The topic of open education and the culture of sharing is so interesting. My blog today is a mix of thoughts that have been pacing in my brain for years and there are also aspects that are fresh from class earlier this week when we discussed open education. With the videos I watched to supplement my thinking, I could go on for days, but I will stick to a few key points of these topics.  

The culture of sharing in teaching: 

If it wasn’t for awesome teachers who so kindly shared their “stuff” with me every time I taught a course that was new to me, I would not have a) survived those semesters and b) become the teacher I am today because how and what I teach today is a patch-work quilt of all of the things that someone else and their content has taught me. So, even though they might not see this (although I’m hoping at least one of them will – you know who you are), THANK YOU. Thank you times a million. You are the kind of goodness I hope I am for others who are just getting their bearings or need a helping hand. By being the grateful recipient of sharing, I try to mirror this behaviour because I think it is important and we have to start somewhere if we want to create a particular culture around it. As we discussed in class this week, lack of reciprocity can be frustrating, no question about it. One piece of advice I received for life in general that I constantly keep in my back pocket is that I cannot expect me from others; if I am willing to share, I cannot expect others to share with me or for them to pay it forward as it was paid forward to me. Despite this, I will continue to share because typically those who ask for help are asking for survival purposes and for that I will not judge them because I’ve been there. In support of creating a culture of sharing, I often share things I produce with my department in case anyone could benefit from it; this is not in a conceited effort, but it is about being able to lighten the load for someone else and the ability to share my creativity for someone to ‘remix’ it, as Lawrence Lessig says, with their own creative spin and purposes.  

The idea of open education: 

Through the discussion in class this week and through some of the available videos, one theme I found that ran through the topic of open ed was access/accessibility, in both support and critique of the concept. On one hand, the possibilities are endless in what information (and from where and when) you can offer your classes (and colleagues) because the options are expanding exponentially. The Why Open Education Matters video shares a few of the open ed resources available for multiple purposes, such as Khan Academy. On the other hand, there is the critical piece of the cost of access. This is in reference to our discussion about what information becomes accessible to certain people based on affiliation (access to articles because a student at a university = privilege) or other aspects of privilege (access to Wi-Fi, devices, etc.). I will say though, speaking strictly from a Saskatchewan perspective, the insufficient funding for education is putting teachers in a position of reliance on open ed. Although the funding situation is absurd, I am not saying this forced reliance is a negative, in fact maybe open ed will eventually implode the politically driven texts book industry creating more money for ed funding…a digression for another day…

In my particular context of teaching high school English, open ed is great because there is no text book, per se, for an English class so every semester I essentially create one, albeit untraditional. Open ed resources have been amazing in creating flexibility and accessibility for my students and me. Being able to access entire novels as PDFs or audio recordings, or being able to use certain free programs for creative projects puts us in an unprecedented time of education and we should use this advantage to our (and our students’) benefit. I use resources that are free to access that “celebrate amateur culture”, which is not to be interpreted as “amateur-ish culture…[but] people producing for the love of what they’re doing and not for the money” (7:41-7:52), touching on the advantage and benefits of a culture of sharing. There is also an aspect of not trying to reinvent the wheel with concepts I teach; if someone out there has created something that says what I am trying to say but in a more creative and appealing way, I’d be straight up silly not to let them take the stage. Ultimately, I am certainly glad I teach in the era of open ed resources and I wonder how they will continue to shift education in the future. 

Can online social media activism be meaningful and worthwhile? The short answer is yes, absolutely. But, here are my thoughts about it… 

With social media (SM) being an integral part of our current society’s means of influence, there is no doubt that using SM platforms for activism is a meaningful and worthwhile venture. This point is underscored when “regular” media is highly politicized and prioritizes stories based on the ratings it will get them. ANYWAY, whether we like it or not, we are all influencers on some level on SM…some of us just don’t get paid to do it, unfortunately. Even in a small SM network, what we choose (or choose not) to post, share, comment on, and support all tells our “people” what we stand for and against, “increasing visibility”, making it meaningful and worthwhile. Will this sometimes rock the boat? Will this sometimes change others’ opinions/perceptions of us for better or worse? Should you stand up for what you believe in anyway despite the possible repercussions? Yes, yes, and yes! Taking it further, if people in positions of societal power (referring to those with a lot of followers therefore a longer social reach) attach or associate themselves with a certain cause, there is a positive domino effect that results, proving it to be a worthy act. A Time article I read asking if a celebrity’s SM activism makes a difference, the ultimate answer is yes celebrities help by sparking awareness and mobilization, proving my point that SM influence makes online activism a worthwhile and meaningful act.  

In addition to the influence people on SM can have in calling attention to certain topics, there is an entire avenue of visibility and community that spawns from different aspects of SM. For example, hashtags create notably vast communities, taking a topic/cause to the global scale. Hashtags can also provide visibility in terms of pictures posted to portray the lived experience of those experiencing the inequity/injustice who do not have the privilege of SM, as noted in the Maryville University article. Even if someone only goes so far as to support a social justice campaign online, there is still positive that comes from it because it may be the catalyst for another person to become a participatory citizen and be involved offline.  

Is it possible to have productive conversations about social justice online?  

Conversations and interactions about social justice is the hard work about caring or spreading awareness about a cause because you will constantly be met with opposition and criticism…and trolls. This hard work is tough enough in the physical world, let alone the online world. Some of the trickiest pieces of online conversations about social justice (or any online interaction) is
  a) intended tone is sometimes difficult to read
  b) we have the ability to NOT respond because it is not F2F, yet, if we are involved with something it is clear we are passionate about it and therefore it is difficult to not be on defence. And, in addition to the fact that not responding will justify the naysayer’s comment, not responding or following up removes us from doing the hard work of creating change and understanding. 

Having said this, it is possible to be respectful in interactions when met with differing opinions and experiences. The comment thread on Katia’s blog post is a great example of this; in the end, there are people with views and perspectives that do not align, nor will they, yet a respectful conversation can in fact happen.

Just a little tip: if a troll happens to throw a toddler-like tantrum in the online conversation, don’t get ‘mad like troll’, maybe just direct them to a youtube video for breathing exercises to calm down. 

Our responsibility as educators to model active citizenship online:

I have said this before, but our critical thinking skills when using SM is absolutely crucial. Being able to decipher what actions will help rather than hurt a cause is important too. As we discussed in class, sometimes intentions are good but isn’t reflected in the action (with the example of #blackouttuesday inundating the hashtag/cause not in a somewhat harmful way to the purpose). We also have to be careful as to not performatively align ourselves with a cause because it “looks good” for a teacher to do so. With having the free will to create our own online world and persona, if nothing else, authenticity must be at the core of our actions. For modelling active citizenship, I don’t consistently voice my opinion or support social justice movements on SM, although after reading Katia’s blog post, I think I should. I chose to become a teacher, knowing the implication of modelling behaviour both at and outside of school. The progression of SM has simply expanded the platform and privilege for teachers to lead by example and inform. I don’t need to psychoanalyze all my reasons for not being a fully active digital citizen up to this point, rather simply shift my mindset away from fear of being active to “look at all the good you can do” by being an active digital citizen and remind myself that part of my job as a teacher and as a person is to lead by example and leading doesn’t happen on the sidelines. A focus of mine going forward will be to expand the social justice accounts I follow on personal SM and to speak up more.

When I first started teaching, Twitter was all the rage. So, I created a professional account to get involved and post some of the stuff my classroom and school was up to. Even with similar features (likes, reposts, replies) to other social media at that time (Facebook and Instagram), I felt I didn’t really get any satisfaction from other people seeing/liking/retweeting my updates as I did from the other platforms. Fast forward to now where social media has exploded and in being reacquainted with Twitter, I find I am feeling the same way I felt all those years ago. I’m not sure I can pinpoint why I don’t feel connected to it; I think it comes from a few places/reasons:

• perhaps it is that I am currently away from teaching
• perhaps it is that I typically selectively participate in social media so with Twitter I feel the pressure of participation
• perhaps I feel I miss out on too much if I am away from Twitter too long and I’m trying to minimize anxiety not perpetuate it
• perhaps it is because I am connecting it to my early career and a ‘that’s not who I am anymore’ mentality
• perhaps it feels like an overwhelming resource pool, etc.
• perhaps I feel I don’t have the time to commit to it and I don’t ever do anything haphazardly  

I wish I had an answer.  

Now, this is not to say that I am not benefiting from reintegrating it into my social media rotation. I am connecting with teachers I never would have been aware of otherwise (and learning from them), I see how relevant it still is (I thought it was passe, but that is not the case), how it can create a sense of community in so many ways, etc. Another benefit to building a PLN on Twitter is that I have followed a few key accounts that I will check back on once I return to the classroom as professional development. One of these accounts is @DitchThatTxtbk . There are some practical and innovative resources this account shares that are helpful in the high school setting, which I find rare across social media (most things are usually geared toward elementary). For example, I love their post of students creating a podcast and can see a few different ways I could use this in different English classes. 

I have engaged in one Twitter chat so far and I will say that I had no idea what I was doing but did it anyway for the sake of learning and participating. I think I did okay for a noob; I gave my on-the-spot opinion to a couple questions (I didn’t answer them all) based on my experience in the classroom. One thing I know about Twitter chats is that you can participate after the fact, but I participated live (is that what you call it?) – I know and am confident in my thoughts and opinions, so I wanted the authentic experience of my first Twitter chat with #SaskEdChat. I say authentic because I understand Twitter to be candid thoughts and engagement rather than meticulously planned out and polished answers/content. I will participate in at least one more Twitter chat before this class is over because  

1. Everything deserves a second try and  
2. I really like the exercise of connecting with like-minded people and keeping my brain in the teaching game discussing the different explicit and implicit facets of education. 

To end, I think, based on my current reacquaintance experience with Twitter, I will continue to use it as a professional development source and resource for implementing new ideas in my classroom, but I don’t think I would have students use it for and in my future classes. This post is not a Twitter diss track and there are many aspects to this app that I find appealing. This is just my honest and personal expression of how I will/will not use it going forward.  

Check out my vlog post for exploring Tik Tok.

Here is the link to the parent control video I mention in it but couldn’t link in video.

The relationship status image feels like it really sums up my relationship with social media. There are endless complexities that come with social media’s presence in our lives. For me, I constantly grapple with my conflicting thoughts/actions/beliefs with social media. The battle to balance the relationship with social media directly and constantly impacts three of my major roles in life: a mom, a teacher, and as an individual. I want my kids to have skills they’ll need to be successful in a tech-centered society, yet I don’t want to shelter or overexpose them too much. I want to provide opportunities for and to allow my students to use the skills they have grown up with, tech-wise, as a means to express understanding and analysis in my classroom as well as gain the perspective that social media is the perfect place to thoughtfully practice critical thinking, self-expression, and learning. I, on a personal level, love the connection of social media (updates on old friends, not waiting for the 5 o’clock news for worldly updates, etc.), but I also want to live in a way that does not rely on checking social media out of boredom or awkwardness – I want to sit in those boring or awkward moments because that is a lost art. I have lived most of my life without social media (until I got Facebook in 2007 and Instagram in 2012), and now I am teaching students and raising children who will never have known a world without it. My biggest struggle for all three of these roles is between how educational and helpful social media can be versus not giving it power to control my thoughts/feelings/actions, or those of my children or students. I truly think there is so much good that social media has to offer, BUT that is dependent on our choices in the worlds we create for ourselves on each social media platform. I’ll explain with an experience that changed my perspective on social media… 

 I was once part of a weight-loss challenge, but it was much more than that. The trainer who was running it had three components to the challenge: mind, body, and spirit. We had “homework” for each of those components that followed a little mini lesson she’d send us to kick-start our thinking each week. One of the lessons that has stuck with me ever since was about my mental diet (in the sense of what I intake and, in turn, digest). Our “homework” was to go through any one of our social media platforms (or all if we so chose) and unfollow any account that negatively impacted our self-image or simply wasn’t serving us anymore. Her lesson was that we control what goes in our body and in our mind; the world we create for ourselves as I mentioned above. I’m not one to follow a bunch of photo-shopped celebrities or other social media “junk-food”, but I cannot articulate how much unfollowing needless accounts turned down the negative social media noise in my head. I still follow this practice and do a clean-up of accounts every so often. It is a simple and beneficial practice for maintaining balance and mental health in an area that can so easily diminish those things. 

Since this experience, I have chosen to make social media a productive part of my life. Do I mindlessly scroll every now and then? Yes, I do. However, it is my personal rule that I have to gain personal learning with accounts I choose to follow, which has completely changed my relationship with social media for the better. When I focus my social media diet on learning for my children, my students, and myself, I add to each of my toolboxes and grow in each of those areas/roles.    

Professionally speaking, I think social media has changed the teaching game both positively and negatively. Unfortunately, I have had to deal with repercussions of misused social media in the classroom (not my classroom) which dictated how the entire division had to manage their classrooms – phones were thereafter “parked” during class. I’d rather teach my students to be personally accountable for not being distracted by their phones or using them in harmful ways rather than having to “park them”, but I understand the circumstances as to why such rules have to be in place sometimes and that is the price we all have to pay when social media is used in naïve, negative ways. On the plus side, our classrooms provide great opportunity to teach the balance of social media for personal and educational use. I will continue to use social media in my classroom in a variety of ways, for a variety of purposes, and for a variety of reasons.

In the end, I’m not sure the complexities of my relationship with social media will ever disappear due to how ingrained it has become in our society as well as where I’m at in life in terms of constantly trying to make the “right choice” for my children and by leading by example. I actually think it isn’t such a bad thing that I wrestle with these paradoxical thoughts because that means I haven’t become mindless about my relationship with social media, one way or the other. So, for now, my relationship status with social media as complicated will remain.