Being connected as an educator offers a unique perspective. It is almost as if there are two different world’s in education, and a connected educator must travel within both. Technology in our computer-driven society has enabled collaboration to occur at a level and pace never before available in the 19th and 20th century versions of education. For the modern educators who have embraced the idea of connectedness, the world of education looks very different from it has been in previous centuries.
Regardless of technology, many educators express a curiosity about what it would be like to talk to and engage people from history. How often have we heard the expression “ I wish I could pick his/her brain for ten minutes”? The whole idea would be to collaborate with individuals who in some way have made a mark on history or education. We could all benefit from discussing and reflecting on the successes and failures of valued individuals who have proven their worth in their profession. That is what is done everyday in the connected world of education. It does not involve picking the brains of historical people, but those of education practitioners.
It is social media in the 21st Century that has boosted collaboration to a scale never before experienced. It enables educators the ability to collaborate beyond their own borders and way beyond their local connections to a global reach. Such collaboration forces transparency. Pedagogy, methodology and policy are all topics of discussion amongst educators worldwide. Education is being analyzed and scrutinized under a huge magnifying glass with the results, blemishes and all, being shared globally.
The overall result is that educators are beginning to adopt that which shows promise in education and they are turning away from that which is not effective. The one sticking point however, to this entire picture of progressive education evolution, which I have just painted with words, is that not all educators are so connected.
I have had the good fortune to attend many education conferences worldwide. Some of the most sought-after speakers, keynoters, and authors at these conferences are connected educators. They are the thought leaders in education moving education from its past to its future.
The result of all of this is the separation of education into two different places, the world of connected educators, and the world of the disconnected. The best example of the difference would be in the group’s discussions. The discussions online with connected educators are very different in tone and content when compared to the discussions in most faculty rooms and department meetings. Ideas such as the flipped classroom or BYOD were discussions in the connected world long before the mainstream media began writing about them to alert the unconnected.
There is one irony of all of this two-worlds discussion that upsets me most. When I talk to many of the thought leaders in the connected world of education, who are still practicing educators, I ask a simple question. Are you recognized in your school or district for the value you bring to the connected community of educators? Most, if not all, tell me that their district has little or no idea of who they are or what they bring to the world of education. How is it possible that the value of these educators, and their contribution to education, are not recognized within their own unconnected education world?
It is that lack of appreciation or even a failure to validate an educator’s success that is costing us the brightest and best in education. We have long been losing our newest teachers at a rate of 50% in the first five years of service. Obvious fixes would include more support with effective mentorship programs, as well as a salary more in line with the requirements and demands of the job.
Now, because of the growing world of connected education, we are seeing educators at the top end being lured into the business side of education because they are being recognized as valuable assets to education. That recognition however is coming from private industry and not their own education leaders. The private sector is luring away many of the education thought leaders by doing in the connected world what the unconnected world fails to do, recognize, validate, and reward leadership and innovation. Complacency is not considered an asset in this new connected world of education.
In a world that is being driven by technology at an ever-increasing rate that has never before been experienced, educators cannot be standing still. If educators do stand still, they will rapidly fall behind and become irrelevant. It is not a question of being a good or bad educator at that point. One can have great skills, but without being relevant to the students, how is that educator to be effective? Gone are the days when all learning took place in the rows of the classroom. Self-directed learning is now a way of the world. Educators will be needed more than ever, but the 19th and 20th Century models of educators are not relevant in our latest century. There is a pressing need to get more educators to be connected, self-directed, reflective, inspired, and relevant. We also need administrators to include themselves in this shift. Administrators need to maintain relevance as well. The longer it takes for our two worlds of educators to merge into one, the longer it will take us to reform our own culture and the education system overall.
My Island View 
Reblogged this on The Sup's Scoop and commented:
If you are in the education field but don’t read Tom Whitby, start.
You bring to light a situation that exists. So many of the wonderful educators I follow online have left the classroom, and many of the reasons you list are the reasons they accepted the new positions. Thank you for continuing to speak up on behalf of moving education in a dynamic, student-centered direction. I appreciate. Classroom teachers like me need advocates like you.
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I couldn’t agree more! I am still hopeful though that we, as connected educators, will also make a shift. We are all at a point now where we need to focus on requiring our leaders to become connected leaders and the universities/colleges to teach “Connected Educator” courses in their teacher prep. programs. I believe there is a revolution going on like we have never had before, yet we have very little media coverage. It is time to speak loudly and boldly like never before. We need to educate the media at this point. There is so much pain in the world and I believe this educational revolution provides hope for our future. Thanks for your inspirational and wise words. I will keep on keepin’ on.
Thank you so much for writing this, and for facilitating the ‘What Connected Educators Do Differently’ conversation at #edcampldr. I couldn’t agree more. As a soon to be 2nd year teacher, I find it difficult at times to navigate between these connected & unconnected spaces. My PLN has been such a tremendous resource to me (and my students) this past year. It’s made me a better educator & has provided us all with an authentic audience for our learning. Yet I’ll be the first to admit that I know no differently. This seems to put me in a unique position. The fact that I entered the classroom with this personalized network by my side can be very isolating at times.
Are there any other new teachers out there navigating these two worlds?
[…] Being connected as an educator offers a unique perspective. It is almost as if there are two different world’s in education, and a connected educator must travel within both. Technology in our comp… […]
Spot on Tom – one of your best posts! Me and several of my colleagues share your frustration of trying to bridge the connected and unconnected educational worlds. For us, the conundrum of connectedness is that we find appreciation, relevance, validation, and support in greater frequency through our PLN, yet feelings of isolation still exist within our schools. Is our effort better spent reciprocating to our PLN connections, or to our professional partners? I explain this bit more here; http://goo.gl/HaPlVE
I hope more educators will read and comment on your post. The relevancy gap seems to be widening between the connected and the unconnected. This gap needs to be acknowledged and discussed. Thanks again Tom, for accurately expressing what many of us feel.
[…] Being connected as an educator offers a unique perspective. It is almost as if there are two different world’s in education, and a connected educator must travel within both. Technology in our comp… […]
“In a world that is being driven by technology at an ever-increasing rate…” The most intelligent writing about education since the time of Plato has seen the connection between the critique of education and the critique of society. (Plato’s thoughts about education are not included in a separate book, but are included in the “Republic”, which is a critique of the prevailing political regime.) You rather complacently (to borrow the adjectve you use to characterise those living in the underworld offline) refer to a world driven by technology, as if it were beyond criticism. But surely educationalists have good reasons for protesting that that world is fundamentally anti-pedagogical. We ought to have a world driven by education, but we do not, it is driven by forces antithetical to it. And teachers are labelled “complacent” for hesitating to catch up with it.
You are right that a teacher has to appear relevant to her students, but the great challenge for the teacher (especially in a world that is so anti-pedagogical) is to change the students’ perceptions of what is relevant. Education 4.0 will have to be about getting students who have swallowed the nonsense about a supposedly technology-driven world to see that the world ought to be otherwise. And they will be encouraged to blog about the need for it to become otherwise. And they will tweet about it. And offline they will be utterly uncomplacent in their insistence that it become otherwise. And, it is to be hoped, the world will come to be driven by something more thoughtful.
True humanists and deep thinkers rarely engage in popular edtech online discussions, so it’s refreshing to hear from Torn Halves, founder of the Digital Counter-Revolution, a lively corner of independent thinking in a conformist, technologically-saturated culture..
A recent ‘think piece,’ Houman Harouni’s “What should a School be?‘ really sparked my thinking by challenging the predominant two worlds, shifting paradigm narrative. Originally published in The American Reader (Vol. 8, 2013), the Harvard researcher’s article essentially challenges us to think more broadly and to seek fresh insights from outside our contemporary intellectual cocoons.
While many education observers claim that “the school system is broken,” few actually stop to do what is known as a “deeper dive.” In our post-modern era of globalization and connectivity, fewer still pause to ask whether the purpose of education should be completely subsumed by“dancing with robots.”
I consider myself to be tech savvy, having studied and written extensively about online learning in Canadian K-12 education. I also tend to agree with Torn Halves that “Technology is not just tools” but rather another educational means that threatens to obscure the true ends of education. The acid test, for me, is whether it serves to produce fully educated, critically aware young people, seeing the world whole and prepared to lead satisfying and productive lives. “The unexamined life” is still a lesser life.
“the true ends of education” Yes, and those ends will only make sense in relation to the ends of the broader society.
Tools ought to be means to more important ends (of course they aren’t, but surely they ought to be). Now, the idea of a technology-driven society is the idea of a means-driven society. The edtech discourse that is so harsh with sceptical teachers cheerfully affirms this idea of society, but if ours really is a means-driven society then what we are faced with is a crisis of ends – of ultimate values.
“Tool up.” “What for?” “Don’t ask. Just tool up. And tool up fast, because the next lot of tools will be arriving in a matter of months.”
The image of a runaway train comes to mind.
Of course, from a purely practical point of view, teachers who want to stay in the profession need to run to keep up, but since they know very well what they are having to keep up with, they have every reason to look across at their fellow travellers and urge them to find out where the brakes are.
Reblogged this on Actualization and commented:
A great piece by Tom Whitby @tomwhitby on the need for a convergence of what is happening with educators online and what is happening offline on the ground. Tom eloquently makes the case for how online PD has the potential to actually transform professional practice in real life. A very timely piece as we head into the new academic year. Thanks Tom!
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I’m experiencing so many changes this year. Tomorrow, I will return to my first teacher work day with only half of my colleagues returning. Yes, 50% of my building’s staff left. Only one teacher retired and the others are gone due to the changing teacher’s evaluation, poor test scores, and low salaries due to limited pay increases and higher healthcare costs. Our principal left also and his replacement is not a connected educator. Sometimes, the roles of leadership are switched in education. I’m not sure which one causes more student neglect, disconnected leadership or reluctant educators to technology.
[…] Being connected as an educator offers a unique perspective. It is almost as if there are two different world’s in education, and a connected educator must travel within both. Technology in our comp… […]
[…] Tom Whitby, founder of Edchat in the USA writes; “Being connected as an educator offers a unique perspective,” in The Two Worlds of Education. […]
As technology and education concurrently evolve, the only constant is change. Innovative educators and administrators can make a real difference in this climate if they are willing to evolve with these changes.
[…] Being connected as an educator offers a unique perspective. It is almost as if there are two different world's in education, and a connected educator must travel within both. Technology in our computer-driven society has … […]
[…] Being connected as an educator offers a unique perspective. It is almost as if there are two different world’s in education, and a connected educator must travel within both. Technology in our comp… […]