Digital Citizenship - Week Six

Week six is finally here. I struggled a bit last week. Not due to the hardships of trying to get Evernote to work, which were many, but because it was reading week at Brock. I found it funny that I felt disconnected form what was happening in the wide world of education as I was not spending as much time interacting on line at the beginning of the week. Reading week, I was only exploring these cool tools for grades. As the week progressed I did change this and started to explore. Critically reflecting on how I felt and my actions through the week has given me the sense of clearly where this path is leading and the changes that have and will occur in me. I can now spend hours just reading the vast number of twitter posts that have links to blogs or web sites and then just explore each one of those and the time just slips away. The new ideas and concepts are so vast that at times it becomes tough to decide which ones to share and explore further. Each one in its own way exciting and intoxicating as my mind races to determine how or what can be tried in my classrooms or implemented at Lambton College. The interaction of all the tools has actually helped the process. It has now become clear how I can use this technology to help me collect information that is on a particular topic and the many ways in which it can be shared.

The Evernote piece was a tiny struggle for me for a couple of reasons. First getting the clipper to perform correctly was a bit of a learning curve that I have now mastered. Nothing wrong with the tool, the issue was all in the student. I still could not get an academic Article from a Library uploaded. I have not given up, just have not yet been successful. The other issue was that I wanted to only find things to store in Evernote through twitter or my feeder. This was turning out to be very time consuming and showing very little results. In the end, I just searched the web to come up with the many "notes" that are going to be required for this research project.

My time looking through my feeder and posts on twitter were not totally wasted as I did find lots of great information. One interesting piece spoke to the increase of social media use in class rooms. There is some statistics that they are using but I wonder what type of social media and just how is it being used. There were also many other links at the bottom of the page that are worth a look. I believe that it is about time and that these numbers are way to low. I think that as social media evolves, great educators will use all these tools to their advantage to guide the students to new concepts and ideas that they will explore themselves. Quality educators, using social media to its fullest, will reach more students at any age, and facilitate learning and real change.

I also found a piece that caused me to laugh aloud as I realized that this was exactly what was occurring in me. Ferriter and Provenzano ( I am following Provenzano on twitter as well) wrote a very good piece on how the use of social media has and well replace the need for professional development. Of course I could not help but see myself as they describe the interaction between like minded educators, sharing and learning from one another using the numerous tools that we have been exploring in this course. Interestingly I feel that this will only be a small number as I only see the truly great educators taking advantage of this now. The revolution has started, just how long will it take before all educators are on board?

I am excited as I grow and learn. I find myself looking forward to the next new bit of the puzzle for my PLE and discovering just how I will make it fit with the others. Thank you reading week for giving me the oppurtunity to critcally reflect and to grow as I am starting to become digitally literate.

Jeff