teaching Scout

It was all going so well. I was on top of things at Uni, had made progress with my disertation and was diligently working away every night. Then I started reading other peoples blogs, and what worse I’ve set up my own one. Now I can see all the hard work slowly slipping away as I spend all my time on my scratched laptop figuring out how to add plugins like the one that allows a preview of the hyperlinks. Sounded like I almost knew what I was talking about there, but I assure you I don’t – I am a complete novice at all this. 

Talking about the dissertation though, this blog might help me become a bit more focused as to where I’m going with it. ‘Sharing Good Practice within Technology Education’, it’s defenitely interesting. In fact, I didn’t think I would start researching something which has made so much sense to me. You see I started off with the notion that as teachers we should all be willing to learn. From each other seems the most obvious way because teachers always know what they’re talking about, don’t they? So how better to improve ourselves as professionals, than share practice with each other? By practice, I mean the everyday stuff, the stuff that matters, the practical stuff – hints, approaches, resources, solutions. Behavioural, managerial, subject knowledge. But what is most interesting to me is the way we do it. It seems that it has to be lateral. Not just how information is shared but how decisions are made. People need to be deciding the common aim rather than being told of it. Needless to say, I feel that the constant approach in Education of a top down heirarchial structure just creates divisions, poor knowledge transition and feeling of resentment about being told how to do your job. But who am I to say, I’m not a teacher yet.

So this blogging thing seems like a pretty good tool to share practice. But is it? I mean, so far I’ve got one reader, I know potentially millions but who’s going to tell them? Are they not just other individuals at computers? Where is the community? Sharing tacit knowledge doesn’t really seem practical for technology to translate? And whats more, where is the common focus, who creates the drive? Is it not a lot of sifting to find something that relevant to you? Or is it actually a fact that it’s not a potential ‘worldwide audience’ its more an audience of other likeminded people that know each other from a community that is already formed? How many ‘outsiders’ actually find there way into a group that suits them?

The thing is – I don’t know. But I’d like to find out. If you read my ‘welcome to my blog’ you’ll see that I’m not doing this in a sceptical manner, I really do think that it is an inspirational technological tool.

Though I wonder what’ll be needed to get everyone on board, to create a common aim in our teaching practice? I feel we’re all doing it for different reasons – which is no bad thing - but I’ve not yet had a sense of ‘whole school/ across schools community’ which I feel is vital for the teaching profession to move forward. As part of my final year dissertation, I’ve got to make a project that supports it. As the project is only worth 20%, like most other students I just want to get it done, I don’t know how much effort I will put into it. The thing is though, what I want to do has ‘potential’ and I really want to give it a good shot. So what is it?

An online resource for probationary Technology teachers to: blog, have an open forum, post resources, help each other out, and not feel too isolated during their first year. Why just probationers? So that the project doesn’t get out of hand for me. Why just Technology? Since I’m brand new to all this, probably best to start small. What I intend to do though, is figure out what people want, provide a starting point and let everyone get on with it. Concerns I have are, how to ‘break down barriers’ such as: peoples’ willingness to share what they do, to overcome the ‘can I really be bothered with this’, how best to maintain a common focus. Things that I feel will be needed, and I’ll need to develop, are maintaining real life contact with each other, the use of critical friends, having a progressing (monthly) focus, a structured resource database and unfortunately some kind of security as I don’t know how pupil suitable the site may be.

Worringly, I proposed the idea to some of my peers, and was asked – ‘Would it involve Jordanhill people, because if it does I don’t want to do it – they’re not getting my stuff’.’ Really sorry all you Jordanhillers, this is not a common view. But a more common view was ‘ I think you’ll get certain people contributing and then the majority just sitting back,’ also ‘ I don’t know about sharing resources, other people might think they’re crap’ and most significantly ‘won’t it just make certain people feel worse as they continually see other people doing better than them, doing better work and having all the answers?’ Hmmmm, maybe, but surely it’s better to give it a go than not to. But if people feel these may be problems just now then I had better address them somehow.

But how do you create change?