Curious About Your Digital Footprint?

So, have you ever wondered who or what would pop up if you Googled yourself?  I admit that curiosity got the best of me.  I am not sure how to feel about what I found.

First, I went to that infamous search engine and typed in my first and last name.  I was nowhere to be found!  There were plenty of Michelle Mattox's.   I just wasn't one of them.  I was happy to know that I had done a good job keeping my privacy and my good name blemish free, but I was a little disheartened that I didn't stand out either.  I wasn't sure what I was doing wrong.  How could I get my name out there in a positive light?  And honestly, do I care if my name is out there?  I am happy with my job and have no desire to attract attention from new employers and I consider the internet a place for me to find information verses a place for me to share information.

I have a Twitter account, a Pinterest account, an Instagram account, a Google + account, and have recently started this blog (albeit this blog was created for a class I enrolled in).  I've opted out of Facebook, and I am not really sure why.  Anyway, I thought maybe I could search my handles from my social media accounts. Obviously, I was visible then, but who goes around searching "mmattox24" or "mattox_michelle" without knowing who I am in the first place?  Isn't the idea to have strangers look you up by name and see how awesome you are?  In case you are wondering, there is a hint of sarcasm in this post.

Then I got to thinking, "Do I want to advertise my personal life, my professional life, or both?"  I started looking closely at my accounts and what people would learn about me if they didn't know me based on my posts in social media.  With the exception of Instagram they would know that I am a teacher and that I am interested in taking on a leadership role in helping my school implement technology. So that was that!  I have personal things on my social media like pictures of my kids and husband and the fun family stuff we do, but I wasn't concerned with sharing that with the world.  I only cared to share that with my friends and family.

Now that I had decided to proactively advertise my professional life, I started wondering why would anyone who doesn't know me care what I have to say.  Then I remembered that I cared what perfect strangers had to say.  I was always looking for resources from people I didn't know.  I didn't put much emphasis on the people, just the resources.  So, I needed to make sure I was sharing excellent resources.

How could I let people know I exist? I started by increasing the amount of people I follow on Twitter and then tweeting my blog posts.  I also decided to be more active in my social media.  I set a goal to try to post at least one thing a day even if it is a retweet, a like, or repinning someone else's pin.  I still wanted to keep a personal touch in my social medias, so I log into my accounts with two different personalities in mind.  One is the professional front.  I treat these log in sessions like interviews.  I wouldn't say or do anything that I wouldn't want my boss to see.  The second is mom mode.  I still want to keep it clean.  Only things that I would be ok with my kids seeing make there way into my social media.  I hope this mentality paves the road for them in the future.  Even modeling this attitude with my students could be an influence on their digital citizenship.

As for the inappropriate jokes and innuendoes, which lets face it, they exist in most people's lives, I will save those for appropriate times and places.  Not online!

Curating Content

Mrs. Mattox pulls out an old folder passed down to her from a thirty year veteran teacher who has just recently retired.  She starts thumbing through the materials over the Inuit, a Northern Native American tribe.  She has to teach an entire unit over this topic and has no real prior knowledge over the subject.  It was very nice of this veteran teacher to leave behind a plethora of worksheets, reading material, and cut and paste activities.  She will have more than enough paper work to keep her students busy during the unit. Although it would have been easiest to just start making copies, would it be the best way to ensure her students are engaged and actively learning the material?

She sets off on a mission to recreate this unit.  Videos, websites, books, and images flood Mrs. Mattox's computer for the next several days.  Finally, it is time for the unit to begin.  It was done under pressure and may not be as organized as she'd like, but the students are engaged, asking questions, sharing, and seem to be taking it all in.  By the end of the unit, the students have really learned a lot about the Inuit people.  Job well done!  Now take a breath and move on to the next item of business.

What happens when next year rolls around?  Mrs. Mattox will be spending days behind her computer trying to find all that great information again as well as trying to make improvements and add to what she did last year.  Wouldn't it be easier to just pull out that old folder?  It is organized, easy to find, and ready to go.  Once again, she is faced with, "Should I start making copies or make sure my students are engaged and actively learning?"

We as educators need to remember that just because the digital age is upon us doesn't mean we can't be as organized as we were in the times of file folders, page protectors, dividers, and plastic tabs.  Now our units, lessons, files, and resources can be organized, added to, and edited wherever we go.  We can curate and store our content using a digital tool.  I have recently learned about many of these great tools.

Next year, I plan to utilized My Big Campus bundles.  Initially it will be a lot of work, but it's work that won't have to be repeated year after year.  Some other tools that could be helpful for teachers who don't have My Big Campus as their Learning Management System are www.scoop.it, mentormob.com, pinterest, symbaloo.com, and live binder.

These tools will organize your content and help you facilitate the learning that is taking place.  Maybe Mrs. Mattox isn't the only one who will benefit from "chunking" her material into bundles.  Her students will also reap the benefits.  They will be getting better, updated, and engaging materials.

Increasing Motivation

Daniel Pink says that in the business world the idea of using a "carrots and sticks" (rewards/punishment) system is a mismatch to what science tells us works for motivating people to perform.  After watching Daniel Pink's presentation over autonomy, mastery, and purpose, I see a correlation not only to motivating my students but also how the state attempts to motivate teachers.

I see everyday how the "carrots and sticks" system fails in the classroom.  We think if we dangle the carrot or provide some sort of extrinsic motivation we will get increased effort from our students.  On that same note we believe if we wave that "stick" at our students that their behaviors will improve.  Yet, I have witnessed those same students who serve Friday school after Friday school after Friday school repeat the same behaviors week after week.  I have seen students who are offered candy or some other external reward finally start to complete and turn the assignments but fail them.  I've also watched students sign contracts explaining that they will be retained if they don't comply with a list of items that the teachers and administrators compile.  Those same students show no improvement but still go on to the next grade level.  I definitely see the failures in this system. Just like Daniel Pink proclaims in his talk these "if this, then that" situations will only work on a small group in an even smaller amount of scenarios.  Rewards and punishments will work beautifully on students who are already intrinsically motivated to please and excel academically.  But the age old question remains, how do we motivate the unmotivated?

I love the idea of autonomy.  I think we could create autonomy by allowing students to incorporate the "genius hour" or the "20 percent time" to show what they know.  They could work on whatever they want for  one hour a week the only condition is that they are able to prove mastery of a certain set of skills.  Project based learning is another way that students could show mastery and purpose.  They will see that it is important to pick up what we as teachers are putting down to try to solve real world problems.

The same goes for teachers.  The state of Indiana says that now if we complete this checklist of items that they say makes us highly effective teachers we will get our raises each year.  But are teachers striving to be better teachers because they want to grow professionally, or are they narrowing their focus on the "carrot" that's dangling in front of them and simply checking off those items in that rubric when they are being evaluated?  Or are teachers so fearful of losing their jobs due to the "stick" or poor evaluation that they have lost what made them love teaching in the first place.  Teachers can become so caught up in improving test scores that their classrooms become skill and drill boot camps and all creativity is left behind.

Maybe the state could be more nurturing to the creative side of teaching and use the example that Daniel Pink mentioned.  The state could allow us to come up with our own creative, nontraditional ways of improving test scores without having to worry about the "sticks" or punishment of being labeled with a poor letter grade or the fear of losing our jobs.  The state test could be one thing the students do during the school year not the one thing they are being prepared for all year long.

Daniel Pink is on to something.  He says there is a mismatch to what science says and what businesses do, but I can see that there is also a mismatch to what science says and what the world of education does.