Finding Common Ground

Yahoo is launching a site for teachers. I assume it will be similar to the Google Educator resource site. When I took a look, I thought it seemed pretty interesting. Over at Bud the Teacher, Bud Hunt questions whether these sites are really what they say they are? Both sites offer some type of corporate “certification” and while I too wonder how useful this certification can really be, it doesn’t make me reject the parts of the sites that might be useful.

All the talk of web 2.0 is directed at helping our students connect, helping the students understand that the world is flattening, but it’s really our teachers that need to understand this before they can make the students see and believe it. Teachers, too, are trapped inside their classroom and can only benefit from the opportunity to join a nationwide (and soon worldwide, according to Yahoo) community of educators. If web 2.0 is about making connections with others that have similar interests, then I’m willing to sign up and encourage our district teachers to do the same. 

There are other sites that allow this type of collaboration among teachers outside of their classroom. One that I participate in is the Discovery Educator Network and I did attain STAR status. At times, I questioned the amount of free marketing I was doing for Discovery, but I reflected that I was putting good information in the hands of teachers which in turn will get to the students. Nothing wrong with that! (If I earn a free t-shirt for doing it, that’s fine with me too!)

Filed under: Learning From and