I am preparing a brief session for teachers at my school on what it means to be a connected educator. I plan to talk about social media in general as a segue to discussing PLN's. I am going to talk about particular sites (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc) by sharing how I use each of these sites to enrich my own learning. I thought this might serve as a useful introduction. My hope is that teachers will participate in an internal Twitter chat to support each other in this process. I am looking for suggestions, cautions, aha moments, reccomendations and any other useful insight you can offer. Pleae leave these in the comments section below. I will share your wisdom with my colleagues.
A child sits alone with a ripped worksheet packet on his desk. He appears to be singing or subvocalizing something though no one hears him. Or, perhaps they're ignoring him. The teacher stands at the front of the room teaching on the SmartBoard. The children follow along in their worksheets. Except the child sitting alone. He is in his own world. No one engages him and he engages no one. My heart aches for this child. He is physically and emotionally removed from the class. I ask him why his paper is ripped. (It's not an accidental rip.) He says he did that on a different day. When he had been frustrated about the work. He tells me that he sometimes sits by himself because the work is too hard for him. He later tells me that he sits by himself because the teacher thinks he talks too much during the lesson. He says he does that because he wants to find out about the "lives of the other children". My first impulse is to rescue him from the wrongheade...
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