On the subject of the ubiquitous nature of social technologies – I recently attended a dynamic event in Scotland arranged by a great colleague, John Connell called GregMeet.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but it turned out to be two and a bit hours of intellectually stimulating discussion connecting educators around the UK using video conferencing and twitter.
Within hours of the event, one of my colleagues in Australia was watching excerpts of GregMeet on YouTube.
The potential for schools to link up via the web with other exemplary schools here and overseas is enormous. It is a great medium for teachers and leaders to collaborate and share their practice very simply and easily. I like the way you can listen, engage in side discussion, tag certain items and share resources – all at the same time.
Yet, we still face a major challenge – how to encourage schools to establish their own networks and share expertise locally across K-12 and across education sectors.
I still see resistance at a local level around having broad conversations on data and evidence. We need to be having those collective conversations on what is working, what isn’t and why, what does it look like elsewhere and what can we learn from our own and others’ experiences.
How do you increase the amount of time teachers spend talking about teaching?
Stephen Heppell suggested setting up a web-cam in school libraries so that teachers and students could be continually interacting with another leading school.
It’s a simple, low-cost initiative aimed at de-privatising practice on a global scale.
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