Tolisano (2014a) lists four ideas to become a connected educator. They are:
- Local isolation – knowing the isolation of teaching and becoming connected to other educators around the world.
- Perspective – be willing to offer and accept different perspectives about ideas.
- Crowdsource – the power of networking for ideas, content, services, data and approaches to learning/situations.
- Model – model network literacy by a. having a basic understanding of network technology by creating your own network, understanding network intelligences and network capabilities.
How essential is each element? – well very, as they all work together to create a globally connected educator. The educator needs to be willing to move from their local area to a global area, be willing to share, be able to accept different perspective, have built connections and know how to use connections for learning and knowledge. I think that the benefits to students in connecting to the real world for their learning are enormous.
I would present the concept of a globally connected educator to my colleagues in a staff meeting as it would be able to reach a vast majority of people at one time (plus the meetings are compulsory and therefore have a captive audience). I would start by explaining the four ideas and show examples of how it is being used, such as in Tolisano’s (2014b) slideshow ‘The Globally Connected Educator’. I would expect the reactions of colleagues to be varied. Some people would be excited, some (particularly those at the beginning end of the connected educator spectrum like me) may be curious but think it’s too overwhelming and some couldn’t be bothered (thinking they already have too much work to do and this would just add to it).
If I had produced any work where the students had participated in global networking, I would show that at the meeting as well to show what is possible at a more ‘local’ level.
References:
Tolisano, S. (2014, September 28a). 4 big ideas around the connected educator [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://langwitches.org/blog/2014/09/28/4-big-ideas-around-theconnected-educator/
Tolisano, S. (2014b). The globally connected educator – Beyond plugging in, towards global pedagogy [slideshare]. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/langwitches/the-globally-connected-educator-beyond-plugging-in-towards-global-pedagogy