Connected educators

Are you a connected educator? Are you a teacher who has managed to harness the power of social media to connect with peers and experts around the globe? Coming hand in hand with these connections is a whole new culture of learning and teaching. Steven Anderson (@web20classroom) has a lot to say about the connected educator. They are transparent in their thinking, he suggests, and that means that they are not shy in sharing their ideas or giving away their content for free. Connected educators know that in doing this they become global educators, with their content being amplified across a worldwide community of practice. On the #authorspeak Twitter hashtag today there was a lot of commentary about connected educators. Connected educators are transparent in their thinking and tend to reflect more deeply on what they learn, simply because they have had to make the effort to connect with new knowledge.

Nicholas Provenzano (@thenerdyteacher on Twitter) was a major contributor. He said that the Connected educators are co-learners, co-leaders and co-creators of content and that they are never isolated. There are many avenues to connect with people from all over the world, he argued. He added that the Connected Educator uses social media to connect with others around the globe and engage in conversations online.

Kyle Pace (@kylepace), another contributor to the discussion, made the important point that the connected educator with a well developed network depends on that before going to Google. I would imagine that this is because a personal network is hand chosen, and therefore infinitely more trustworthy and relevant to one's own professional needs and interests. He knows that the Professional (and personal) Learning Network (PLN) as an important resource for learning in a connected world.

My own contribution on Twitter #authorspeak today was that connected educators are in a more powerful position than those who are isolated. They have a greater ability to check their facts, call on support and find out new things when connected to their personal learning networks than they do isolated. I also think that the ability (or perhaps more appropriately willingness) they have to share knowledge has become a part of the cultural capital of the connected educator. Sharing - the gift economy on which much of social media are founded - is probably the most important part of a connected educator's role. It is abundantly clear to me that connectivity is one of the essentials in the 21st Century teacher toolkit. We are now learning more from each other than we could ever learn on our own. So I will return to my original question. Are you a connected educator?


Note: The #authorspeak hashtag was a Twitter backchannel of a live presentation by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

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Connected educators by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.