The Uphill Climb

Every day my phone is inundated with dings and whistles as Twitter and Google+ let me know that my classmates are coming up with more share worthy ideas.  I feel as though I am adrift in the unknown...how do I find something worth sharing? I go searching for noteworthy sites to pass on to my colleagues, only to realize that I'm not techno savvy enough to know what makes a site noteworthy.  I'm not sure what I should share and so I end up sharing nothing and worrying about how my mark will suffer from my ignorance.  You see, I am a teacher and used to being held accountable to a specific standard...with this newfound freedom, I'm not sure how to succeed.  I don't have a rubric to tell me what is share worthy and I feel lost.  Yes, I know how very sad this is and it for this very reason that I am in this class.  I need to learn to escape the cookie cutter definition of valid/valued education.

Having (I think) figured out how to post my own blog, Benita and I have decided to work together to get our students blogging.  We are both a little old school in that we needed to print off the instructions, rather than follow them on screen. Now, armed with instructions and blog prompts, we are about to stretch our students as well...or are we? What I'm discovering is that many of the "new things" I'm discovering are those that they have long been aware of.  Most likely, had I paid attention instead of pitying their lack of "real connection", I would've heard my students talking about blogging. In fact, as I sit and think about it, I'm sure I've had at least a couple of students who were bloggers.

The final project weighs on my mind as Benita and I have decided to work on a Math supplementary unit but I am also tugged in other directions.  In the spring we sat down and decided to work on a video project with our students this year and now Twitter and Google+ postings have given me access to what colleagues have deemed good technologies for doing just that.  I still want to do the video project because I think it will give the kids a voice they haven't had but first will do the Math unit because it is also something for which our students have a need.  So I guess technology will come into play a lot in our building this year.

So much for my head in the sand....now I just have to figure out how to become a contributing member of the social media required for my class and I will be good to go.  I still feel overwhelmed by the social media - so many ideas coming through in a day that I can't keep track and don't know how to filter.