The Internet and Learning

This is part four of Steve Hargadon's Teacher 2.0: Using the Web for Your Personal and Professional Growth.

"How has the internet impacted your own personal learning?"

Walsall Library Presentation Key by Black Country Museums available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

This sounds trite, but the internet has changed my teaching life. When I first started teaching (2002, my first teaching rounds, 2006 my first class), sure I used the internet. I would look up teaching resources, images, animations, lesson ideas... the usual. I was pretty "techy", and I knew how to find what I needed. In the last couple of years, I started using a lot of web 2.0 and social media, but not for my teaching. For some reason, the blatantly obvious connection between my personal and professional usage had escaped me.

2011 was the year it all changed.

It began simply enough, as many things do. I signed up for a new twitter account. As you would know from my previous post, in addition to being a teacher, I am also a photographer. I had signed up for Twitter not long after starting my business, but I only followed a couple of people, and never saw the benefits. This time though, I started following people. I spent a couple of days building up my network, starting by following people who were using the #ultranet hashtag, following the people they followed, and so on (I now follow 196). The information that I had pulled toward me was relevant, interesting, and on so many occasions, exactly what I needed at that very moment.

I am, however, not the first or only person to think that getting information from Twitter is like trying to drink from a fire hydrant. I needed some way of filtering out the junk, and more importantly, saving the gems. I downloaded Tweetdeck, which helped immensely. I created a few columns - #edchat, #vicpln, #Ultranet, which were filled with people sharing great resources. However I needed a way to file it all. I created a Diigo account, a readitlater account and set up my Google Reader account (which, like many tools, I had used for years but never for teaching) properly with folders. I have blogged in more detail about how I use these here.

Now that I manage the information effectively, I can honestly say that Twitter is the source of the best professional learning I have ever done (and at present I am including my M.Ed in that - the quality of info shared via Twitter is THAT high!).

Without the internet, this year alone, I would have missed out on:

• The Age Digital Literacy Seminar
• Stever Hargardon's Teacher 2.0 Professional Learning Day
• A video conference with a NASA astronaut
• A massive number of great blogs
• Enrolling in the Master of Education
• Countless teaching ideas & resources
• Many more things!

Something I love doing

This is part three of Steve Hargadon's Teacher 2.0: Using the Web for Your Personal and Professional Growth.

"...Write down something(s) you love doing or something(s) you love learning about."

Perfect timing for me today, as I have just returned from doing something I love doing, that I haven't had the opportunity to do for a long time: Photography.

Among the many hats I put on, I am a photographer. I run a small wedding & portrait photography business called Natasha Glaister Photography. This year my photography has been a little neglected, as between full time teaching, part time M.Ed, running a house, and seeing my husband occasionally, there hasn't been a great deal of spare time. It is my one passion that is 'for me', and something I truly enjoy, particularly when the creative energy is flowing!

I love all aspects of photography, being able to see the light, visualise how I can capture it, then succeed in doing so is a wonderfully rewarding process. If I can then capture something that other people enjoy, that is a bonus! 

My students loved discovering my passion for photography, and I have just started running an "E-Lective" for those that are interested in exploring their own interest in photography. I have never taught a "creative" subject prior to this year (and now I'm teaching music as well!), and I am really enjoying the different approaches.

I love getting to know each of my student's passions every year, and next term I have invited them to explore an area that they are passionate about in extensive detail, with the completion of "Passion Projects". The idea is that they will explore something that they are passionate about, and will be paired up with an industry expert, a 'mentor', in their field of interest. It's very open ended, and I am excited to see what they come up with!


*** All photos in today's post are my own, captured this afternoon at the Tesselaar Tulip Festival in Silvan.

I Matter!

Creative Independence by nattu, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

I'm doing Steve Hargadon's "Teacher 2.0: Using the Web for Your Personal and Professional Growth", after attending a professional development day of the same name a few weeks ago. I completed step one on the day, which asked me to register at http://www.teacher20.com.

Step two asks me to ponder what I am good at. I believe that I am really good at adapting my teaching to include new ideas - I am very open-minded. I will try pretty much anything at least once, and will always look for ways to incorporate the best aspect of new things into my teaching. This certainly extends to using technology in my classroom, there is a multitude of technology out there, and I am continually striving to seek out the best tools and incorporate them into my teaching.

My students certainly recognise this, teaching from the edge of my comfort zone frequently takes me outside it, and I share this openly with them. My commonly heard phrase is "I don't know if this will work, but let's try it anyway". I think it's so important to model this mindset for students.

All In a Day's Work

It took me a little while to get around to blogging about it, but I really wanted to share what we got up to on Thursday of this week.


Thursday morning, we had an extended Pastoral Care session, in which my students commenced writing their proposals for their Personal Learning Projects that they will be completing next term. Once they have decided on their area of interest, I will use my professional network to link them up with a mentor, who will help them in the completion of their projects. They were blogging, posting on our class website message board, and beginning to establish their own Personal Learning Network by setting up their Google Reader accounts.

Hopefully they can become truly networked!

After recess, they were finalising their Ancient History research projects, the product of 6 weeks' work. Tasks like comparing and contrasting ancient and modern religions, redesigning a legacy of a civilisation, and creating the laws that they would have invented had they been in power are rich, promoting deep learning. Not having had an opportunity as yet to have an in-depth look at the work they have produced, I am very excited to see what they have developed.

In the next session I had arranged for the students to take advantage of an opportunity set up by the Department of Educatoion and Early Childhood Development's Next Practice Division - a video conference with NASA astronaut Rex Walheim! The topic for year seven next term is 'Space Rocks', so it was a great opportunity to hook them in, and although he didn't get to answer the questions the students had prepared, they were still enthralled, finding out the truth about going to the toilet in space (vacuums are involved!) and discovering that after a few days in zero gravity, your back starts to ache because you grow a little bit. Thankfully, the technology even played nicely, the only glitch (a faulty cable to the theatre's sound system) being overcome with a microphone held up to my laptop speakers.

The day finished with the students presenting their terms' learning to an audience of year nine students and some other teachers. We heard the story of Cleopatra's life, the story of a young Aztec girl sold into slavery, and saw a functional recreation of Roman aqueducts, among many other amazing presentations. They assessed each others' work, providing praise and constructive criticism.

While I was there the whole time, guiding, leading, monitoring, providing feedback, suggesting new directions, the day was not about me, it was about my students, and what they were learning. It was amazing to finish the term on such a high, and makes me dread leaving them in just 10 short weeks.

Is it weird that I feel like Zuckerberg?

Something amazing is happening in my class at the moment.

The idea has been cooking away, like all big ideas do, for some time now. Little tidbits of information would be added to the pot, I would hear or see or read something new, that would lead me in a new direction.

Like the ingredients for a great recipe, these thoughts gradually accumulated.

Yesterday, my online community was born. Research tells us that prospects are poor for online communities that are unsupported by offline contact in some form. So my existing community of learners, my year seven class, were offered something new to try - a simple, closed social networking page (a Ning to be precise).

I was at a PD last week, run by Steve Hargadon, who spoke of his teenage daughter who had recently been allowed to sign up for Facebook. He said he could see her transforming in front of him, as her world-view expanded. In the last 36 hours, I have started to see the same thing happening for my students.

There was a buzz in the room as they played with it, tinkering, tweaking, personalising. Taking ownership. Later in the day, they were completing some online tasks, and the website was open in the background. It wasn't a distraction, they still worked, but they remained connected behind their computer screens. We started a conversation about the guidelines for their community, how we could make it a positive environment. Nobody needed to have an acceptable use policy shoved at them, yet the phrases they chose could have been taken from one.

After school, they kept playing. Exploring, seeing what it could do. They shared photos, comments. Connections.

They were talking about it at school today.

I knew from the buzzing of emails pushing through on my phone during a lecture tonight (I heard John Hattie speak, which is a whole other blog post) that there had been some activity, but I was amazed at what I found when I opened up the site. Aside from the chatter, which is valuable enough in itself, aside from the shared and appreciated photos and videos, here were 13 year old kids, online at 9:30, having message board conversations about how they as a class had slacked off in the last few weeks, and organizing to meet up before and after school to catch up on homework. Ideas sparking other ideas, with another wanting to create (quote!) "a list of educational websites".

These kids don't often say a lot in class.

But I think I'm helping them to find their voice.