Comment 4 Teachers (weeks 10 & 12)

For the past two weeks I was reading and exploring a web page called EDTE.CH Inspire Connect Engage Create by Tom Barrett. There were many great posts in this page and I highly recommend reviewing his site. Mr. Barrett gives incite to Google Forms, Twitter and Google Earth. The three post that I decided to do over Superhero Ideas That Didn’t Make It Through the Revolving Doors, I Hope and Are we the resource if been looking for?

The first post is called Superheroes ideas that didn’t make it through the Revolving Doors was about the fantastic #movemeon book by Doug Belshaw and Stuart Ridout. This book was created by users of Twitter. The reason for this book is to gain knowledge and ideas about school leadership from other teachers and administrators. Mr. Barrett likes this because it involves our peers. In the end, it brought 300 individuals together for a common cause.

It is amazing that with the different technology in the world, those simple networking pages like Twitter and Facebook can cause educational break through. Libraries can be a great source to get information about education in books, but nothing is more useful then the word of mouth from peers that work in the field that they give the information about.

The next post I read was I Hope. This post was about Tom Barrett’s hopes for his future as an educator, father and for his son in education over the next fifteen years. Education isn’t just about the students and teachers. It’s also about the parents. Mr. Barrett hopes that his son’s classrooms are engaging and exciting. That he finds his success and celebrate it. He hopes that his son will find the opportunity that the world provides.

Also, in this post, it is similar to Dan Brown’s video in my previous post about hoping the class size was smaller, the teachers engage the students, and technology is part of the students learning. Through the years, education has been ending with students, teachers, and parents giving hopes on the future more than changing the future of education. Mr. Barrett hopes is one of the voices that are looking for a change not just as an educator himself, but as a father of a student looking to learn.

The last post is called, Are We the Resource I Have Been Looking For? It is a web application Mr. Barrett outlined as an application to provide educators opportunities to find their resources and connections in one place then in several different web pages. Mr. Barrett thought about how this resources was doing more harm than help. He determined that the source should be on the educators networking abilities to allow them access and not the resource itself. This means that it is important for educators of youth to know knowledge not just expect to summon it with a click of the mouse.

Mr. Barrett says it is more difficult to make your networks after you are out of school training then when you are in the mist of learning what networking is and about to be more prepared. It is important to have your networking and personal learning networks (PLN) established before entering your classroom. Future teachers that have networking and other teachers who are or have been in the field already in their network have a better idea what to expect when they enter their new classrooms for the first time.