Monday, February 20, 2012

The Overwhelm Factor


Camille Cole
 If you're a K-12 teacher and you're in the classroom right now, there's a good chance you are feeling overwhelmed. You're drowning in work, there are kids who need your attention, there are mandates you must meet, expectations you must live up to, and emerging technologies you must learn. But that's just for starters, right? It's not enough to learn how to use interactive digital tools; almost everyone has a Facebook page by now. You've posted a picture of your trip to the beach, told your friends about the new flower garden, maybe you bought a farm animal, thought this was going to be some form of relaxation....think again.

Can we remember a world when a tweet was sitting on a branch outside your kitchen window?  It's all going by so fast. While you were figuring out how to post a profile picture your students already had an avatar and 300 friends. Hand-helds have nothing to do with last Saturday night, and the truth is you have to get out in front of those kids. It's not going to work to ask them, or to demand they leave it at the door. The world has changed while we were busy correcting papers.

Add to that note-to-self: learn how to integrate social media tools into my instructional methodology. The chilling truth is that you can't learn it all at once. It's too big of a bite. What to do? Take it one step at a time. Embrace the idea. Join Classroom 2.0 and poke around on this "Ning." (A Ning is an interactive social media site, just like Facebook really.) Read the posts. Respond to a post. Now you've done it....You are using social media. So now you might as well join Twitter and see what's going on, upload a picture. Watch for a while.

Before long, something will speak to you. Someone's blog will inspire you to start your own blog. Someone's sample wiki they have posted on Classroom 2.0 might inspire you to use a wiki to augment a reading assignment or a research project.

There are so many resources and sooner or later you will be out there with the rest of them...no training wheels, a vision of your own. This is how it's going to have to work. It's more about attitude right now than it is about aptitude. Why do our kids need us? For the same reason they always have: to guide them and remind them to be safe and wise.

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