Collaborative learning has always been with us. Educators have for ages shared ideas and methods with other educators that they came in contact with on a face-to-face basis. Most educators insist that face to face connections are their best connections. Unfortunately, for some educators, it is their only form of professional collaboration. Technology, however, has been a game changer in the area of collaboration. It has enabled at least hundreds of thousands, if not a million educators to connect in various ways to share and collaborate professionally, learning and growing in the process. This has become a growing movement recognized as connected educators. The U.S Department of Education has recognized and supported the movement for the last two years with Connected Educator Month. Although many are connected, a majority has yet to reap the benefits.
What has bothered me for several years now has been the lack of support by the State and National Education organizations for the connected educator. The conferences of these organizations do have some sessions on Personal Learning Networks and how to connect educators, but the need for more information on those topics always seems to exceed the supply of sessions at these conferences.
Two State conferences of ISTE affiliates that I am familiar with have gone out of their way for connected educator education. Both NYSCATE of New York, and ICE of Illinois have created booths and lounges to educate and connect educators on the advantages of being connected educators. NYSCATE even gave out mugs to those who connected to other educators on site.
The irony of this dilemma comes in the fact that all of the Education organizations are now very quick to develop hashtags for their conferences, in order to create a buzz, and branding for both the conference, and the organization among connected educators. They fail however, to support that connectedness at the conference itself.
Few programs offer Twitter handles of educators and speakers in their programs. Nametags do not contain contact info for connecting.
Friday night I put out a tweet that we should start a movement petitioning all education organizations to at least support connected education by including Twitter handles on Nametags at conferences. Educators are connected in many ways using a cadre of applications to do so. Twitter in my estimation has been in place the longest supporting and promoting connected educators in developing collaborative personal Learning Networks.
Three people who I respect and admire from my own PLN immediately jumped on the tweet pointing out that an endorsement of one application over all of the others might be unfair. I was surprised that anyone was even on Twitter late on a Friday night so close to the holidays. As educators I guess we strive to be fair to everyone even if that one is an application. Both Pintrest and FaceBook were mentioned as additional ways to connect, and we should not favor one over the other. I would add that LinkedIn and Plurk are also in the mix. There are any number of Social Media applications that afford educators the ability to connect.
I chose Twitter because it was the one application that has been used specifically for professional collaboration over the longest period of time, by the greatest number of professionals. I wanted organizations to be able, in a simple way, to support and promote connectedness with educators. My connected colleagues however do have a valid point. Maybe a better method would be to allow conference participants to place on their nametags their preferred method of connecting with the name of their choice. Educators should not have to ink in their own information. It needs to be recognized by organizations as a legitimate for of professionalism for educators. The unconnected educators need to be educated and convinced of the legitimacy of connectedness.
The larger picture here is to get these Education Organizations to support connected educators and not just use them. PLN’s will never take the place of conferences, just as computers will never take the place of educators. Our world is changing and to stay relevant we need to change as well. In the garden of ideas we must weed out the bad and fertilize the good, but we can never ignore the ideas that are popping up at a rate never before imagined. Collaborative, connected educators are making a difference and creating transparency in a system that before operated behind closed classroom doors. Sharing the good and shining a light on the bad benefits all educators and in turn all students. That deserves to be supported and promoted by our own professional organizations.
My Island View 
Hi Tom, Perhaps the next post should be a “How To Organize an Ed Conference in the Tech-Ed Age” as I believe many organizations don’t know where to start when it comes to this. If you write this, I’ll be the first to send it to an organization I work for, one that is hosting a couple of conferences this spring.
I know that our Union, the MTA, has embraced social media, and recently my attendance at the NCTE demonstrated greater infusion of technology and social medial.
I suppose the post would need the “Must Have’s” and the rationale for each. Perhaps someone has already written this post. Thanks for your continued support for optimal PD in education. Happy Holidays! – Maureen
Maureen This is not a new topic for me. Here is a post I did on June 17, 2010 “Not Your Father’s EDU Conference” https://tomwhitby.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/not-your-father%E2%80%99s-edu-conference/
Perhaps the more difficult issue is the desire and will of the educator(s) to actually be connected in whatever way THEY choose. I think the form is secondary, although not unimportant. The crucial piece is the educator(s) and the choices they each make relative to being connected and at what level. And that surely is based on their own sense and understanding of their work and the power and possible outcomes that they perceive they have relative to their own work.
Thanks for the link, I’m sending it to the system conference organizers.
Frustrating, right? Simple (and simply fixed) issues like the handles on nametags and the listings of presenters — and more systemic issues like the regular blocking/expense of wifi in many conf centers — invite these organizations’ rethinking about the support of connected educators.
In recent registrations for ’14 I’ve taken to adding my @ handle to my name on the reg form, on the gamble it might show up on the tag ‘by accident’. 😉
I always wear a second name tag containing my Twitter Avatar and my Twitter handle. I have been doing that for years, but the time has come for me not to have to do that on my own anymore.
[…] Collaborative learning has always been with us. Educators have for ages shared ideas and methods with other educators that they came in contact with on a face-to-face basis. Most educators insist t… […]
[…] Collaborative learning has always been with us. Educators have for ages shared ideas and methods with other educators that they came in contact with on a face-to-face basis. Most educators insist t… […]
[…] Collaborative learning has always been with us. Educators have for ages shared ideas and methods with other educators that they came in contact with on a face-to-face basis. Most educators insist t… […]
Another interesting post Tom. Particularly liked your remarks about ‘weeding the garden’. The problem with that is that a ‘weed’ as actually – sadly – a matter of interpretation.
I regards to your main point, I am taken by the idea of having a point of contact beyond a ‘name’ that allows for further collaboration post-conference. Two other possible mediums include Edmodo and About.Me. However, there is no escaping the corporate element to it all, so having a choice would seem the best bet.
I think another possibility is having a link of some sort to a directory of conference participants. Good option for those who feel awkward trying to decipher the jumble of letters that are some people’s Twitter handles like mine @mrkrndvs. However, I am sure this will have its issues. Maybe teachers could have an ‘opt-in’ option when registering.
I attending the Melbourne Google Summit earlier this year and their answer was that attendants actually make their own name tags. This also might have potential. Being a Google Event, they also created an Google+ group.
In the end, I think that the problem still lies at the school level where some leaders are apprehensive about embracing social networking at a teacher level (fine at a school level, that is somehow different). It is often seen as another thing that needs to be managed and monitored. Something that no one wants to do, most likely because they don’t want to have the hard conversations about acceptable or appropriate behaviour.