Facebook Group
 |
Click the link to visit professional FB page.
Image source cited with References at the bottom of the post. |
The area I relate to the most from the four is cognitive. My main purpose of joining educational social media platforms is to acquire and share resources, advice, and strategies. Although I do enjoy meeting other educators and making online friends, breaking away from being isolated in my classroom is not a priority for me because I do not feel isolated. I think the one benefit that I do not relate to is the affective one. Relying on others, who are online, to make me feel confident is something I do not seek. I do think I dabble in the area of identity, which moves the teacher from being the expert to collaborating with helping students to achieve success. In other words, the teacher moves from being "the sage on the stage to the guide on the side" (King). This is what I strive for with my teaching, thus I hope to move from a dabbler in this area to someone who stays in this area.
The way I am using Facebook (FB) groups to acquire resources is an example of crowdsourcing, which is "The practice of obtaining information or input into a task or project by enlisting the services of a large number of people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the Internet" (Crowdsourcing). Depending on the topic or time I have, determines how much of a taker than a giver I am. Since being in the technology specialist and masters program, I have made it more of a priority to make sure I contribute to the social media platforms that I take information from.
If you visit my page, I have one friend and that is for a couple of reasons. The first reason is my teacher friends I have do not have a professional FB page. Instead, they use the one FB page for all their connections. Second, I left this page pretty much inactive for about a year. My goal is to work on building my professional learning network through this course. I invite you to be my friend on my page so we can share resources and ideas.
The three groups I recently joined and try to contribute to are: NGSS For Middle & High School Science Teachers, Teachers Using Google Classroom, and 6th grade ELA Teachers. All three groups are new to me, but so far they are worth my time.
Here are a couple examples of my usage in these groups.
 |
6th grade ELA Teachers
Image source: Personal screenshot of FB group page.
|
Recently my principal has asked all the ELA teachers to include at least one day of reading stations. It has been a few years since I used stations and I have never used them while teaching sixth grade.
 |
NGSS For Middle & High School Science Teachers
Image source: Personal screenshot of FB group page. |
|
This is a group that I am finding little help with because it seems most of the members are high school teachers or teach only science. I need to seek out another group or use a different platform if I truly crowdsource. With this group, I find myself more of a lurker than a contributor, meaning, I am a watcher because at with this FB group I do not feel like I have much to contribute (Tolisano). Although I posted an example of a contribution, this is the only one I have made to this science group. You can also see that I had to scroll back to January 8, in order to find something where I could contribute.
 |
Teachers Using Google Classroom
Image source: Personal screenshot of FB group page. |
Using Google Classroom was the first FB educators group I joined, which was about two months ago. I joined it from my personal FB page by accident, but recently, I joined from my professional page. I am a Beta tester for Google Classroom, so when the newest features were rolled out to everyone, I wanted to read what others thought about the changes. There are 30 comments so far and most of them do not like the new look of the Classroom's new page. It was nice to read what others thought and their reasoning for liking or disliking various aspects of the updates.
Crowdsourcing | Definition of crowdsourcing in English by Oxford Dictionaries. (n.d.). Retrieved January 15, 2019, from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/crowdsourcing
King, A. (1993, January 01). From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/27558571?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Main Page. (n.d.). Retrieved January 15, 2019, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Tolisano, S. (2012, June 7). Silvia Tolisano- Langwitches Blog. Retrieved from http://langwitches.org/blog/
