Well, this week’s class was a real eye-opener. I honestly had no idea what #openeducation meant. I remember signing up for #eci831 and trying to research the term, but I never found a clear definition. After starting the class I sort of forgot that I still didn’t know what it meant. So this week when it was the focus I was excited to learn what it meant!
As soon as Alan Levine started speaking about what open education was I began to have flashbacks to the early days in my career when I relied on so many veteran teachers to share their ideas and resources with me so that I could figure out what I was doing. However, with those good memories of ‘consensual sharing,’ I also recalled times when other professionals had taken ideas/resources without consent, even to claim them as their own. Some of these negative experiences, unfortunately, shaped a lot of my feelings about sharing my resources and my views around (what I didn’t realize to be) open education. The few teachers who didn’t share well ruined many great opportunities to collaborate and share. As I look back I don’t know why this tends to happen in schools. Why can’t we all just work together? How hard is it to ask for a copy of something? It boggles my mind that educators who teach sharing to their students can struggle to share amongst themselves.
So after this week’s discussion, I was remotivated to try some sharing again. I got into some great conversations on Twitter about sharing resources and figured I should reshare my #digcit website (click the link if you were someone that was interested on Twitter). It’s interesting though to work through the mental process of sharing something that you have put time, energy, and dedication into with just anybody online. It really does make you feel vulnerable. Anyways, I am going to do it and see how it goes!
I also decided to try some open education tactics with my colleagues this week. I had a primary teacher explain that she was stuck on how to word some report card comments. So I asked her if she had ever heard of ChatGPT. She said yes but didn’t know what it really entailed. So I walked her through the steps and showed her how to manipulate the request to get it to create comments for her. She was SO excited about how much time she said it would save her. Within the next ten minutes, I heard that she went and told another teacher about using ChatGPT, who then told someone else, which then ended in me hearing another teacher explaining to ME that I should use ChatGPT for MY comments. I laughed so hard at how fast word had spread (so much so that the teacher didn’t realize I had initiated the use of ChatGPT)! It reminded me of the power of sharing and collaborating, especially in education. Within a day most of the staff were excited to try a new strategy and felt connected and grateful to other staff members! What a great team bonding opportunity. Maybe open education really isn’t that hard. Maybe all we need to do is start small, share 1 idea with 1 person, and watch it spread.
I am not sure why we don’t engage in this more, maybe more educators are looking to share ideas but just don’t know where to start. I think if we take away the idea of ownership and teaching solo and replace it with collaboration and community it may give more opportunities for teachers to share.
Here are some simple steps I am going to try in order to create more opportunities for sharing:
- Ask for advice/help
- Notice things that other educators are doing well
- Praise a teacher for a great resource/idea
- Ask if you can try it/have a copy
- Ask if you can share it with another colleague
- Say thank you
What’s the culture of sharing like at your school? What has been your experience with sharing in a professional sense?
sarahross 