Tonight I attended the #etmooc live session with Dean Shareski entitled ‘Sharing is Accountability’. It was in my early days of blogging about 5 years ago that I first encountered Dean and his message of sharing and it is in large part due to his influence that I do share as much as I do. In today’s session Dean put up the following quote by Ewan McIntosh (from this post):
Sharing, and sharing online specifically, is not in addition to the work of being an educator. It is the work.
I don’t know if McIntosh was frustrated when he wrote this or if he was just trying to be provocative, but I think that the part “and sharing online specifically” goes a bit too far. I couldn’t agree more that if we want to improve as educators, sharing what we do is essential. It is through sharing that we influence others and that they influence us with their questions, suggestions, or improvements on what we’ve shared. I was reminded by Carolyn Durley (@okmbio) in her comment here that of course it is not just in online spaces that we share what we do. We share when we present at conferences or staff meetings and mostly when we’re just kibitzing in the staff room.
Definitely online tools make it easier to share anytime, anywhere. Will I push to get more of my colleagues sharing online? You bet! But should it be a requirement of teaching? I’m not so sure. What do you think?
