Thankful for my network (Photo credit: krossbow) |
Three years later I am loving the ENGAGEMENT! Discovering curation and sharing on Scoopit, Twitter, and other social networks like Ning, has widened my knowledge base, helped me research pertinent scholarly articles, archive for my patrons, and also help me make friends. One of these friends and fellow teacher librarian from England Elizabeth Hutchinson collaborated via blog and virtual classroom with our campus and distance learning grade 6/7 students, on Chocolate Lily and Kate Greenaway children’s’ books. We hoped our students would imbibe cultural sensitivities and global awareness as they studied the language similarities and differences between England and Canada. We laughed at our accents, shared our silly phrases, and reached out to connect on a heart level around picture books.
On our Ning (a private social network within our distance learning school) we teach digital citizenship skills, such as media sharing, blogging, discuss issues such as cyber bullying, collaborate in online book clubs and participate in events such as our Innovator’s Challenge. We trust and value our relationship within this private and safe community.
So what I hope to share from this conversation is how we can have virtual relationships using social media. I was in a library advocacy workshop recently, and I heard the presenter share that social media is not a place for advocacy. I would strongly disagree! Enjoying ten years as a virtual teacher librarian… this is MY world and most of my students world who live in different parts of British Columbia, Alberta and beyond would agree.
My goal is to reach out in love and respect on a global level. As Gust MEES @Knolinfos my Twitter friend shared we thought about creating a multilingual social media dictionary for other educators to share their thoughts on the positive and community forming bases for social media. We can do that in 30 words or in 3 characters. The choice of words we use can either build up or bring down. It would be cognizant of different languages, ethnic and religious backgrounds. Thankfully on Twitter I have seen mostly positive encouragement! I have also seen poetry in reduction. As a wordsmith in hiding I LOVE it! Thankful for all things PLN!
We welcome your thoughts! Thanks @KnolInfos for starting a blog to collaborate on such thoughts!