As I begin my blogging journey, I was very inspired by the book "Ubuntu" by Stephen Lundin this summer. It is an African philosophy often spoken about by Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu meaning "humanity to others". As teachers in our journey of learning and professional development, building personal learning networks are necessary to connect, collaborate and contribute to our professional society. We benefit from this by becoming "connected, empowered, confident learners." (David Andrade, 2010). As technology expands, our learning networks have gone beyond the walls of family, friends, and colleagues in our building, by using tools such as social networking sites (blogs, wikis, twitter, etc.) and social bookmarking sites (diigo, delicious) to connect with experts around the world.
The same is true about students. K. Tenkely posted a story of two explorers given different means to reach a goal. One had a direct route, and one was given the tools and the outcome to reach and was able to explore and get there on their own journey. Differentiation allows students to learn the tools necessary to create their own journey to reach and achieve goals.
The concepts of Ubuntu compliment the building of your own PLN and allow for a more global and informed perspective which will help enhance our students' learning. Check out the Ubuntu page on our school professional learning community wiki:
The internet as a place of "sharing knowledge," and a "democratizing place" was a theory I heard a couple years ago and it has really materialized for me this last year. The potential in the classroom with 2.0 for empowering learners is incredible!
ReplyDeleteYou know, we say "connect with experts" around the world but, WOW, it is a truly incredible experience to actually get to chat with the experts and to not only chat, but to begin to collaborate with them.
And the power in it is that what interests me is different than what interests you and as we learn the "how's" of connecting with our PLNs, we are becoming so empowered! You connected with Jim and I have connected with George and while we move in the same direction, our paths are slightly different. I love it! Now that we have connected with these "experts" we must begin to collaborate with them. :)
oh, btw, I luv the wikipedia widget!
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