"The Best Resource for Me Is Other Teachers"

Today we learn from other people’s focus groups. Specifically WGBH Educational Foundation's study on how to enhance the social media functions of Teachers' Domain, a free online library of multimedia materials supporting K–12 instruction. Teachers' Domain is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.

Researchers asked two main questions to understand how to better support professional networking on Teachers' Domain:

1. How do teachers use social media tools in professional contexts, and for what purposes?
2. How are teachers likely to use social media tools in the near future?

#1: How and Why Teachers Use Social Media Professionally

Researchers found the typical range of social media tool use among the teachers they surveyed. Everyone from teachers like my dad, who prints out my e-mails to him and waits to respond to me in person, to Vicki Davis, who uses wikis, blogs, Twitter, Ustream, and so forth to create and share curriculum resources.

While the Vicki Davis group may be small when compared to the overall teaching population, researchers noted that these teachers have a big influence on the habits of other teachers. They are establishing online professional networks within their schools and beyond.

Also not much of a surprise, focus group participants envisioned three main purposes for social media use:

• Finding appropriate rich media resources, activity ideas, and lesson plans more efficiently.

• Learning from and communicating with other educators.

• Storing, organizing, adapting, and sharing rich media resources and related materials in one place.

Researchers found, in general, that teachers tended to be passive users of professional social networking tools. Some reasons:

• Limited planning time. Teachers want to know that a resource is matched to their needs and is teacher-tested and approved.

• Privacy concerns. "I wouldn't want parents to figure out a new way to contact me" (1st grade teacher). Also noted, they don’t want to put their personal info out there for marketers or weirdos.

• Interlopers. Researchers found teachers particularly passive on education resource sites where blogs, discussion forums, and groups tend to be moderated by staff from the site itself. This could also be cited as an issue of authenticity, or desire to see sites that are practitioner-led. I think I just wrote myself out of a job. :(

• Need more how-to support. Teachers were less likely to adapt and upload their own versions of professional development videos because it seems difficult and time-consuming, not to mention concerns over copyright and (student) privacy issues.

#2 or Finding Your Teaching Twin

All types of teachers, regardless of how much they use social media tools professionally, are always on the lookout for like-minded teachers—teachers who work in their geographic region, teach the same subject or grade, or have comparable technology access, researchers said. All teachers surveyed valued these connections but often struggled to find these peers online.

Teachers suggestions, from the report, for making finding your teaching twin easier online:

• Notifications when other teachers that fit their profile (grade level, content, student needs) upload new content or resources.

• A way to rate and review online resources that is brief, easy to understand, geared to what works, linked to the reviewer’s profile info, sortable, and rated according to consistent categories (like a Zagats for teacher resources).

• In general, teachers wanted a way to search and tag site content in a way that's both consistent but at least somewhat user-generated.

• Protect privacy by letting users not only leave comments or questions on profile pages but also the option to communicate via a double-blind e-mail system, like Craigslist's.

• Limit student access. While student participation is welcome in classroom wikis or blogs, teachers underscored the importance of professional networking with other teachers—exclusively.

Finally, an implicit recommendation of this report seems to be to build teacher's professional use of social media into planning time and professional development. If it's not supported during the school year, it's not going to be pursued, or as one teacher said about social bookmarking tools such as deli.cio.us:

"I was into it for a while, but during the school year I don't have the time to really organize it all. It's a summer project."