How is your proficiency with Google Apps for Education, Blogs and Twitter? Where would you want to improve?
School is over, at least for 2018-19, and that means fewer work emails to sort through. One today caught my eye.
My new principal sent an email sharing for thoughts on our new school motto for August: Bulldog Strong. Those who responded said "I love it" or "sounds good." I scrolled through dozens of responses on the thread and thought how can we expand the conversation on this. I like the simplicity of the statement - less is more - but I see an opportunity for discussion platforms that go beyond a work email. This could be the start of a very necessary conversation over what that statement means to our school and community.
Email is the quick and ready tool for getting information out. It's not conversation-starting. It doesn't coalesce ideas. As a librarian and a tech advocate, I see an opportunity to bring in platforms to shape the conversation, not just deliver it.
I am preparing to take the GAFE Level 1 certification (my wife is gearing up for Level 2, which means I have to up my game and catch up with her), am breathing life back into my own blog, and use Twitter to expand my own professional learning communities. I describe Twitter as a cesspool of political vitriol, but it DOES have its merits as a way of positively spreading and sharing ideas. MY proficiency is solid.
My goal this year was to get more teachers involved with GAFE, blogging, and Twitter. The ones who implement those tools do so with kids in mind. Some amazing things happened. The inequity in access to the means of using those tools (Chromebooks) made expanding it difficult. It also involves creating mindsets when kids are young that hold technology as more than entertainment.
I plan to follow up with my principal and pitch the idea of a Google Form soliciting feedback on her motto idea. This would allow some data collection and coalescing into a package to examine. I could blog about it. The school Twitter handle could post the idea with #moedchat and #ffsd hashtags and expand the conversation beyond an email thread.
That would be transformative.
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