New Teachers to Twitter

After watching Chris van der Kuyl's keynote and reading the Developing the Youth Workforce document, I knew who and what could be used to realise the things that Chris was advocating for.

This post details how and why I felt an an invasion of Connected Educators was needed and how Julie Szaj and here merry band of New Teachers to Twitter #NT2T could help.

Developing the Youth Workforce
When I read Developing the Youth Workforce document I highlighted how an initiative that I am a HUGE fan of could help, I detail this in Developing the Youth Workforce and Circle the Schools post.

The same week that I published this some people from Circle the Schools contacted me and we had a discussion. During which she said 

"WOW! What are they putting in the water in Scotland... what ever it is it's working! You are nailing it!" 

I had a chuckle to myself and said that "I've been watching what's been happening in CA and taking tones, because what's happening over there will be here eventually... I'm just trying to re-skill so I'm ahead of the curve" says me... Because cold calling is dead!

We're still chatting about these issues but having already written this post and speaking to Marialice Curran on the 24th November, I felt working with the DigCitSummitUK team could achieve the same result as Circle the Schools and/or what I said would be needed to realise the #DYW agenda.

Twitter Data: A Trust or Training Issue

After speding a week writing a few posts to detail what I felt was needed to implement Chris' keynote I started looking at the Twitter data.

Straight away there was one of two issues going on and the solution to both was to call in the Connected Educators. What were the issues? They were either issues of Trust or Training.

I looked at the various hashtags that were Scotland's education water cooler moments and the number of accounts were not huge.

• Only 545 people chatting on a national conference hashtag and only 70 of those were from School or educator accounts.
• 211 people chatting on the #DigiLearnScot hashtag, again relatively few educators

• 145 accounts on the newly established #ScotEdChat hashtag but only 45 educators.

Trust Issues

Trust or Training: Take a Wild Guess about which one I think that it is!

When you then look at the number of people chatting with policy makers you can't help wonder if there's a trust issue, something that was apparent from day one of my exploration into the issues (And BOY! was that theme set to continue as events unfolded!)

But then again, I understand that Education Scotland don't reply to people on Twitter, they use Social Media to broadcast their PR messages... Too big and important to engage with the little people #Couldn'tresist.

So whether a trust or training issue Education Scotland would not be able to resolve the issue, they either can't reach educators because trust has been broken and they are fed up... Or if they are not modeling and/or encouraging good use of Social Media or providing the right #DigCit then how can they teach it?

"Before you can become a digital leader, you need to become a digital learner" 

Raising A Digital Nation
When watching van der Kuyl's "Raising the Digital Nation" I felt that priority #1 was to "Get Social." Before acting I had to listen to find the bright spots.

When I saw that all Falkirk Schools were on Twitter and that Larbert High School had close to 50% of their staff on Twitter, then getting some connected educators to Larbert it just might convince an awful lot of people about the value of being social... Especially as it was a random Tweet that kicked it all off: An Amazing Skype call with a Connected Educator.

#BeTheDigitalChange
In days gone by, when the Government of the day created the problem of piracy by;

1) Press Ganging people onto ships and then
2) The conditions were horrendous on board, then they were

3) Tossed aside like rubbish when their wars were over, leaving the sailors with no way to earn a living

4) Out of necessity they "Turned Pirate"

I've no idea how good or bad a job Education Scotland is doing, based on the chatter about the National Inspection Framework it looks like they're doing a fantastic job and approval ratings are sky high!

Three people with their hands up to ask the Education Secretary a question at an Education Conference... Kudos! You have my respect!

When their was a big job to do Captains would form alliances and share the booty. I wonder if Julie Szaj might be willing to help connect New Teachers to Twitter #NT2T #NT2TEU and to show them the ropes.