I would like to refer you to a blog post about learning networks and social media that I wrote some weeks ago - Please learn with me. It should be read in conjunction with this page. The post was written not long after I commenced building my Scoop.it collection and prior to most other students in the course had started theirs. As a museum curator, I found the idea of curating a digital collection of artefacts very exciting. I signed up by linking my Scoop.it account to my Twitter account, which I rarely used. Through trial and error, I navigated Scoop.it and discovered some excellent sources. My initial searches were atrocious, and the results were filled with political issues and current affairs. When I found the first suitable artefact, I looked more closely at the collection of the Scoop.it community member. From there, I was able to connect with more relevant sources and started following other people or groups and their collections. Suddenly, my networking and professional learning journey exploded into a frenzy of collecting and connecting. Having experienced working with museum collections and teaching workshops on significance assessment, my skills for determining the relevance of sources had been honed. Nevertheless, I discovered myself scooping many, many digital artefacts. I was determined to find something that would inspire the development of learning sequences for secondary school students. At the same time, I was discovering and scooping several resources that I wanted to explore at a later date. I linked everything to my Twitter account initially, but decided to delete a few tweets that weren't terribly exciting. It's funny how I didn't mind what people could see on my Scoop.it account, but was concerned about appearances on Twitter. The process of deleting from Twitter laid the foundation for determining the real significance of my scoops. I attached my curator's insight to every artefact, but didn't write exorbitant amounts. Working in a museum, I realise the importance of object labels and not making them too long or people will skim over them and miss the most important bits. As mentioned in my blog, I quickly developed a penchant for networking. When I started my Scoop.it acquisition process, I had kept my Twitter account private and had no followers so I decided to become 'visible'. I began connecting with people and tweeting their scoops and, as a a result, they began to do the same with me (Image 1). One of my fellow learners left a wonderful comment on the aforementioned blog, saying that she had scooped my post into her collection (Image 2). This was truly an eye-opening experience and made me realise the value of networking and learning from others. Subsequently, I followed Jeannette on Scoop.it and re-scooped one of her resources that nicely suits my learning area (Image 3). I regularly checked the class wiki pages and started following other students. Some rather influential figures (with many followers but who followed few) in the education sector started following me on Twitter (Image 4). Several students from the course started re-scooping from my collection and following me on Twitter (Image 5). To date, I have 36 members in my Scoop.it community and my collection has had 73 views - in just a few weeks! I am sure these figures will continue to grow. Upon realising that the requirement for this course was to limit the number of scoops to eight, I was reluctant to cull too much from my Scoop.it collection - I want to keep building my network. I chose to leave some scoops on Twitter and delete them from my Scoop.it collection. I then went a step further and grabbed some scoops and tweets and pinned them to my Pinterest board. I had only used Pinterest for personal collections previously, and my folders were all set to private, but I decided to create a Humanities 2nd Ed folder and leave it open for public viewing. Before I could return to my Scoop.it collection, two people had grabbed my pins and placed them in their own Pinterest folders. The networking and learning process had taken on another level. This exercise in professional learning and networking has far exceed my expectations. Although already a user of professional networking sites such as LinkedIn, my connections did not include education professionals. I was unsure about where to make those connections and certainly wasn't aware of the wonderful range of teaching resources that could be accessed through such connections. I have surpassed my initial hopes to meet the graduate requirements for professional learning and networking, as stated in Standards 6.2 and 7.4 of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers*. To my surprise, I have connected with fellow students and high-level education professionals. I understand more than just the relevance of professional learning, and the purpose of engaging with professionals and other community representatives. I genuinely believe in the power of cooperative learning and sharing. I hope that I continue to inspire other professionals as much as I learn from and am inspired by them. I'm actually incredibly keen to see where this professional learning and networking journey will take me. I have learnt so much from the minds of others and can see enormous potential for the future. References:
* Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. (2014). Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. Retrieved from https://www.aitsl.edu.au/australian-professional-standards-for-teachers/standards/list
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