Sharing is Caring….
Image by Jens Rydén via Flickr
I am a firm believer of sharing resources. And as a result I have shared all of the resources which I have ever made or used in my teaching career. Lets face it as teachers we are time poor. And if there are thousands of teachers around the world who are creating fantastic lessons why should we all reinvent the wheel? This week I have struggled… I have struggled to understand why the Teacher Association I belong to is having to discuss the end of its resource sharing magazine. And we are having to discuss this because we cannot get our members to share their resources. It saddens me to see that teachers won’t share their resources. Let’s face it by sharing resources, the resources can only get better as we use the collective teaching experience to make them better. At the end of the day its our students who would benefit. Most of us are in teaching to better the kids we teach?
The other reason we are struggling is the whole copyright issue. Teachers, especially teachers of economics, use copyrighted materials all the time. And even though for education this isn’t an issue because we are able to use the materials for educational purposes the Teacher Association is not an educational institution. As a result we cannot publish the materials.
So I guess my question is how do we get more people to share the resources they have created? I know there are lots of fantastic teachers out there creating fantastic resources. If all the teachers just shared five resources imagine the lessons we could produce as a result. And heaven forbid the learning which might occur!!
Related articles
- Sharing Resources using Twitter (ukwebfocusdaily.wordpress.com)
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Image by purplemattfish via Flickr
There is no other way to explain it. Our school year starts on Monday that is two days away. As I sit here in the dark writing, its midnight on Friday night and I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep because I have never, ever, EVER felt so unprepared for Day One in my teaching life. I have been teaching for seven years and with the exception of last year (where I was on maternity leave for the first six weeks of Term One) I have never not had Term One planned to at least to Week Five. This year I am rushed. I am rushed because everyone is rushed. I am stressed because everyone around me seems to be stressing.
This year I’m doing my ELF role AND taking on an academic class and not just any academic class its a Year 12 IB Economics. Our PD days like every other year have been planned down to the minute. Usually this hasn’t phased me because I am planned and calm but this year I’m pushing my luck. This year preperation week seems to have just disappeared.
Day 1 – your general intro to the year and this is the direction we want to take includes a bit on our new e-learning environment and time management (this is funny!!)
Day 2 – Habits of Mind – something we so desperately needed – was a brilliant session and I learned a whole heap of things to take into the classroom
Day 3 – Public Holiday (yes a breather) – spent… you guessed it… working!!!
Day 4 – Understanding by Design and Differentiation – again a great session and I have a good tool kit to go into the classroom with
Day 5 – Department Planning, E-Learning Environments, and various meetings depending on what you teach. – today
This was the hardest day of all. As one of the E-Learning Facilitators I spent the day going from planning session to planning session assisting staff with their E-Learning Environments. This was great however as the day wore on and more and more things went wrong and patience was tested. It got harder. So now I need to write my to-do list and try and get some sleep so that tomorrow (well today now!!) I can try and plan at least my first lesson and hope that I find the time to complete the tasks on my ELF to-do list (132), my classroom teacher to-do list (62) and my parent to-do list (44).
And this just about sums it up….
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We Still Block Content in Schools?
I’ve been spending my summer break catching up on my favourite PodCast Classroom Geeks and even though the episodes I was listening to were from way back in 2009 it was interesting to note that there were discussions occurring about blocked content in schools. When I was next close to my twitter feed I noticed a number of articles come through about websites which should be white-listed on school content filters. I have to ask what exactly is content blocking teaching kids?
Granted the educational institution I work for also filters content (though the restrictions are not too bad we do have access to facebook, twitter, and YouTube). I do want to know what are we teaching kids if we don’t let them access the big bad world. I have three children and at home we do not filter the Internet. Instead we teach our children what to do instead and trust that they know how to handle it. Ms 10 certainly does a number of times she has come to us about questionable content her friends have sent her or she has stumbled across and we have the appropriate conversation and alert who we feel needs to be alerted. I don’t think we need to shelther her from it. Perhaps educational institutions need to take the cotton wool off their eyes and have a good look at their content policies. I guess the problem is there is always someone who objects and makes waves. And schools need to protect themselves from this. I guess this goes back to my earlier post Time to Pop the Bubble Wrap We need to teach the kids cyber safety.
Read More"What NO INTERNET?"
Last week I attended the BEA (Business Educators Australasia) Conference, the conference was really good. It’s always interesting to see conferences for various subject areas and the information you can gather. In a previous life I was a business teacher and it’s nice to network with teachers who have brilliant ideas in the teaching of business and any subject for that matter. In my new life I am at the conference as I’m one of their technology speakers. When I agreed to speak I asked if there would be internet access for delegates as this would form part of my presentation. I was assured there was. I asked if delegates would have their own computers and was shocked to hear that they would have access only through the computers offered during my session. But at least they would have a computer. I asked if I could use my own computer and would I have access to internet while at the conference. Yes we have wireless available for presenters. Awesome I would still have net access. However as I discovered when I arrived at the conference the access was only available during my presentation. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Maybe I’ve been spoilt at the conferences I’ve attended in the past but in 2010 is it really acceptable not to offer net access to all your delegates? Especially a business educators conference when we are offering strands in incorporating technology? I have to admit three days without internet access has been hard and I feel very disconnected from the world and my PLN.
Missed you all!!
@MrsAngell
Read MoreTime to Pop the Bubble Wrap
I was reading a blog post tonight about what is the best age to teach Social Networking. Royan makes many good points. The main one I agree with is
Everywhere I turn I see a lot of time and money being consumed warning parents, children, and teachers about the dangers on the Internet. It’s getting to the point of absurdity. The problem with most of these initiatives and campaigns is they usually implicitly suggest that proverbial abstinence is the best policy. -The Spicy Learning Blog
I think that cybersafety has finally gone too far. Blocking kids from the Internet, chat, social networking and web 2.0 does not help them later in life from the big bad world. We need to teach kids to be smart from the start. Teach them how to protect their privacy. Teach them to talk to you as a parent or teacher. Teach them to make their own mind up about right and wrong. Encourage kids to use technology in open areas.
We used to teach kids (when I was a kid!) about stranger danger, we offered safe houses for kids walking home from school. Perhaps we should transfer this to the Internet.
Lets stop wrapping our children up in bubble wrap and teach them to be safe.
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