I recently had the opportunity to talk with a number of educators online with George Siemens as a part of the Commun-IT.org organization. Tim Hawes and Quentin DeSouza are the two main advocates for the site that focuses on supporting teacher professional development in Ontario, Canada.

Below is the transcript of my talk that is in two parts. Part I addresses how learning technologies are being used to support/enhance teacher development at my institution, and Part II briefly examines what educators could/should be doing to make best use of social media.

I hope you find the contents mildly useful. If you think there are other uses of social media that have not been addressed, please chime in. Also, any comments concerning overcoming barriers such as getting educators interested in using social media or re-visioning classroom practice are most welcome.

 

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Part I

Teacher education at UF essentially comes in two flavors: conventional and non-conventional. [I prefer the term conventional over traditional for a variety of semantic and connotative reasons.]

Conventional teacher education consists of f2f coursework combined with practicums, classroom observations, site placements, and extended internships.

Learning technologies such as our online course management system are used to enhance f2f courses by providing fora for extended discussions, activities, and as a resource repository for materials to support learning and development (rubrics, readings, lesson plan examples, syllabi, external resource linkages, etc.)

All teacher education students are required a foundations of educational technology course which introduces them to wikis, weblogs, RSS, social bookmarking, vodcasting & podcasting (Will Richardson’s text is required reading).

Students are then asked to incorporate these read/write resources in a way that will enhance lesson planning, parent communication, student communication, peer communication, resource development, etc.

We are currently investigating how students use what they’ve learned in this course in their other courses and we’re also looking at extending this research to their teaching careers (i.e., beyond the uni).

Most of our conventional f2f students are young and new to teaching. A majority have MySpace and Facebook accounts so they are familiar with social media/social networking technologies, yet often keep these technologies separate from their professional practice. Many of these student teachers see no connection between their personal use of the Read/Write Web (pdf) and their professional use. I believe there are many research possibilities here that I would like to explore in more detail.

Beyond our conventional teacher education programming, we have several non-conventional programs that serve working professional educators around the state and nation.

We have two fully online masters programs that use the Moodle course management system, three blended, cohort based doctorate programs, two alternative certification programs, one blended professional/personal development program, and we are currently developing a professional development online portal to serve first year professional educators and college alumni.

Most of the technology incorporated in these programs involves the use of our course management system where discussion boards figure prominently. I’ll call these traditional online courses.

The two projects I am most actively engaged with are the alternative certification program and the teacher professional development program.

The alternative certification program is based on preparing teachers to work in high poverty school settings. Since this program is aimed at getting teachers immediately prepared for teaching, we are focusing mainly on the acquisition of teaching skills associated with 12 state-defined accomplished practices. We have created an online portfolio site designed to scaffold and document artifacts associated with demonstration of accomplished practice. This site was created in Drupal and it provides us with a way to manage artifacts, justifications for the inclusion of such artifacts, instructor feedback, remediation activities, and various reports that can be provided to state administrators and education researchers.

The professional development project I am associated with focuses on training teachers to incorporate action research into their practice as a means for exploring and researching their experience in a way that both documents and extends the professional knowledge base of teacher practice but also leads educators towards adopting what Cochran-Smith and Lytle refer to as an inquiry stance, i.e., a way to approach teaching that recognizes that we are all learners (teachers and students) and that to create inquiring students, we educators need to model such behaviors.

This project has incorporated a "mother blog” created in Drupal to support reflection, community, communication, collaboration, and the creation and sharing of resources. This project is the pilot study for my dissertation wherein I am investigating the nature of interactions in this online community and to see how to best foster knowledge creation and collaboration within such an environment.


Part II

For me social media in teacher education is very much connected to George’s thinking about connectivism.

Social media provides us a medium to build or extend relationships, that is, our connections to one another as well as connecting us to a network of resources (human, intellectual, practical, spiritual, etc.).

In my view, social media is about building, extending, connecting, and expanding our world. These connections we are able to form online offer us an opportunity to discover new knowledge, create new understandings, and provide us with new perspectives and new ways of seeing.

So what does this mean for teachers?

When I was first starting out as a teacher, I developed a bond with several members of my teacher college cohort. We would meet once a week at a local pub and share “war stories,” talk about what worked in our classrooms’, what didn’t, and shared lesson plans, and resources we thought we might find useful.

Collectively, we built three units together even though we all taught different grade levels at different schools (we all taught Language Arts – English classes, Reading & Writing at the secondary level, i.e., working with 14-18 year olds).  This was back in the days of online BBS’s, MUD's, and MOOs. The World Wide Web and IRC becoming more and more popular and reproducing like rabbits. In the beginning the Web was like a vast city with little life, but lots of storefronts and facades promising content to come (e.g., this site is under construction). It was both promising and frustrating.

My colleagues and I built a website to share resources, lesson plans, assessment instruments, and, I’ll be honest, bad jokes. We constructed bios and linked to personal interests and favorite Web sites. For us the Web was a repository and a place to look for new content, new materials to enhance our practice. If I found content online like a lesson plan that I really liked, I would email the site admin asking for permission to share the content. In a few cases, I developed a friendship with this distant colleague and we became online  “pen pals.”

I recognize that not all educators are as curious or adventurous as we were. none of us were technically brilliant, but we weren’t afraid to experiment. We were obviously a bit technogeeky so the idea of learning html didn’t put us off.

Today, I see many Read/Write technologies like Ning, WikiSpaces, Elgg/EduSpaces, Edublogs, Delicious, PageFlakes, Google Groups, etc. that allow for quick and relatively painless opportunities to communicate, collaborate, connect, create, and aggregate a variety of multimedia resources.

The piece I find most exciting about this is the notion of portability, i.e., these social networking instances are relegated to one person’s hard drive or institution. These Read/Write resources can be accessed from practically any machine from any place on the planet that has Internet connectivity.

As an educator I adore these social networking tools precisely for this reason… I don’t have to store these resources on my hard drive. I can upload and down and them as I need. My GMail account is part email portal part document and multimedia repository. I no longer keep piles of hard copies in file folders in my office, although I do like to keep at least one hard copy of most items (what can I say, I’m a belt and suspenders kinda guy!).

Social media is also a fantastic way to stay abreast of what’s happening across the teaching profession. I am a member of a number of communities where I check in regularly to see what’s new, what’s hot, what to stay away from, and what I might be able to use in the classroom Monday morning.

Social media brought us all to this spot today. Reading Stephen Downes’ weblog over three years brought me to George Siemens. George and Stephen have subsequently introduced me to Clarence Fisher, Quentin DeSouza, Vicki Davis, Brian Lamb, Barbara Ganley, Will Richardson, David Warlick, and on and on.

And as such social media tools have connected me to hundreds of others who have impacted and expanded my worldview.

All it took was a bit of curiosity and persistence. For me, as an educator, it is important to keep my eyes and ears open. As an educator, I recognize that I am a role model for my students, for parents, for administrators and my peers. Being an educator is like being a flight attendant on a plane that never lands. I am always serving others and myself. Luckily, I find joy and contentment in this.

To make the nest of social media, educators need to know what makes them tick; they need to know what turns them on, what fires their passion, and to follow that passion. Others often share these passions and social media provides a means to connect with others of a similar mind.

As my friend Ben Werdmuller likes to say, the Internet is people. And connecting people is what social media is all about.
 

 

I admit I always enjoy looking over Pew/Internet studies. They do a terrific job of documenting their research, making their methodology both transparent and easy to digest.

c|net news.com provides an overview of the latest Pew Internet & American Life Project study (pdf) focusing on adults’ (18 and older) “evolving relationships to cyberspace.” (A tip o’ th’ tam to Ben Campbell for pointing me to this.)

The Pew study reports that 73 percent of U.S. adults surveyed own a mobile phone, 68 percent have a desktop computer, 30 percent own a laptop, and 73 percent use the Internet, yet only 8 percent are “deep users” of Web 2.0 features (n=2,822). (The study defines Web 2.0 users as people who employ digital technology to “express themselves online and participate in the commons of cyberspace," which would include maintaining a blog, a vlog, or a web site.)

The study also notes that 37 percent of the U.S. adult population surveyed regularly use instant messaging, more than 25 percent have downloaded music, 19 percent have shared photos, artwork, stories, or video, and 41 percent have sent a text message via their mobile phone.

The study then goes on to categorize adult users of technology into 10 types (which often overlap) that represent the priorities and attitudes of how information and communication technologies (ICT) fit into one’s life.

The “Elite Tech Users” (31 percent of American adults surveyed) comprise the following categorizations:

Omnivore (8 percent) – typically under thirty, tech savvy users, who blog, text message, twitter, and stay connected almost always.

Connector (7 percent) – mostly thirtysomething females that stay connected to family, friends, and hobbies online. This group is also reported to be twice as likely to blog or own a web page than the average American.

Lackluster Veteran (8 percent) – typically a fortysomething male who has “been there, done that” and could care less about anything “2.0.” Their interests end at email, information gathering, and see computing as something they do at work, not at home.

Productivity Enhancer (8 percent) – typically fortysomething of either gender who like what the Internet and technology have to offer but won’t be found watching The Office on their mobile phone or laptop.

The “Middle-of-the-Road Users” comprising 20 percent of the adult population surveyed  and includes:

Mobile Centric (10 percent) – typically a thirtysomething who would not be caught dead without their “cellie.” Pew noted a large share of African-Americans fitting into this category.

Connected but Hassled (10 percent) – these people could live without technology and find it an “intrusive” necessity. Typically found among women in their late forties who own mobile devices and digital cameras but do not swear by them.

Finally, the “Few Tech Assets” group (49 percent) comprise the majority of adults surveyed. They include the following categories:

Inexperienced Experimenter (8 percent) – typically a female fiftysomething with an above-average income, who has dabbled on message boards, downloading a tune, or sharing photos via email, but is not sure what to make of all of this.

Light but Satisfied (15 percent) – usually a fiftysomething female who discovered the Internet five years ago, who likes technology but would probably never consider dropping their landline telephone service.

Indifferent (11 percent) – typically a fortysomething male without high-speed access who rarely connects to others online, but might be more inclined to do so if he/she shelled out more ducats for broadband.

Off the Network (15 percent) – similar to the term “off the grid” this group, typically 65 and older, do not own a mobile phone or have Internet access but might own a computer or a digital camera (see my in-laws).

The Pew study based their findings from phone interviews with 4,001 adults, 18 and older, between February and April 2006. The results based on Internet users was based on a sampling of 2,822 adults with a margin of sampling error in plus or minus two percentage points.

In the Pew portrait of technology adoption, some other interesting statistics rise to the surface:

• 62 percent of adult Internet users reported going online just for fun, for no particular reason, or simply to pass the time (p. 3).
  
  
• 13 percent of adults who report watching television reportedly watch TV shows or news programs on either a computer, cell phone, iPod or PDA (p. 4). In other words, it appears traditional news/media outlets are still relatively “safe” and will not be subsumed by the Intarweb just yet.
  
  
• 27 percent of all respondents reported feeling overloaded with information, while 67 percent said they liked having so much information available (p. 4).
  
  
• 48 percent reported that computers and technology “give them more control over their lives,” 16 percent reported less control, and 29 percent said, “these things make no difference” (p. 4).
  
  
• More than half of the people surveyed reported that electronic devices are not intrusions and that managing all of these devices is not an annoyance (p. 5).
  
  
• An overwhelming majority of respondents also reported that information and communication technologies (ICT) improved their ability to do their job, learn new things, and stay in touch with family and friends. A relative majority of the respondents also reported that ICT allowed them to share ideas and creations with others, pursue hobbies and interests, and allowed them to work with others in groups and community settings (p. 5).

In terms of educational levels and technology adoption/integration, the Pew study suggests that the Elite Tech Users (31 percent) generally have a higher level of education (i.e., a college degree); however, having a degree does not necessarily mean a person enjoys using ICT. The Lackluster Veterans group shows a high percentage of college degrees that also report information overload and stress managing their gadgets (pp. 37-38).

What do these results suggest for educators?

For primary and secondary educators and administrators, these results suggest that you might consider a weekly weblog or listserv newsletter to keep parents apprised of classroom activities and events. Parental involvement is quite important to a strong school community. Empirical research clearly shows that “well-structured family participation in education enhances students’ academic success, improves school behavior, and reinforces strong regulatory skills and work orientation” (Chavkin, 2000; Moles, 1987; Baker, 1997; Morris and Taylor, 1998 as sited by LePage, Darling-Hammond, et al., 2005, p. 338).

These results also document why some educators take to the Internet, weblogs, and ICT in general, and others do not. As we’ve all known, you can’t force educators into the blogosphere even while many of us regularly profess its social, spiritual, and intellectual impact. I guess you can force educators onto the Web but it’s generally not advisable. In defense of a top down model of Web adoption, I have an initial gathering of evidence that shows how a number of educators were asked to participate in an online degree program (i.e., it was not the first choice), who joined reluctantly, and over time began to see the value of the coursework, the Internet, and its affordances. Clearly, people/educators need to see the social and content value associated with/through technology in order for it to be successfully adopted and integrated into one’s life.

What about the Youth?

The Pew study notes that that ICT use is generally the “province of youth. Yet, overlaying age with the number of years online tenure shows that technology adoption unfolds in waves within age cohorts” (p. 39).

Since kids and teenagers were not part of this study, I’m guessing a report will be forthcoming soon, perhaps once summer rolls around and teens are out of school.

Anecdotally speaking, I have discovered that my own kids and younger relatives, ranging in age from 14-21, use MySpace & Facebook to connect and communicate with family and friends, but see no reason to tread too far outside of this domain. The do not Twitter or Flickr or even use del.icio.us. They might text their friends on their mobiles, but they know they would have to pay extra for such a service. They are unfamiliar with RSS and a majority of the social software/Web 2.0 applications on the market, yet they probably consider themselves relatively techno-social. My youngest likes MMORPGs and says he wants a Second Life account to meet up with friends. My 17 year-old daughter is relatively indifferent to technology and my oldest son is an information sponge and regularly uses the Internet to learn new things as well as connect with others. I think a Pew report on teens using similar questioning strategies would be quite revealing and perhaps even startling on several fronts. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Note: I thought it was interesting the way the Pew study authors framed their research, that is, "our collective relationship to cyberspace," as opposed to a relationship with cyberspace -- after all, who can have a relationship with an inanimate structure, much less an extensive electronic network? Or can you… hmmm…. Sounds like I need to follow up with a blog post focusing on the work of Reeves and Nass!)


References:

LePage, P., Darling-Hammond, L., et al. (2005). Classroom management. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds.) Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Pew Internet & American Life Project (2007). A typology of information and communication technology users. Washington, D.C. Retrieved 8 May 2007 from http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_ICT_Typology.pdf.

My dear colleague, Nancy Dana, is in the process of writing a book on coaching educators through the action research process*.

As a friend and advisor, I am assisting Nancy with portions of the text related to the use of technology to support practitioner inquiry/action research. What Nancy and I are looking for are examples of teachers who are using social media/social software (e.g., weblogs and wikis) to record and/or publish their action research projects.

If you or someone you know is actively teaching in an elementary or secondary classroom and is using a weblog or wiki to capture and publish their inquiry/action research project, please let me know. Nancy would like to include portions of such work in the book for inquiry coaches to see what the action research process looks like when supported via technology (specifically through a blog or a wiki). This text will be the third in a series that Nancy and her co-author, Diane Yendol-Hoppey, have written for Corwin Press (Will's publisher) related to supporting reflective practice in teaching and learning.

Your work and contributions will be appropriately cited, referenced, and very much appreciated. Not only that, your work will become part of the knowledge base needed to support the teaching profession around the globe.

Again, if you or someone you know is using social media to support their inquiry/classroom research, please either let me know via the comment section below or drop me an email (csessums@gmail.com). Nancy is finishing the initial draft as we speak and would like to move on this as soon as possible.

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*Action research is inquiry or research designed and conducted by practitioners to analyze data from their practice in order to improve upon it. This process provides educators the opportunity to reflect on and assess their teaching; explore new ideas, methods and materials; assess the effectiveness of these new approaches; and share the findings of the inquiry/research with colleagues and other practitioners. Many teacher educators believe such an inquiry practice provides a means for generating and sustaining a meaningful focus on classroom and school improvement.

 

 

This weekend I had the opportunity to participate in the Webheads In Action Online Covergence. Fellow edublogger, teacher, and doctoral student,  Konrad Glogowski, and I hosted a discussion focusing on teacher professional development and the Read/Write Web in TalkShoe, a “talk cast” application that neither of us had previous experience with (details regarding our discussion can be found here). I believe we found the application easy to use with the exception of the chat feature which handles a bit oddly and I am not sure how easy is was to participate directly if you were dialing in outside North America.

Nonetheless, Konrad has done a marvelous job summarizing his presentation ideas on his weblog.

For me, this was a great opportunity to use the Read/Write Web to collaborate on a topic that both Konrad and I are quite passionate about. I felt as if I was able to take much of what I have read about constructivism and connectivism and tie them together, bridging my self, specific academic/professional content, and other learners into an experiential whole. While I cannot speak for others who participated both in the TalkShoe and WorldBridges environments, I felt as though I learned quite a bit which I have attempted to describe below.

Konrad is quite versed in action research and spoke directly to the advantages of adopting such an inquiry stance in his practice. Since I have been spending time working with practitioners in support of their inquiry projects, I was curious to hear Konrad’s perspective. What struck me is that Konrad mentioned receiving little support or guidance as he embarked on this process. While I have found this to be the case with many educators, I find myself feeling disappointed or frustrated with the lack of support that educators in general report receiving in terms of sustained mentoring or coaching that should be a part of teacher research and other forms of professional development.

I find myself wondering how many educators would adopt such a practice such as action research if they were not working toward a specified goal like an advanced degree or national certification?

A question was raised during the discussion that asked if action or teacher research could be intuitive, as in something an educator does naturally without formally documenting the process. Such practice is possible but it wouldn’t really count as research if nothing is documented. This leads me to believe that there are still a number of questions around what action research or teacher research really is, what it entails, and why it might be useful.

Basically, action research is about examining one’s own practice, i.e., practitioner research, teacher research or research with a “little r” as opposed to “Big R” research. While it embodies many formal elements associated with scientific method, starting with a hypothesis, a wondering, and leading through periods of observation, empirical data collection, measuring evidence, and reporting conclusions, practitioner classroom research often lacks the rigor associated with conducting formal reliability studies that are an integral part of most formal research (Big R). Not to say such studies cannot be conducted; however, the idea has typically been to get educators to systematically and intentionally examine elements of their practice in a way that can be clearly documented and openly shared with other practitioners.

Action research is not about being “right,” which is a difficult concept for many educators. Action research is part of larger stance that researchers Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Lytle (1999) have dubbed an “inquiry stance.” Inquiry as stance is essentially a framework or a way to think about teacher learning that embodies all the elements of competent practice. These elements include subject matter knowledge, knowledge about the disciplinary foundations of education, human development, classroom organization, pedagogy, assessment, the social and cultural contexts of teaching and learning, and knowledge of teaching as a profession.

Lytle & Cochran-Smith argue: 

Teacher research … makes visible the ways teachers and students negotiate power, authority, and knowledge in classrooms and schools. As a way of knowing, then, teacher research has the potential to alter profoundly the cultures of teaching—how teachers work with their students toward a more critical and democratic pedagogy, how they build intellectual communities of colleagues who are both educators and activists, and how they position themselves in relationship to school administrators, policy makers, and university-based experts as agents of systemic change (p. 470; cited in Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 275).

Action research/teacher research and teacher inquiry is part of a new vision of teacher education and personal/professional development. It suggests that what educators need are opportunities to explore and question their own and others’ interpretations, practices, and ideologies (C-S & L, 1999). This notion of teacher practice also reminds us that the way most schools are currently configured is nowhere near to approaching such a vision.

While my idealism is still in tact, I aspire to work towards rebuilding and recreating a vision of teacher practice that wholly embraces an inquiry stance which includes working with administrators and district policy makers to see how schools as they are currently operating are doing a disservice to students and teachers alike. Teachers will never embrace such a stance if their working environment leaves them no time to focus on anything but producing outstanding test takers. I believe the Read/Write Web and the social and educational affordances of the Internet have ushered in a new era in how we think about our world, our connections, they way we learn, and our relationships to others. Given this grand opportunity, now is the time for us to rethink what school and what learning are really all about and to take action in making our vision a reality.

For me personally, the connections and learning made possible via the Internet has not been a difficult undertaking, required no superhuman skills—except a desire fueled by curiosity and yearning to know more about myself and the people/world around me. The Webheads in Action Online Convergence reminded me that I am not alone in my desire to bring about changes to the practice of teaching and learning.

And as such, Konrad and I are thinking about hosting such conversations about teacher professional development on a regular basis in an attempt to keep the fire stoked, as it were. If you are interested or would like to join in on the fun, please let me know. The challenge, of course, remains to stay focused and keep working toward the vision as outlined above. This is part of my motivation to complete my graduate studies--so that I can approach policy makers in a way that allows me to speak with conviction and authority while remaining deeply connected to practitioners and the university community. I feel like this process is similar to a calling one feels in one’s bones. And I’m in for the long haul.

As always, thoughts and comments are most welcome.


Reference:
Cochran-Smith, M. and S. L. Lytle (1999). Relationships of knowledge and practice: Teacher learning in communities. Review of Educational Research in Education 24: 249-305.