The following comments were left for JJJJJJ. To understand their meaning and the learning derived from them see my post
How the World Helps Me Teach Pre-service Teachers.
Comments Left for JJJJJJ
Will Richardson January 24, 2013 at 2:28 PM
Thanks for reading my blog and for leaving the comment. I learned a great deal about you and your class from the interaction.
You are right to wonder why blogs might be important. I doubt anything I can say about the tool itself would convince you of its worth; you'll just have to keep writing and commenting and see how things evolve. Suffice to say blogging has transformed the way I think about learning and education because it has connected me to thousands of smart, brilliant people around the world who on a daily basis help me understand kids and schools and classrooms more deeply than I could sitting in a classroom taking a required tech course that seems at first blush to have little relevance to the modern world.
The barrier is that it's clear you're expecting to teach the way you were taught. I found it really interesting that your preferred method of working with kids is "I do" "we do" "you do" (as noted on a previous blog post), a method that will probably do a great job of getting kids ready for standardized tests but will do nothing to prepare them for the real world of learning that now exists. As I parent of two teenagers, I frankly shudder at the thought.
You have a choice, JJJJJJ. You can choose to look at social technologies as a fad that seems to be a minor inconvenience in your worldview, or you can be open to the idea that education and learning are changing dramatically because of them. As an aspiring educator who I would hope would also aspire to a model learner for his students, it might be good to put some time into reading and reflecting on what's happening outside your classroom and thinking deeply about how these technologies are rewriting the realities of teaching and schooling. If you'd like some places to start that work, I'd be happy to supply some links.
Karl Fisch January 24, 2013 at 2:18 PM
Well, my first suggestion would be to read a bit more of Will's blog as opposed to just that post. I think it's tough if you're coming into the conversation in the middle, and I think it's safe to say that that post was intended more for the regular readers that are part of the on-going conversation. I think if you read a bit more you'll find some value.
And, you're right, it is all "opinions" - but opinions that are informed by experience, practice, constructive dialog, and a whole lotta thought. It's folks trying to figure out - together - what's best for their students. I think that if you join this conversation it certainly has the potential to make you a better teacher. And citizen.
RBurkett January 24, 2013 at 2:37 PM
Welcome to the conversation, JJJJJJ. I believe the ability to connect with other educators has been greatly enhanced by internet tools like Blogs, Twitter, and other social media. Should you decide to become a teacher, you will quickly learn that one of the pitfalls of the current "system" is that you can very quickly feel like you are working in isolation without the time or ability to connect with other teachers. This connection is a critical component in moving toward the goal of becoming a creative, equipped, master teacher. Ongoing conversations enable you to share your ideas about what works best in schools, what methods seem to best meet specific student needs, what technologies are available to help your students, what classroom management strategies exist to support you, how to handle disruptive or difficult students (or parents), how to assure your students are learning, and most importantly, how to grow and stay informed in your chosen profession. Blogs and other web-based forms of communication mean that teachers no longer have an excuse to remain entrenched in ineffective classroom practice because they have access to the collective wisdom, experience, data, and research of the entire educational community. While you might not have found value in this particular blog post, I would encourage you to continue to explore and to engage your colleagues in productive dialogue about your practice and what's best for students under your care. A teacher who insists on remaining isolated and uninformed is one I would simply not hire for my school, so personal and professional growth is vital to your success in the field. I wish you all the best and the richest rewards that come with the noble, yet very complex and difficult tasks found within the teaching profession.
J. Yantho January 24, 2013 at 2:38 PM
It sounds like you are surprised that a blog post contained an opinion. Education can be tricky and lots of people have lots of ideas on how to make it better. I would suggest that when you read a blog post regarding education, that you continue to research the topic until you have a "freaking idea" or at least keep an open mind.
Education reform is a hotly debated topic right now. There are many parties pulling in different directions. People that want to make money through charter schools, people who want to make money in ed-tech, people who want to make money by creating curriculum that every American student must consume - oh, and the people that want education to actually BE better. Understanding where education "may" be headed (good and/or bad) is very important to deciding how you can be a better teacher, or at least better prepared to teach in this "brave new world."
Sometimes when we have been out of the classroom for a while it's hard to get back that spirit of curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. As a teacher, however, I think it is pretty important that we have the mentality of a student for life.
Jonathan Palles January 24, 2013 at 2:43PM
As a first year teacher, I have found Mr. Richardson's posts invaluable. Part of the problem you may be having is exactly what Mr. Fisch pointed out: you are coming in in the middle of the conversation.
When I first started learning about technology in the classroom and forming PLC's (Professional Learning Communities) I was completely lost. However, my district continued to emphasize the importance of forming a PLC. As I began doing my own research and developing a direction for my class, I started finding many teachers using methods that would help me to structure my classroom differently than a "traditional" classroom. I began following these teachers on Twitter and other online networks. I began to find lots of great FREE resources to use in my classroom. I already knew that the "traditional" classroom is no longer a viable option, but I didn't know how to break away from that model. By reading resources provided by Mr. Richardson (and many others) I have begun to develop new strategies to bring my class into the future, instead of repeating the past.
Technology is here and it's not going away. With all the resources at our fingertips, learning facts is no longer as important. What is important is learning to navigate and locate viable information for yourself. We need to teach our students how to problem solve and locate information for themselves. I don't have all the answers to help them accomplish that, so I learn from people all over the world who have developed strategies that I can use. I recommend that we all get plugged in and help each other out to navigate this extremely exciting time in education.
Niki January 24, 2013 at 2:46 PM
Maybe you need to check out some great classroom blogs to find inspiration!
Poke around some links from here to start with:
Edublogs Best Class Blogs for 2012
Kristy_Vincent January 24, 2013 at 2:54 PM
Well hello there! The power of blogs and social media as a whole is the exact experience you are having now if you have read down this far.
Will shared his thoughts (or opinions) on a particular "hot button" topic in education on his personal blog. You responded (all part of that free speech deal). AND all the world saw! When you were in the K-12 classroom it may have looked something more like this:
Will read an article in the newspaper. He wrote a letter to the editor. A week letter said letter is published. You read the letter Will wrote and you respond. A week later, it gets published. By then, Will is on vacation (and won't get to your response until the week later when he returns). Conversation over!
Today, Will shared his post (as he does most of his posts) on Twitter. The 33,000+ people that follow Will on Twitter have read his post, your comment, and now your post. Your post isn't on a Post-It note in the hallway. It is on the internet. The world wide, vast-reaching, ever changing internet. Through the power of blogs and social media, people like Will and the first year teacher in the one room school house in Central Texas meet. They can talk. They can help each other. That's why we are here. We are educators. We care! As a whole group we lean on one another for inspiration, frustrations, and ideas. We band together to truly change education because we care about children. The technology of today allows us to do so at rapid fire speed. It's an amazing!
Brandon Raymo January 24, 2013 at 2:58 PM
... [A]lthough you did not find that particular blog post helpful, your comment on the blog made me think about the classroom. If you were the teacher and required your class to read and comment on a blog, would your comment be acceptable to you the teacher?
Disagreement and not understanding are all a part of learning. We can disagree and not understand in a respectable manner, assuming you would know a thing or two about respect as you were a ... for some time.
I can also tell you that reading and commenting on blogs has been a great learning experience for me. I have learned more in the last few years as an avid blog reader and Twitter junkie than I did in 4 years of undergraduate work. The best part about the blogs and Tweets is that it causes me to think, question, and examine my own thoughts and practices.
Thank you for commenting and giving me the opportunity to reflect. Good luck in your journey.
Kathy
It is interesting that now because of this question, there have been more resources shared and more advice and sharing to sort through. We as educators have an amazing opportunity in the world we live in today to also choose our learning. Even if we don't agree with what is being shared or stated it makes ask question and makes us think.
Darren Kuropatwa January 24, 2013 at 3:22 PM
Hi JJJJJJ,
I read how you hadn't come across anything that you thought might be useful to the work you'll be doing in the classroom so I thought I'd share some stuff with you:
This is my curated list of resources on
Learning.
I'm not sure what you teach but you might find these
Writing Prompts or
Photo Prompts useful somewhere down the line.
I'm a math teacher. You can have
all my stuff. There's
more here. If you go all the way back to my earliest slidedecks (saved from my SMARTboard each class every day) you can see how
my teaching and use of the IWB evolved.
I hope something in all this helps you in your classroom in some small way.
Best wishes to you! This is a great time to be a teacher. ;-)
Cheers,
Darren
Jon January 24, 2013 at 3:40 PM
JJJJJJ,
I would be interested to know which part of the experience leaves a bad taste in your mouth? Is it the difficulty learning to use technology? The work of reflecting on your own preferences? The difficulty in understanding a perspective different than your own? The task of critically analyzing the opinions of another person to determine the merits of them?
You asked for somebody to explain to you how reading and writing these blogs will help you become a teacher.
Regardless of the content of the specific blog post you read, it appears that by going through the process, you are learning some skills that are vital to becoming an effective educator. Some of these skills include self-reflection, critically analyzing information, identifying the perspective of another person, and the ability to use technology.
Specifically, this is preparing you to be a teacher in the following ways:
You have been asked to understand the perspective of another person. This is vitally important to educators so that we can understand what motivates students to take ownership of their own learning.
You are now experiencing the process of developing knowledge through an exchange of ideas between different people, as opposed to simply transferring rote knowledge to a passive receptacle. I imagine this is a growth experience for you.
You are learning how to use technology to communicate and to express your throughts. Based on your first couple posts, it appears that this is a new experience for you, and a skills set which you will need to increase significantly in order to be an effective educator.
You are learning that teachers are treated as public figures. You are working through the conflict between your desire for personal privacy and the public role of teachers.
You are being asked to reflect on your own personal biases, prejudices, world view, and preconceptions of teaching and learning. All effective educators do this continually.
Frankly, the tone of your comments makes me doubt that you will be receptive to this response. (Perhaps that just my own opinion.) However, my observation of your writing leads me to believe that your reluctance (or resistance) to learn from the knowledge and experience of others is your greatest hurdle to becoming an effective educator.
I hope you do find the value of learning as you work through these challenges. That's the nature of learning, and becoming a good learner is the first step toward becoming a good educator.
thegeometryteacher January 24, 2013 at 4:05 PM
I will mirror what many of the earlier posts are saying. Blogging is way into a conversation. It is a conversation that is rich and broad and includes TONS and TONS of experiences, backgrounds, successes and failures.
Bottom line: There is a group of people who are blogging for the purpose of becoming better educators. This is surely why I keep up my blog. I hope to offer something to the conversation and I hope to get something back that will benefit my students and my community.
That having been said, my blog isn't what it was when it started. As I've posted and commented and explored and participated and read, it continues to evolve, just as I continue to evolve as an educator.
I don't think that it is necessary to participate in the blogging community to become a good educator, but I think there is an affordable, diverse and flexible set of resources available throughout the community to take advantage of.
Roderick Vesper January 24, 2013 at 4:23 PM
JJJJJJJ -
I will keep this short and simple. I teach differently now than I did earlier in my career, because I sought out passionate and engaging voices of other educators via blogs and Twitter. I began just wallowing in the quagmire of voices, and have now edited it down to a handful of voices that challenge me, and voices that affirm my current path. Sometimes the most successful things that happen in my class in a given year come from ideas that have been "borrowed" from those voices. Things I would never have thought of in the isolation of my own classroom.
One other thing that I think is important to mention: if you are not interested in the education reform conversation now, you will be, because it will invade your classroom on a daily basis.
Best of luck as you continue your studies.
Andrew Shortell January 24, 2013 at 4:27 PM
Opinions lead to investigation lead to thinking lead to research and hopefully publishing which then becomes literature which then carries credibility. So opinion is good! Sometimes it is completely wrong or completely right but mostly way in between. We need to lead by example. I am trying to implement change in my school and my classrooms, however students resist change in many cases because that is not what they are used to. They are in a comfort zone that is easy - they do not have to do much work if they stay in teh system and it stays the way it has always been - in their experience
@acsbear8
Gerald AungstJanuary 24, 2013 at 6:18 PM
JJJJJJ, for me the power of a blog is not just that I can learn about the ideas and opinions of others, but that I get to engage the writer in a conversation about those opinions. If I disagree, I can challenge them and deepen my understanding (and perhaps theirs as well). Through my blog and the others I read, I've connected with people and ideas and ways of thinking about education that I would otherwise not have encountered.
Dorothy January 26, 2013 at 2:59 AM
Kia ora JJJJJJ,
In response to
"Somebody please explained to me why this class is important"
I would like to let you know that this class is the envy of educators around the globe.
Because you have the luxury of having this class, you can have no idea what it is like to be a preservice teacher at an institution that provides no preparation for 21st century learning and teaching environments. Last year I worked with 4 new teachers who landed in 1:1 classes for their first teaching job and they had had NO preparation during their training for this. They had been trained for a world of paper, pencil and textbooks - and that world is disappearing like the Titanic with it's bow dipping under the water.
We enjoy having a number of your classmates visit our children's blogs (at Pt England School) and my own blog and are always envious when we track back and see the latest things you all are being taught.
I am trying to think of the hashtag equivalent to #firstworldproblem for your situation, but am stumped. One of your other commentators may be able to help here :)
Be very very thankful
Dorothy
Auckland, New Zealand
