Freaktography
Urban Exploring Monkey Bars
Spring is in the air. Lately I’ve had a number of colleagues ask me to walk them through Twitter. I’m super excited about that (see here). Twitter has changed my relationship to teaching and learning, and I think it has a powerful capacity to make our inquiry-driven-mindset as educators more visible. Twitter has brought amazing educators into my life, and has humbled me and made me feel very grateful for belonging to the brilliant tribe of teachers thriving in 2016. I’ve lurked, and listened, and learned. This week, I’m sitting down for lunch and a Twitter tutorial with Valerie, an #IBMaths teacher who is making a return to the Twitterverse. If you are reading this right now, please stop, give her a follow, and recommend one person for her to follow back.
Why Twitter?
How Twitter?
Twtter: A Cultural Guidebook from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.
Twitter and the inquiry cycle:
Creating beautiful questions takes time. In the end, though the answers that come from beautiful questions can save a lot of time.
Creating fine art also takes time. Art excites. Inspires. Lifts us up into our imagination. Reveals the thrill of discovery. Takes us beyond what is, into what can be. Art redefines how we see, what we see and who we are as the seer who is seeing.
Dynamic questioning is a way of being. It is not being a problem.
Right questioning introduces imagination and possibility. Right questioning is inviting. It invites us into new ways of approaching work, working with others and the different ways they think and process information.
To be or not to be one who questions is the question. Not to be one who questions is the problem.
Read the rest of “You Do Not Need the Answers. You Need the Right Questions” by Jay Steven Levin here.
Twitter is about having more questions than answers. For me, Twitter has been the most poignant reminder that we don’t know what we don’t know. But not knowing what we aren’t knowing is not about being hopeless. It is about being open-minded. What I do in my classroom could always be better. For the first time in the history of teaching, we have more access to more shoulders of giant-teachers to stand on then ever before. Twitter is our ladder to them. Why not climb?
So, which shoulders to start with?
These are my top-ten Twitter-phenoms to launch your feed with. In no particular order, I recommend adding these incredible educators to your virtual-staff room:
George Couros
Jeff Dungan ADE
Kim Cofino
Tosca Killoran
Sonya terBorg
Will Richardson
@TeacherToolkit
Kristin Ziemke
Angela Maiers
Vicki Davis
Twitter is all about taking the advice of Einstein, remember to embed inquiry into your weekly habits:
“It is not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”
― Albert Einstein
Garden State Hiker
Shoulders
Have I told Flickr lately, that I love their CC Images?
Thanks for the inspiration and guidance. You CAN teach an old dog new tricks.
Hello Tricia
I have to say I have been very slow to come round to Twitter and you make some excellent points as to why it is necessary for teachers to use. I have been experimenting with using it as an educational tool with my kids. They had a research project on Ancient Greek Hoplites. We split the class in half and gave them videos to watch on half of the information. The other half of the class had the other half of the information. When they found a fact they had to Tweet it through the class account. The catch was that neither side had all of the information so they quickly realised they had to start asking questions and collaborating with the other half of the class in order to complete the project. It was great as a time saver as they didn’t need to watch or read ALL of the information. The children have to synthesise the knowledge and put it into their own words as they only have 140 characters and for EAL kids the info is condensed into easily understandable, bite-sized chunks. Of course you may have already done this and be wondering why I am blathering on!
Love that idea, Iain–thanks so much for sharing. Hope to see it continue with your students this year!