It's Connected Educator Month, So Share your Recipe

What's your favorite recipe?  Is it Mom's apple pie, or your favorite barbecue sauce. Is it the American Cookie Factory's Chewy Pecan Supreme or Pizza King's pizza, King's Delight (the best Pizza in America)? Besides salivating with hunger, don't you wish you knew the secret to that favorite recipe?

#Me2 

Great recipes aren't shared very often, but the product of those recipes is paraded around like a brand new car. This is because great recipes are a sign of excellence.  Strangely, great recipes aren't just about food. They are about the people who invented them. Recipes are guarded out of fear that if the recipe is shared, the creator will lose not only his recipe, but the notoriety for being the recipe's creator. 

If you think about it, education has great recipes that we call lessons, and for the last 20 years or so, we have had this pressure to share our knowledge.  The pressure to share great lessons is higher now than ever before. There are great educators who are sharing everything they have on the web, but there are also great educators who share nothing. 

To share or not to share. That is the question...

The fear of sharing is a real thing. Great teachers don't share because they fear their stuff is not good enough.  Some fail to share because of their modesty or they don't want to be perceived as a know-it-all, and some won't share because it is their creation and they don't want to share it. 

All the while kids continue to fail.

Kids come to us like a masterlock without a key. Some locks can be unlocked with a good lesson, while other locks can only be picked by a master lesson. Not all educators have the time, knowledge, or experience to create master lessons, but all educators can follow the recipe and adapt them to their needs. That's why sharing shouldn't be the goal. 

Sharing should be the standard...

All kids must learn; therefore, all kids deserve access to the same degree of instruction.  Instruction like this can only occur when educators break down the barriers of bravado, and kick in the doors of detached desolation. If all kids must learn, then all educators must be the first learners. We must share our recipes of excellence, borrow recipes where we fall short, tinker in teams with new techniques and collaboratively grow as lead learners. When we embrace this growth mindset that sharing is about more than caring, then educating all kids will no longer be the goal, but the standard. 

October is Connected Educator month, so get out there. Connect with your colleagues. Share your recipe, and equip educators with your excellence. 

Kids will be better for it!

Twitter, the Exponent of Learning

Twitter has been the most mind blowing learning experience I've ever had. If I compare it to my previous experience of traditional PD, which has been great by the way, there are some vast differences. Here are some reasons why you should consider using Twitter to enhance your current PD.

Frequency

Traditional PD requires you to be there for at least a day, and that would be great if you had nothing else to do. I thoroughly enjoy going to workshops. Some of the greatest ideas I ever received came from a workshop, but I typically attend one or two a month.  There's not enough time to attend traditional PD. Twitter exponentially increases the frequency of PD because I can learn any time of day for short or long periods of time.

Geography

Going to a workshop takes time, and you have to dress up. You have to drive there, and you are sometimes limited to the ideas from your region. On Twitter, I get ideas from California to China and all points in between. Seriously, I do. Cutting edge ideas are found in links, blogs, videos, chats and tweets from around the world, and it is overwhelmingly awesome to learn from people around the world.  Most importantly my geography is unimportant because I can learn from the comfort of my couch or anywhere that I am.

Collaboration

This is the most amazing part of Twitter. At workshops, you have little time to network with the people you come in contact with. On Twitter, you find new contacts and they are experts in specific areas. Teachers, principals, lead teachers and central office staff come together to share their experience as well as gain new ideas from others, but what's great is that everyone forgets about the hierarchy of their position. How utopian is that? Tweeps organize themselves into chats and lists based on where each Tweep is interested in growing in their own learning.

Ideas flourish and interests change based on the needs that each person has each day. Learning is personalized daily because everyone is part of a PLN (Personalized Learning Network). This is what PD should be all about.

Twitter and Traditional PD

Twitter does have its limitations in that traditional PD can take learning much more in-depth on broader topics.  The simple fact is you just can't replace a face to face PD. I always leave a traditional PD inspired and motivated to do an even better job. Twitter's role is to solidify my thinking in between the traditional PD opportunities as well as connect with other educators on issues that I currently face. I need both to be the best educator that I can be. Twitter exponentially improves my learning, but coupled with traditional PD it goes even further.


Special thanks to members of my PLN for playing a part in this post and taking my learning to a newer and higher level: @Cowpernicus, @DCulberhouse, @Mandery, @ChrisStogdill