Get your twitter mosaic here.

Get your own Twitter Mosaic here:

Thanks to Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day for this one!

This is a must-watch video.  Watch it from beginning to end.  It’s powerful.

This week we’ve been directed to read Will Richardson’s article World Without Walls:  Learning Well With Others and Distrupting Class: Student-Centric Education Is the Future by Dr. Clayton Christensen as we begin to look more closing at Personal Learning Networks.

Will Richardson writes

The Collaboration Age is about learning with a decidedly different group of “others,” people whom we may not know and may never meet, but who share our passions and interests and are willing to invest in exploring them together. It’s about being able to form safe, effective networks and communities around those explorations, trust and be trusted in the process, and contribute to the conversations and co-creations that grow from them. It’s about working together to create our own curricula, texts, and classrooms built around deep inquiry into the defining questions of the group. It’s about solving problems together and sharing the knowledge we’ve gained with wide audiences.

My personal learning network is one of foundation stones of my own life-long learning journey.  Without it, it would have been so easy to become overwhelmed in this world of ever-changing technology and digital learning tools.  My PLN has become my “go to” place whenever advice is needed, help is required, or just a reality check of the pressures, joys, low points and highlights we all face as educators.

Because of a PLN I have had the privilege of meeting f2f some of the amazing people who willingly share their ideas and resources.  I’ve connected online with people that I wouldn’t normally have the chance to connect with should my PLN be wholly based on whom I meet in face to face situations.

Through my PLN I have connected with mothers of educators (and stayed with them in foreign countries), had the door of opportunity opened in the world of International School teaching and I’ve made some lasting friendships with people I will probably never, ever meet face to face.  That’s pretty amazing and never ceases to make me go WOW – that’s incredible.  That’s a PLN established “later” in my life.  What really blows my mind is what will my students (aged 10 years) PLN’s look like if they start establishing them now?

When first reading Distrupting Class: Student-Centric Education Is the Future by Dr. Clayton Christensen, I was at a loss to see the connection between it and Personal Learning Networks and finding information online: How do we address truth and bias in the classroom?  Then it suddenly occured to me – PLN and finding information online will eventually become the way of learning for students.  Maybe not next year, maybe not even in five years – but it is going to happen.  The rate of students learning online has already increase by 55,000 in just eight short years.  Not only will PLN’s be crucial to the success of students and teachers online, but finding information online whilst addressing truth and bias will also be mandatory.  It’s extremely important that we learn how to make and maintain our own PLNs and teach our students to do the same.  It’s extremely important that we understand how to address truth and bias in the information we find online as our students are already reaching for the keyboard with the internect connection and no longer reaching for the encyclopedia on the bookshelf!

I found myself thinking about each characteristic and where I sat in the midst of it all.  Do I have all those characteristics?  Are there some that are a strength?  Some a weakness area?  Do my own personal goals reflect those areas of strength or weakness?  Are there some characteristics that I don’t possess?  Will this awareness or knowledge of the characteristics help improve my teaching/learning in the 21st Century?

The Adaptor
To be an adaptor you need to be able to adapt the curriculum and the requirements to teach to the curriculum in imaginative ways, adapt the software, adapt to the different learning styles and of course adapt the lesson when the technology doesn’t work or it all goes wrong.  This is probably an area of strength for me.  I’m always looking for ways to help my students learn and trying to find the right “tool” for the job out of my technology toolbox.  When the technology doesn’t work or it all turns to custard – I’m usually the one with the smile still on my face saying – ok guys – what other ways can we get this task accomplished because the technology’s not cooperating today, or well that didn’t work – why don’t we try this instead and we’ll come back to this another day?

The Communicator
I’d like to think that I’m a life-long learner (in fact that’s what it says on my resume!) I love the freedom of anywhere, anytime learning.  And my favourite thing to do online is learn new tools and technologies that enable communication and collaboration.  I’m still honing those skills that enable me to go beyond learning just how to do it and to stand back even more, to facilitate it and manage it.  Area of improvement identification #1

The Learner
I’m definitely not using Units and Lesson Plans that I was using 5 years ago!  If you really are committed to being a 21st Century Educator, then this is impossible!  The tools and technology available today and what will be invented tomorrow just won’t allow it.

The Visionary
Area of improvement indentification #2.  Even after reading the description Andrew Churches gives for characteristic The Visionary I don’t immediately think of myself as one.  I need to ponder this thinking a little longer before addressing why I feel that way.  I do love to see other people’s ideas and often walk away thinking that’s such a great idea and I could do it with this tool, or this technology.  There’s a few colleagues that I really enjoy talking to that just seem to spark ideas and grow new ways of doing things – that’s especially rewarding.

The Leader
Sometimes it’s really hard being the leader – especially when a lot of people don’t really understand what you do with the tools and technology.  Sometimes colleagues believe that the tools and technology are just “one more thing” to do.  I don’t see it that way – I think “it’s just what we do”.  In order to be a leader in the 21st Century you need to be able to help your colleagues change that way of thinking – and I don’t know how to do that yet.  Area of improvement identification #3.

The Model
I’m a firm believer in modelling the behaviour that I expect from my students.  How on earth can I expect them to behave in a way that I don’t behave myself- be it online or off?

The Collaborator
My most favourite part of what the online world has done with the tools and the technology.  How else could we possibly open up our classrooms to the world, if we don’t collaborate.  It’s not good enough to work in isolation any more.  It’s not good enough to shut ourselves away and not share what we do and it’s not good enough not to connect our students with other students across great continents.  There are no excuses anymore.  (I just wish that sometimes I could come up with a great collaboration project!!)

The Risk Taker
Well if moving countries with only 3 weeks notice doesn’t indicate that I’m a risk taker, then I don’t know what does!

Where do you see yourself in the 21st Century Educator model?

As part of our Certificate of Educational technology & Information Literacy Course 1 we have been asked to write a post about our hopes for this course.

I hope to extend skills that will enable me to successfully guide my students, both now and in the future, on their learning journey through the 21st Century.

I hope to make connections with the people taking this Certificate Course to share, collaborate, support and learn from them.

I hope to pass this Certificate Course so that my own Personal Learning Goal of completing my Masters Degree remains on track.

I hope to grow like this new “koro” of the fern from my living room – planted, watered and nurtured but ultimately challenged by my environment.

Not exactly earth-moving stuff – but my hopes none-the-less.