Oh what a week- E-Portfolios, DigCit and more

As I sit here getting ready for the week ahead, I cannot help but continue to think and reflect on last week. It was a stressful and exciting week of being part of an amazing team that organized a day full of sessions on topics from proficiencies, youth suicide prevention, digital portfolios, and many self-care sessions for the teachers, guidance counselors, and nurses in the district. I was lucky enough to be able to lead two sessions.  One session was on making a digital citizen and creating connected classrooms. The topic of my session ended up connecting with the Technology and Leadership course very closely. Now, as the week comes to a close, I wish the additional information I have now, I would have had last Sunday.

I am excited to start this week planning and organizing. One thing I have learned in this new role is I need to schedule time. I need to schedule time for projects I need to focus on otherwise my schedule quickly fills up taking care of so many other things. Although all of the other topics and tasks are important, I now feel that I need to devote some of my time to helping to make a plan for what I need to do for the supervisory union to support teachers in the process of implementing digital citizenship in all areas of a student's day.  The group of individuals I worked with on Friday have sparked creativity in me. I want to start to plan out future sessions, school visits, and leadership presentations. Thanks to the Twitter lists and contacts, the tons of great resources shared by so many I have connected with just this week or in the last month, I feel I am starting to have the knowledge I need to pull all of this together. I am feeling the need to continue to share the positive side of making digital citizens. I plant to create a Wakelet collection to curate resources that I can share with teachers and administrators.

My first thought is to start with helping the teachers become strong digital citizens. After chatting with a number of teachers on Friday and mentioning to them about using the hashtag one of our principals was going to use, #ncsulearns, we were surprised at how many of them had no idea how to use the hashtag.  So many of them are fearful of social media themselves.  If we want them to support students, they need to feel comfortable with the tools and techniques themselves. My first goal, as of right now, is to start to work with the teachers that need help to make stronger connections with other educators on social media.  This is a bit of a scatter post of my thoughts of the end of the week.  However, being able to say I have a goal of what I want to try to do first, helps me feel like I have closed out the week. On to the next week....

Mavens, Connectors and Salespeople: Really do exist.

After reading Charlie Gilkey’s article, “Maven, Connector, or Salesperson: What’s Your Archetype?”, I began to think about the individuals that make up our learning design department.  I also started to look and think about the other individuals in our supervisory union and those individuals that make up part of my personal learning network.  I never really thought about the three different archetypes of people.  I can see we have a representation of each type in our department with the connections each of us makes with each other, teachers, students and the community. There are those of us that are the mavens that help collect the information, who are always working on the next initiative.  We have connectors within the department that have strong relationships with so many individuals throughout the district and beyond and bring these resources back to the table for everyone to make use of the many connections.  And finally, we have the leader who is a salesperson, without selling anything. They are strong with the power of persuasion. They are able to explain a plan or an idea and have others buy into it and enjoy the process by just communicating the process and getting them hooked on the idea. I can see all three archetypes in many of the individuals I work with or reach out to for support myself.

Currently, I am finding my place on Twitter.  I have started to use this social media tool to help look more closely at someone I may be thinking of following.  I need to build connections to help me with understanding my new role of the learning design technology coordinator. It is an interesting role. I find myself playing the role of the maven most of the time.  So many projects and ideas that I need to spend time on and plan out on how I can share the information with others.  I find myself being the connector between the thirteen schools at times.  We have teachers doing amazing things in all the buildings.  Sometimes it is not easy for them to share ideas with being spread over such a large area of the Northeast Kingdom.  There are times where I am able to be the connector and share the information with others.  And finally, I do find myself falling into the salesperson type.  Where there is a new program we are rolling out, I find myself often trying to convince teachers why the change will be ok.

So, back to myself, I hope to continue to use social media to find the three different archetypes of people that I can connect with to help build my personal learning network.  Finding mavens that can share information with me about my role or about the latest tech in education.  I need to make connections with individuals that will help move me past just what is happening NEK so I can bring the info back to NCSU and support the community here. And finally, I need to learn who is the salesperson who may be trying to get you to buy into something but making sure it fits into our needs.  I am excited to now have an understanding of these roles and can see how they will impact my participation in social media and in my current work environment. I will be interested in observing how roles change with individuals over time.