edspace community of practice

edSpace – Our networking frontier

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edspace community of practice

I recently read Anne Kenneally’s blog post There is power in being connected, and found myself nodding, agreeing, and getting more excited as I read about the power and potential for using social networks to help drive and influence professional practice.

Educators are important and have important things to say, and every day I see strong relational networks growing within and between schools and kura, so it was good timing to view Alan Daly’s talk about the potential of using social networks to leverage collective wisdom or intellectual capital. As the Online Facilitator for CORE Education’s edSpace, I also see huge potential for teachers, kaiako, leaders, and tumuaki to continue those rich connections online.

What can edSpace do for educators?

According to recent research, New Zealand teachers are using a variety of social media tools and networks to support their teaching and professional learning by:

  • collaborating with teachers beyond their school 61%
  • asking teaching-related questions online 76%
  • sharing teaching resources online 62%
  • contributing to online discussions about teaching 51%
  • taking part in online learning opportunities 50%

stats

Findings: Digital technologies for learning: Findings from the NZCER national survey of primary and intermediate schools 2016

Like social networks, communities of practice enable us to connect to other people, information, ideas, and events. edSpace is a community for those who have a strong common interest in education. We are a community of experts — some in classrooms, some who support a community of practitioners — who can connect and learn from each other in a safe and open environment. What’s the difference between a social network and an online community?

What can edSpace do for you?

edSpace enables us to access and generate intellectual capital together, beyond what and who we know. This, in turn, can generate new ideas and inspire transforming shifts in our professional practice. In the establishment phase of edSpace, we see relationships forming and interactions ignited where community members are invited to share experiences, facts, opinions, emotions, resources, ask teaching-related questions and take part in online learning opportunities. Relational trust is the foundation of this mutual engagement, where multiple interactions grow an audience into a community. Connections might look like this:

connections

Getting the most out of edSpace

Once you join edSpace you’ll find a collection of Ngā Rōpū (groups) and a mixture of communities — each dedicated to particular interests and people. Some meeting spaces are openly associated with CORE projects, products or services (events), fostering opportunities for many voices to engage, share, debate, challenge, and explore. There are like-minded people and groups of interest to connect with such as the following featured themes and events:

If your areas of interest are not represented yet, we invite you to create your own. To get started:

getting started list

Some food for thought

  • How might you connect with others in edSpace to support your own practice?
  • What are the benefits for you, your colleagues or students?
  • What concerns do you have about becoming connected?
  • What is the way forward to overcome any concerns and maximize the benefits?

For more, see About edSpace, and if you have any queries or need any further support, please feel free to contact your Online Facilitator, Tessa Gray.

 

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video chat

Digital tools for connected schools

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As schools cluster together to help raise achievement for all students, considerations for how this will work becomes a priority. Schools are being encouraged to share their expertise and ‘learn from each other about how best to raise the quality of teaching and learning.’ (Communities of Schools; Making a difference – IES) Blended ways of working (face-to-face and online) could well be one of the best solutions for all.

Connecting together

Q: How will key stakeholders come together to build trusting relationships and address common goals – and are there digital tools that can help us do that?

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Reimagining Professional Learning 2016

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professional learning 2016

The way educators are engaging in PLD is changing. As the school year begins teachers and leaders are crafting inquiry goals and considering their professional learning foci for 2016. For many teachers, particularly those in schools and kura clustering inCommunities of Learning (CoL), this may mean embarking oncollaborative inquiries as they ‘share goals based on information about their students’ educational needs and work together to achieve them’.

Current research highlights the importance for learning networks, or learning communities, to develop shared approaches, and a culture of learning and inquiry. In the NZCER paper, Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching – a New Zealand perspective it is noted that:

“Schools are being talked about as “learning organisations”, and educators are encouraged to become “professional learning communities” or even “networked learning communities” within and across schools. School leaders have responsibility for supporting and sustaining a continuous culture of learning amongst staff, in a dynamic environment.” (p 45).

The fundamental shift of communities of learning is to function more as anetworked organisation focused on raising achievement across the educational sector. As written in, Accelerating student achievement: a resource for schools (December 2015, p 1):

“Accelerated improvement requires a whole system to function as a collaborative learning community that is advancing progress on the four areas of leverage: pedagogy, educationally powerful connections, professional learning and leadership. (Adrienne Alton-Lee, cited in Mathematics in Years 4 to 8: Developing a Responsive Curriculum; ERO, 2013)

The PLD implications for schools practising as networked organisations and professional learning communities are varied. New ways of working as networked organisations may challenge and influence, “infrastructure, processes, people and culture” due to organisational and logistical factors as time, location, size, and distribution of those schools involved in the communities of learning.

The challenge for schools is to find responsive ways to create on-going, engaging professional learning opportunities that are inclusive of all staff across their CoL, able to address individual and collective strengths/needs to help achieve collaborative goals for teaching and learning, not constrained by time or location.

When reimagining PLD in 2016, key aspects worth considering include:

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Safe and sound? | Strategies for cybersafety

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cyberbullying

Educators, parents and community groups alike, are becoming increasingly aware of the issues associated with digital citizenship and cybersafety. Some are observing a growing chasm between what we aspire to and what our students actually do.

Online conversations within the secondary school sector have identified specific issues around cyberbullying and the effective use of Facebook. In addition, there is the challenge of resonding to inappropriate websites that are designed to ridicule and defame.

Let's consider issues related to cyberbullying, and managing inappropriate content…

Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying or digital disrespect is identified as a growing problem amongst our young people. Compounding the issue is that some young people don’t see this as anything serious as this article from ED Week highlights. There are some members of the younger generation who yearn for their 15 minutes of fame and who put themselves ‘out there’ in pursuit of recognition – even if this means beings noticed for the most adverse, undesirable behavior.

A recent thread in the  VLN Groups asks, How can we help students use social media appropriately – and why?  It comes down to, says Karen Melhuish, “how well students are prepared to manage themselves with responsibility and integrity online”. It’s about wanting our young people to be good digital citizens – individuals who have the moral and ethical judgment to make the right decisions when engaging online.

Some suggested strategies:

Creating and accessing questionable material online

As our young people get older, they are considerably more influenced by their peers. This includes how they interact and communicate online. "That’s why, rather than trying to put barriers on what kids can do with technology…we need for them to discuss possible problems and consequences with their peers and with adults who will encourage positive behavior". (Power to Learn life)

Some suggested strategies:

  • Explore with your students the long-term implications of a digital footprint and help them make a personal discovery about whee they are online. Check out these resources on YouTube and the Innovative Educator blog.
  • Discuss the consequences for a worse-case scenario. If our young people see this merely as a joke, then it's our job to convince them otherwise. Have a look at this relevant article in ED Week and this YouTube video.
  • Address the cause for the behaviour. As Michele Martin writes in, Negative Online Behavior is a Product of Culture, Not Your Social Media Tools: What I'm Learning from the Work Literacy Course the root of the problem may be more about the culture of the community and there needs to be a strategy or, “plan for dealing with this.”
  • Involve everyone (students, parents, educators) from policy through to implementation. Everyone wants the best for our young people. After all, we want them to make the most of the life – in the safest possible way.

Other resources include:

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Digital citizenship (part 2): At school and at home

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Teachers can sometimes 'hide behind time'As a teacher, I wasn’t always thinking about ways to manage cyber safety in the classroom. It was always in the back of my mind, but I never really had a system or a set of protocols that guided the children’s use of the Internet. There was a school policy of some sort, but that was tucked away in a big folder, and was very rarely referred to. If something undesirable should happen, I was confident I wasn’t too far away to address the issue.

How times have changed. I think very differently now—about what it means to manage cybersafety in the classroom (and at home), and the long-term implications if this isn’t addressed appropriately.

But what does everyone else think?

NetSafe survey reveals lack of confidence in educators about cybersafety

Recently NetSafe asked New Zealand educators how confident were they in managing cybersafety in their schools. The key findings from this showed:

  • Teachers do not feel confident supporting students with cybersafety, with secondary and intermediate teachers less confident than those teaching at primary level. A knowledge of cybersafety issues was needed by teachers.
  • In terms of managing issues, generally students were not involved in discussions about appropriate use of ICT, filtering was seen as only one element of managing cybersafety, and
  • That issues extend beyond the school gate, but that educators were seen as vital in guiding students.

Most educators acknowledge the classroom landscape is changing (due to adoption of mobile and Internet technologies), and the research  shows nearly 70% of respondents realise they are required to “… be confident in supporting students to develop their digital citizenship, and, like other literacies and skills digital literacy and cybersafety skills, require cultivation and development.” But the findings from this research also shows a significant amount of New Zealand teachers (more so at the secondary level) are not confident about their own knowledge and ability to teach cybersafety. Check out NetSafe’s Teacher Confidence Survey Summary (PDF).

There's no 'real world' and 'digital world'

What we as educators can do about digital citizenship and cybersafety

If being a successful digital citizen is just as important as being a ‘regular citizen’, then perhaps we need to get busy finding ways to:

  • Increase teacher confidence and knowledge of cybersafety in the classroom – from generalist through to specialist teachers
  • Improve strategies for managing cybersafety by involving students and parents in a consultative process to help develop policies and user agreements
  • Extend messages of cybersafety and digital citizenship to the wider community

As mentioned in Digital Citizenship (part 1), one way teachers can improve confidence with teaching digital citizenship and cyber- safe practices, is to continue to focus on the Key Competencies and how this might be translated into the digital realm.

Digital citizenship and cybersafety resources

There is a wealth of resources both locally and internationally that can help educators unpack the concepts of digital citizenship and the realities of managing cybersafety—in school and at home.

For more information on specific resources that can help support the three areas identified above:

It's great that the internet is no longer static

All images sourced from Ollie Bray free internet safety and responsible use cartoons

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