Help! I am a Connected Educator

Technology for teaching -  I love it - but it is not alway the easiest solution for educators (or anyone struggling with online resources for that matter!) For weeks I've been toying with the idea to create a new blog for our class, to keep the parents in my class informed. Informed parents are happy parents who tend to stay out of your hair. Well, generally - you will always have the odd know-it-all-and-aren't-teachers-just-the-laziest-and-stupidest-people-on-earth-parent. But I'm digressing. The idea was to create a password-protected website, so that I could post all the pictures and videos I wanted without worrying over privacy issues. Password-protection turns out to be a premium feature on Weebly, you have to pay to keep those kiddies safe online, so that was step 1. I got my credit card and filled out the details; then it turned out I already had a website under this particular email address. What was it?? I spent 20 minutes trying different usernames and passwords, then asked for a password reset. For this I had a message sent to my phone. As the battery had just gone flat, i had to first charge it. Where was that cable again? After having retrieved the info, I could continue with the sign-up process for the premium service. The classroom blog was a reality shortly after that. Well - in theory. Now all I had to do was build it. As all my classroom and project photos are on my phone, I wanted to send them to my Google email account, so I could access them from the iPad I was working on. It appeared that I could only access one of my google accounts, not my school email account. Why? No idea, one of those online mysteries. I thought Chrome would be a better browser, as I use so many Google products, and so went to get the Chrome app. After signing into the App store, Chrome was downloaded onto my iPad. By now I spent 90 minutes online without having written one single word on the shiny new classroom website yet. I guess I will send another traditional email update to the class community next. But first publish this text on my Blogger account... Who said that connected educators are saving time?

Teen life online

My thirteen-year old is at home on the Internet. She speaks social media language, simply because she grew up with it. A few months ago Amazon delivered a rather scary looking hair mannequin that she had been wanting for a long time. The life-sized doll's head with real hair (where from? Who? How?) has been groomed and braided numerous times since then. My daughter took pictures of the french braids and  dutch plaits and posted them on Instagram, as millions of people do every day. Pictures of cats, nails, beaches and mountains - they need to be shared apparently. Yesterday I realized that she is doing a bit more than just posting: she is hosting. She finds braided hairstyles of her liking, then she removes the background and posts them thus in similar layout on her account, which she calls 'braidinginspiration'. The name is sounds cheerful and tells you what to expect. She posts her own stuff as well as other people's pictures. When I ask her if she gives credits, she retorts "of course! What are you thinking?!" It seems that her generation follow an unspoken code of conduct online. You give credit where credit is due, you use an alias, you reply to comments, you like what's to like and you engage with your audience. When her account hit the 300 followers mark, she created her first contest, using Instagram Academy to easily put 6 photos of different braiding styles together, and asking her followers to choose their favourite. Closing date  3 days later. She got 24 votes  and a lot of new followers. She seems to like her followers and feels responsible for them, but she is not obsessed with gaining new followers. I am impressed; she simply shares what she likes and puts a rather professional touch on it. Her thumbs race across the shiny screen - she is congratulating the winner of the contest. The award? Daily mention on Braidinginspiration,  for a week. When I asked her just now, she showed me that she now has 443 followers,  compared to 400 only three days ago. She is not obsessed with her follower count, but it seems like I am. That is a difference between us, I write and post on Twitter and Blogger mostly for myself but am aware of the online environment. She posts for herself and others, but she sees her platform as her natural habitat: she feels at home.