And now for something completely different...

How hard is to stay current on issues....

One of the biggest challenge for teachers (and for any professional in their area of expertise), is to stay current on issues pertaining to education. One option in the past was to subscribe to magazines dedicated exclusively to the topic of interest, in our case education. But subscribing to education magazines is expensive in the long term, and we could end up accumulating high quantities of magazines in our store room or in the garage.

As more people had access to the Internet, pages related to the topic of interest started appearing offering accurate information that barely was monitored or certified. Then the government agencies started publishing their web pages and many companies did the same too. All of them were publishing sites and software related to education available to everyone (free or would charge a fee for their services).

Nowadays, I use Social Media like Facebook and Twitter to keep me informed about topics of my interest. Many users of Facebook have created pages for all kind of topics, and it only takes a click for accessing them or leave them when it stopped to be of interest.

Twitter and Facebook have news feed, which lets me read what it is happening in real time with the pages and groups that I'm subscribed or following. For my Twitter account, I am the follower of newspapers, education and tech institutions, as well as actors, artist, music singers, groups and celebrities. It is really useful to have Twitter open in my browser and check and refresh it periodically.

To follow or friend someone in a social network, it would have to be someone who I admire and has something really important to say. There are not many out there who fall neatly in that category, and sometimes we follow persons that we admire or that have something good to say, for the main purpose of entertainment. For example, one person who is famous in youTube is Geriatric1929, the alias of Peter, an old Brit man who dos video blogging, has a lot to share and a lot of followers. Check the next video about an interview made to him in 2006.

Now the advantages of participating in a Community of Peers is that we can contact people who are in our field and share experiences and knowledge. Being in a CoP builds a sense of community and we can experiment a feedback of information that could be useful for our careers and students. On the other hand, a great disadvantage is to find a CoP where there is a self proclaimed leader who moderates the discussions and believes that is the “holder of universal truth”. When that happens, we could end up being victims of cyberbulling. If that happens, we have to be intelligent to recognize them and put distance for our well being.