has been the best professional development I’ve had in my life, and I’ve been a teacher for over ten years. It gives me 24/7 access to some of the smartest people in education” (W. Ferriter and N. Provenzano, 2014). Through Twitter, teachers are able to harness the power of thousands of teachers and connect in a social, low-stakes high-reward arena. In addition to the input from various teachers as Provenzano mentions, educators are also able to “chat” via a common hashtag and share thoughts in a real-time environment. Authors of professional books such as Penny Kittle, Donalyn Miller, and Meenoo Rami moderate different chat opportunities, giving teachers direct access to educators with whom they can share practices.
Shortcomings of this Medium
Along with the fast paced and instantaneous access to content and the sharing of one’s work comes the responsibility of maintaining privacy, avoiding phishing scams, and maintaining a professional presence. The immediacy of the posts can also lead to trouble. A new term, “Facebook Fired” has emerged to distinguish the unique circumstances of losing one’s job due to social media posts (Bradley, 2009). Maintaining a professional presence online requires constant educator reflectiveness regarding intent, content and possible perceptions from his/her audience.
While curating the @HighTechHigh account, another user made misleading comments about our organization and the way in which we conduct tours of our schools. When faced with his disparaging tweets, we had to make some decisions about how to best inform people about the work we do here without engaging in a shouting match via Twitter. The other user accused our organization of not being open-source enough. He cited the price we charge for the residencies and customized tours. That day, we took particular care to tweet out teacher project cards, digital portfolios, links to our free student-led tours, and links to our UnBoxed journal. There is a particular challenge with the venue of Twitter in responding to misleading information. Anything we would have tweeted in response would have likely been twisted to suit his agenda even further. It was not, in this case, a place for substantial dialogue where a change in viewpoint might occur.