Chapter Two Review

Chapter two of The Connected Educator, talks about how to develop a connected learning model.  The chapter goes on to explain how the connected learning community model is broken into three categories and how they apply to create one big picture in the work place.  It takes all three of the approaches to provide the 21st century teacher learner with the experiences and ideas needed to become an effective teacher.  The chapter compares the typical teacher to the connected teacher.  The typical teacher only acquires new information from in service days.  These in service days consist of many workshops throughout the day.  The connected teacher benefits from this traditional network but also has access to a much bigger community online of people all around the world.  The chapter goes on to say how the online world and face to face meetings need to be a safe and friendly learning environment so that people can take in as much information as they can.  It is very important to connect with people all over the world to diverse your teaching skills so that you understand all cultural backgrounds.

Now, I will go into the three approaches to professional development.  The first approach is the local community--also known as the, Profession Learning Communities.  This is where you have purposeful, face to face meetings among people in your work field.  Professional learning communities are about improvement, shared leadership, and school reform.  People in these groups can provide feedback and support one another.

The next approach is to Global network, also known as a personal learning network.  This is where you have online connections with a diverse group of people and resources from around the world.  Personal Learner Networks are designed for the teachers to further their short and long term goals for professional growth and personal learning as opposed to focusing on the students.  Educators must have good digital tools and select trustworthy sources to complete this stage in a safe and effective way.

The last stage is bounded community, which is also known as, a community of practice or inquiry.  This is where people in your same field from all over the world come together with overlapping interests and recognize that there is a need for deeper connections than a personal learning network or professional learning community can provide.  Also, in this approach, teachers are coming together to think of new ways to educate children and ways to improve themselves as educators.  This is where educators can share what works and what does not.

This chapter was a big eye opener for me, considering I plan to become a future educator.  This chapter in the field of education, shows that you are constantly trying to obtain new information to not only benefit your students, but yourself.  Already working as a substititute teacher, I see teachers striving to learn new information from one another.  They are seeing what works and what does not.  However, if something does not work for one teacher, another teacher can adapt that lesson and try it for themselves because it might work for them.  Being a teacher, you are constantly learning more information daily on how to teach your students.  Each year you obtain new students, who have different needs and wants and you as an educator have to meet those needs.  Teachers can bounce ideas off of one another to form new ideas or fix old ones that might not be working anymore.  Never stop furthering your education.  Teaching is not only about teaching your students-you are also learning new ideas and concepts each and everyday.

Chapter Six Review

After reading chapter six of, "The Connected Educator," I have grasped an understanding on how people in their working fields create, set roles, communicate, and share valuable ideas and lessons while using networks.   The world we live in today, is growing very fast and is becoming more technology based.  Obtaining knowledge, learning, and applying ideas can all be found and managed within virtual networks.  Personal learning networks allows you make deeper connections and relationships with people all around the world that are in the same working field as you are.  Networks are where you can find ideas and information and bring that following information back to your work place and share what you have learned.  This allows the work place to grow and be open minded by accepting new thoughts and ideas and enforcing them.  However, after obtaining certain ideas from various networks, you are allowed to alter those thoughts and ideas.

Networking can be very overwhelming at first, the author states.  Questions can start to form: How many people should I follow?  Am I interested in what this person is sharing?  Are these ideas inspiring me and can I bring them back to my community?  People starting to network need to remember this, you have to see yourself as a learner first and a teacher second.  It is okay to not be a leader in the networking field.  It is acceptable to just sit back and try to absorb, learn, and apply as much information you can and bring it back to your community.  I have learned that there are four roles you can obtain while networking based on your participation.  The first one is linking: where a person can join a network and visit periodically.  The second role is, lurking: where a person does not share their own thoughts and ideas, however they like to learn from others.  The third is, learning: this person brings something to the virtual network and take away information.  The last is, leading: this is where the individual puts enormous amount of time into their community.

Overall, after reading this chapter made me realize how important it is to network yourself.  Becoming a future educator, I now see how important it is to begin to network yourself early on in your career.  Over this past summer, I have started to network myself on the social media, Instagram.  (Yes, I know, it might sound silly).  On Instagram, I find many different educators who share new ideas, lessons, and concerns on their social media.  Most of the educators that I follow will post a little picture explaining a new concept or lesson, but will post a link to their blog containing their thoughts, ideas, comments and concerns.  I hope as time goes on during this semester, I can learn how to network myself professionally and start to comment and post my ideas.  Becoming an educator, I see how networking can not only help myself as an individual, but my co-teachers.