A Love for Learning

Over the past couple of days I’ve been exploring the online community Tapped In.  I must admit I was a little lost when I first got started.  I felt a bit like I was stuck in the lobby of my building in my first few forays.   I’m certainly not an expert yet, but in my more recent efforts to explore, I found that this really has a lot to offer teachers. 

From Tapped In’s About page, they define themselves to be:  “a Web-based learning environment created by SRI International to transform teacher professional development…Tapped In enables providers to offer high-quality online professional development experiences and support to more teachers cost-effectively. Through Tapped In, educators can extend their professional growth beyond courses or workshops with the online tools, resources, colleagues, and support they need to implement effective, classroom-centered learning activities.”

Essentially, it’s a virtual community where educators can join in discussions, share resources and “attend” conferences in subject areas and topics of interest to them.  When you first join, you can create your own office, a “room” in the building, if you will.   Mine is on the 13th floor.  I’m hoping that’s not a bad sign!   If you enjoy the virtual aspect, you’ll like the fact that you can change your office’s look and feel.  I changed from the home office look that was automatically generated to a comfy office with a sofa.  Your office is a place where you can store notes (keeping them private or publishing them for others to see), upload files, post links, engage in a discussion or use a whiteboard (which can also then be saved as notes.)   You can also then create passageways out of your office into other people’s offices.  I created several passageways for technology-related topics, but I didn’t get to explore them all yet.  I can remove the ones I may not find useful later on.  I also tried to create several math-related offices, but I can’t find them at all!  I’m still a novice at this for sure.  I also locked the door for now, but I’m not exactly sure what kind of power that has.

Once I finally got out of my own office, I did find some good resources.  I went to the calendar where events are listed.  There was an interesting “workshop” (I’m guessing that was the idea) today from Learning from Lyrics.   I wasn’t able to attend it when it was actually occuring, but I went back to it later, and I found some neat lesson plans and resources about how to integrate modern music into lessons.  Most of the lessons were for Social Studies or Language Arts, but it was most interesting.  I can definitely share what I found with others and use it as a springboard for my ideas in my own classes.  I tried to download the chat transcript for it, but I wasn’t having much luck with that.  Needless to say, I added this room to my favorites, and I did the same with the NETTS main office and a room about Web Design.  All of these provide files, links, discussions, notes that might prove helpful for me in my own desire to teach these topics.  It really has a lot of potential.  I also think it is a place where you can meet with students to have discussions or present ideas.  It seems like there is enough security for this to be safe for K-12 students.  I’m thinking it might work really well for someone who is going to be out for an extended period of time or as a way to offer online courses or special workshops in the summer.

We’ve been learning in our  Web Technology (Classroom 2.0) class at Fontbonne that there are several levels of participation when it comes to online communities:  linking, lurking, learning and leading.  I certainly am just in the lurking phase at this point.  I’m willing to check things out that others are doing, but I’m still a little reluctant to get too involved.  Perhaps with a bit more experience and confidence, I’d be willing to engage and contribute more.  Tapped In is certainly a friendly learning environment.  You are encouraged to sign up for a live tour with someone when you first join, and you can chat whenever you need a little help.  You might be interested in lurking too…or even more!