What “makes” a connected educator?

#cenz14 is wrapping up (actually this post is a few days late), and it's time to try describe just what I think being a connected educator is.

Something that I believe in is that 'the knowledge is in the room', the power of social constructivism. It's the idea that singularly I can have some ideas, some struggles, some solutions...but if I pair with another...together we may have more ideas, more struggles and more solutions, and if you harness 'the power of the crowd' the possibilities are endless. How often have you been stumped with something, only to have an answer or an idea come to you in a staffroom, or corridor conversation? Or had an idea you've shared with somebody only to see the idea grow legs, and really take off?

To me a connected educator is one who is brave enough to work with somebody else, to air your troubles and seek advice, to challenge your assumptions/beliefs/values by hanging them out for all to see...somebody who is willing to be a learner, to listen, to discuss and debate, to critique and accept critique...and to hunt for critique. Ultimately, someone who is willing reflect on their practice (or leadership) outside of their own head.

To me it isn't about Twitter, blogging, conferences (un- or otherwise)...these are all the tools of a connected educator, the things that can enable all the above to happen (and to happen to a massive degree...the twitter staffroom is much bigger than my own...), but unless combined with two things they are fairly useless:

1. Action: 'knowledge is just information until acted on'...not sure who said that, but very true. All the great ideas flying through the twittersphere are amazing, but need action by you to become your own knowledge, your PPK (Personal Practical Knowledge).

2. Reflection: Whether using a tool like a blog to reflect, or sharing f2f, reflection on practice with others is essential. Reflection with others allows perspective.

While I am new to the 'online' side of being connected, I have always worked best with others...and the month of #cenz14 may be drawing to a close, but that won't change. The new (and exciting) thing for me is now I can connect with people outside of my school, my town, my region, my country...

If the 'knowledge is in the room'...I now have a fairly large 'room' to draw from, and add to.

Oh, and being able to drink a beer while listening/watching/tweeting has been great...cheers #cenz14! 

Hour of Code...the learning inside the learning

As mentioned before, I'm at the beginning stages of learning more about 'making'...the whole maker movement is something I never knew about, but sits very well with what I believe about learning. Part of this learning has been around coding.

Prior to this month if you had mentioned coding, the visual image it drummed up was one of a slightly darkened room, banks of screens, pasty individuals looking at those screens and seeing 'matrix' like stuff on them. How wrong was I (once again)? People had mentioned in the news, at conferences etc about learning robotics, computer programming...but all this just washed right over me. I still don't really understand it all...hence this post.

In order to learn, I signed up to code.org, and completed the hour of code tutorial. I had angry birds chasing pigs, zombies eating sunflowers...if/else blocks, repeat blocks...Mark (FaceBook) and Bill (Microsoft) telling me what to do...such great learning. And that is what surprised me...I didn't learn to 'code' as such, but the problem-solving, logical thinking, and conversations (my wife helped towards the end) were so great. The LEARNING embedded into the act of learning to code, excellent. I'm excited about trying this with some of my learners, setting them up to work together.

I realise it was quite an easy set of activities I completed, but the satisfaction of learning was still the same (and I got a sweet certificate at the end...).

Somehow doing this led me to @AKeenReader 's blog...will blog about this later.