This morning, on my way to work, I was thinking of all the opportunities I’ve been given as a member of the ed tech network on Twitter. At the cost of nothing, but my time, I’ve gathered more knowledge and experience than I have through professional development activities sponsored by my employers. I began to think through the contacts in my network and how our connections work. I most often will see an interesting post and then follow that person around the Web for a while to piggy back on their learning experiences.
I considered a friend of mine, who is a K-12 tech coach at an alternative school in the US. She is not a member of the network. I have invited her, but there is no way she would be able to put in the time I have. The challenges she deals with go way beyond her professional job description. I realized that our network consists of a tight demographic and while we are growing together at an increasing rate, we are leaving teachers behind.
We preach about access for all students, while ignoring, to a large extent, the teachers who work with those students. While developing interventions to raise the literacy level of minority and underprivileged students, we spend little time discussing the trials of the teachers who support them. We have access to pre-service teachers and can have considerable impact on them, but our outreach to teachers who are most in need of support, is limited.
I believe technology is not the answer to many problems. I’m not suggesting we need to go into at-risk schools to ramp up the technology skills of the teachers. What I do think, is that we’ve developed a professional development model that may be of value to those instructors and technology coaches who struggle with responsibilities that keep them from their job duties. What can we do to bring these teachers into the fold? Would the network even work for them?
My other thought is that the network works the way it is. I rarely attempt to entice others into the space, because I know the richness would evaporate. But what can we do to take what we gain from the experience, and move the condensed version to the instructors most in need? I would love to see a grad student analyze the demographics of our network. I have a sneaking suspicion it is majority non-minority, male, married, with kids, advanced degrees, mid-upper income. I sometimes think of activities in terms of whether or not I could get grant funding for the initiative. I don’t think any organization would want to fund a program with that demographic. We would never target students from that demographic. I just wonder how, or even if, we should reach out.
