After some feedback and comments from Ben Barton and Sarah Brownsword on my previous post, I have begun to see another side to the third idea I outlined. The web application I proposed would provide teachers the opportunity to find resources, connections and ideas all in one place – from one search query.
Vortex by phill.d
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
However it occurred to me that although there are existing tools that perhaps do these things, they are just diluting the process. Another web application doing this will just multiply this further, resources and people will be in another place to join and search – spreading the network even more thinly.
Maybe I was coming at this from the wrong angle. The emphasis should be on teachers developing network capabilities that allow them to tap into and find all of this and not a tool or system that does it all for you.
I consider the journey to where my network is now to be just as important as anything I gain from it. The experience of virtually meeting and connecting with literally thousands of educators from around the world has been amazing – shortcutting to a prefabricated, ready-made, network denies people that opportunity.
Someone mentioned that this type of web tool (content management and social networking combined) is a sort of “holy grail” – but on reflection I think that the real treasure is a network that invariably yields value for the user in construction as well as in use.
I am just jealous of all of those trainee teachers who are establishing their networks whilst they are training. They are tapping into the insights from working teachers and no doubt benefitting from it in their own practice. Just imagine what their network capabilities will be like when they are 3 years or 5 years into teaching.
Every teacher training course in the world should encourage and teach students to build a network to support them professionally.
I am convinced. It is not a case of finding a single tool, system or platform that seeks out content and connects teachers – it should be down to us to make the journey to those different destinations ourselves and learn as much as we can along the way.