Teacher Isolation in the Digital Age

When I want to know something about technology, I don't pick the brains of my colleagues in Fair Grove even though my school is taking some giant leaps into the digital age. Wi-fi is available, there's an active technology committee, the talk is that every student in high school will get an iPad, and every classroom has a projector. But there's an RCET workshop taking place at the school on Tuesday at which an elementary teacher will speak about setting up a classroom blog, and I sincerely doubt that she knows much about my experience with blogging. I know that she has a lot of talent when it comes to technology, but other than an RCET class I took from her, I never visited with her to ask her for help. There is a go-to person I can count on, but she is employed part time and stretched thin to help the teachers in the entire district.  It ends up that I frequently look for help outside the school when I suspect there's a world of knowledge available right in the district.

So why don't we heed the prophet in our own land? There's nothing sinister going on. I may suspect that Joe in the high school has achieved computer geekdom and I know he prides himself on using technology in the classroom, but I don't have the time to engage him in a sit-down conversation. And my notion of what he does in his classroom is so vague, I wouldn't know how to begin a conversation. "Hey, Joe, what do you do that I can take to my classroom?" lacks focus; only pure luck would yield a useful answer. We're so busy that when I do speak with him, it's about our shared chess club sponsorship and upcoming tournaments or the slogan on a chess t-shirt. 

I've learned a lot in some chance conversations at conferences while waiting for the next speaker or event--no students or lesson plans to disturb us. I don't recall how the conversation started, but I do remember learning a lot about wikis from Kyle Wallace at a conference on campus. I immediately went home and put his suggestions to use.

So I want to know what my colleagues in my own school know--how our pooled knowledge can advance what we're doing individually. The solution seems pretty straight-forward and only occurred to me as I was writing this blog. I propose a Yellow Pages of in-house tech experts: I know how to set up a classroom blog to use as a class portal; Mark can do some wizardry with a wireless mouse; Heather has expertise in classroom publishing. This directory could be supported by a discussion board where we post our tech questions and everyone benefits from the answers.

Richardson says "a great entry point for Weblog use is to build a class portal to communicate information about my class and to archive course materials" (21). That's what I can offer as my expertise. I also was able to use the class blog as an effective e-portfolio for student work, but I would have benefited from someone's knowledge about tagging and labeling to make it even more useful. Another question I would pose to my colleagues is how to deepen the collaborative conversations that a blog can make possible. "...the Read/Write Web opens up all sorts of new possibilities for students to learn from each other..." (Richardson 23). We lacked the purposeful commenting that could have pushed our writing further.

Technology is not the only area where teachers work in isolation--sometimes it feels like my individual classroom is a world unto itself--but it's the area where I feel most adrift. Send in the lifeboats.

Richardson, Will. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2010