I was thinking about what exactly I wanted to cover in my final choice blog post. There was nothing that coming up as super appealing to me that I wanted to take a deep dive into and investigate further. I took a quick break and scrolled a bit through my twitter feed and then stumbled up this article. It is a compelling 10 minute read about educators on twitter and the evolution of #edutwitter and #teachergram. This is a very interesting topic to me and until I read that article was not a viewpoint I had completely considered.
I joined Twitter in college in 2009. I would go through and scroll to get my news of the day, the latest on MSU Football or Basketball and anything else that I had followed and allowed onto my timeline. As I became an educator, I was quickly introduced to the world of a #PLN and how the use of Twitter could allow me to reach out to other educators with thoughts, questions and allowed me interactions with people outside of my normal day to day life. I think overall this was good, but it also took a toll sometimes. I am definitely not innocent in making comparisons and having all these great teachers and resources was a bit overwhelming. A lot of teacher twitter has turned into teachers sharing out ideas and products that they “use in their classrooms!” and that “students just love!” and they I can go to their TeacherPayTeachers store and pay $3.00 to download and use it myself. In her blog post, author Sarah Gross (2019) questions “where is the line between promotion and pedagogy, and how many teachers actively think about that line while on social media?” (Promotion or Pedagogy?, para. 3) I had been using twitter to find good resources and ideas and it genuinely had never occurred to me that some teachers might just be using their audience to gain an extra profit (or that they were sharing ideas they had stolen as if they were their own!) If you look closer at some of these #edustars and Twitter famous teachers, some have even left the classroom and now are “consulting” or working at conferences to make a living. How do they stay current? How do they stay in touch with what works for students in our ever evolving society? A situation like this reminds me of when teachers gripe about administrators not being understanding of what happens in a classroom. They have been out of the classroom for so long they are “out of touch”. Wouldn’t the same be true for these consulting teachers? This article prompted me to take a considerate eye to the list of people I follow and remove a few accounts from the list. Gross (2019) points out “Just because they have a Twitter account devoted to education doesn’t mean they are an expert. Because tweets are microblogs, often full of platitudes, it’s easy for busy teachers to be hoodwinked.” (Promotion or Pedagogy?, para. 7) I think I blindly assumed that because someone was tweeting things out so fervently and so polished looking, they must be an expert. So who was I to question them? This mindset long term could be damaging to me as an educator, but even more so to my students if I buy into to pedagogy promoted by teachers who don’t really know what they are talking about. Gross also breaks down the situation on TeachersPayTeachers. TPT does not need to fact check or vet their work before it is published in a teacher’s store. I just bought resources during the TPT back to school sale to use in my classroom this year. I purchased from respected “stores” - teachers who I follow on twitter, typically. I did not once question what I was buying. Why is that? Since reading this article I have gone back and looked at the resources I downloaded and feel confident that they don’t violate copyright laws and aren't using someone else’s material as their own. Gross ends her article with suggestions on what we can do moving forward. To make #edutwitter better for all educators and not having it just be an echo chamber, she suggests actively discovering who you are following (Google the person! Don’t just click follow), pushing back if you disagree with someone, see who else their Twitter account interacts with and, ultimately, don’t make assumptions that just because they are on Twitter they must be a leader in their field. Have a critical eye when looking at what resources you are introducing to students in your classroom. As I have gotten older, more experienced in my career and social media has evolved, I have learned to take everything I see on the internet with a grain of salt. This article reinforced that ideas ten times over. I still get a lot of good ideas from Twitter and I know I will buy resources from TeachersPayTeachers in the future, but I will do so with a more critical and watchful eye. References Gross, S. (2019, August 10). Promotion or Pedagogy [Blog post]. Retrieved from: https://blog.usejournal.com/promotion-or-pedagogy-638ef48cea28
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