Taylor the Teacher

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Something that’s been eating at me lately is whether or not the edublogosphere can open up. Do I have to choose between being in the edublogosphere and having a personal blog? Do I have to niche down so narrow that talking to my network means being in 12 different blogging accounts?

It was so weird that Graham Wegner twinked (twitter linked) me yesterday, and it was generously cool of him. (I’m ridiculously proud of that neologism, by the way. At least I think I made it up.) It’s weird because his post “The edublogosphere is a big place, the edublogosphere is a small place,” led me to think about this even more last night. In fact, the two posts I made yesterday plus a big chunk of this one were originally a comment on Graham’s blog. But then the comment grew like a weed (or a cancer?) in that comment box until I started getting afraid I’d lose it, so I switched it to Word. Then it changed from there.

I, being so glad to finally feel like I had something to write, posted those two last night thinking I’d get to this one before he made it around to comment! Yikes! Plus, Shark-Fu distracted me and I had to stop and write about her post for a minute. This is why I take adderall.

But, back to the regularly scheduled rambling:

Graham mentioned a “blend of influences,” and my initial thought was that it seems like there isn’t enough blend of influences on most blogs. Many of the Silicon Valley folks talk to each other on blogs, twitter, seesmic, and god knows where else. Teachers do the same. We all know who Wesley Fryer is.

Then I saw the end of Graham’s post and realized he was saying the same thing. That has led me to several strands of thought, the latest of which is this:

One of the measures that’s talked about in my neck of the woods in assessing a school’s performance is its connectedness and reciprocity with the community that surrounds it. It’s a problem that so many parents and teachers feel alienated from one another. It’s a problem that so many people mistrust teachers.

The web has been powerful in helping teachers to connect & share ideas with one another. I think we need to work on our web “school’s” performance in terms of reaching out to the community. Nothing will change as long as we talk to each other.

We can’t expect people to understand why we need money for technology, why we should have a voice in policy at every level, why, in fact, we’re still a valuable part of society if we don’t get out there and talk to people.

Maybe Miss Landers had an excuse. No Internet. But what is our excuse for bitching that teachers aren’t heard if we only talk to ourselves?

Then again. Don’t answer that.