Connected Teacher

Reading the article Professor Alec Couros: "The Connected Teacher" really opened my eyes as to what social media can bring to me as an educator. The first sentence of this blog really moved me, “One powerful benefit of networked learning is that when you find something interesting, it often leads to someone interesting - and that someone often leads to an entire networks of interesting people”. To me this is exactly what being a connected teacher is. It’s finding valuable resources online that you can follow and then finding even more based on those primary people. The online world offers great connections and resources for educators. It is just up to the educator to use these resources to better themselves as teachers.  

After reading a few blog posts from Kristina Peter's blog  I also learned how important it is to reflect. Reflection is key to learning. To be a connected teacher, you should be reaching out and following people on social media but you should also be collaborating and commenting as well. Being a connected teacher means that you are creating conversation and collaborating with people. This could be done by simply leaving a comment on someone’s blog post or asking questions on twitter. I think I would enjoy creating a blog to reflect on my findings as an educator.

Using social media to enhance your teaching is a wonderful experience. As a college student, I have begun following teachers on twitter. I love scrolling through my twitter feed and seeing all these great ideas being done by teachers in Iowa. PLN is a great way to get connected with other teachers and broaden your ideas. You are able to learn about new things and be able to do new things in your classroom. Constantly broadening your mind and ideas are key to being a great teacher and PLN is a great way to do that.

When I googled “how to be a connected teacher” endless amounts of article came up. I decided to click on the first one that was titled 5 Tips for New Teachers to Become Connected Educators . I decided it would be a credible source because it is from edutopia and was created by educational consultant. Here is a list of the 5 tips she explains

1. Be able to define what it means to be a connected educator
2. Be knowledgeable about web 2.0
3. Be willing to join social media network
4. Become and blogger
5. Be reflective and reach out

I liked this article because it was straight to the point and she does not necessarily define everything. She provides resources to look at to define what a connected educator is and to figure out how what web 2.0 is. She does not just give you an answer, you have to do a little digging and I think I learned a lot more because of that.