Sharing: The Moral Imperative by Dean Shareski

K-12 ONLINE CONFERENCE:

Sharing: The Moral Imperative with Dean Shareski

I watched a video posted by Dean Shareski. I found it to be very interesting. I wasn't really sure about it at first because of the title, but once I got into listening to what he had to share, it became really interesting. Dean was talking about how important it is for us to share our work with other teachers. He shared a quote that caught his attention " Sharing, and sharing online specifically, is not in addition to the work of being an educator. It is the work." Ewan Macintosh. 

When we think about sharing our work with others we might ask ourselves, why would I do this? Is it safe? Is it worth my time? How do I make it valuable & meaningful?  But what we really should be asking ourselves is:

Is this an obligation?

Does my institution see value in sharing?

How will it help my students?

If you think about it we really couldn't share any of our ideas with other schools before we all had internet. The only time we were sharing was within the same school. We never really got knew and bright ideas into the schools. Very rare, teachers shared when they would go to workshops, which wasn't all the time. Dean says that sharing back then was a luxury, and it really was for the students in the classroom. They shared with each other. 

Dean also mention that we should ask who, where, and what do I share? He thinks that we should be sharing with the best educators in the world. With all of the technologies we have now a days, it makes that concept of sharing with each other much easier. 

Dean gave examples of teachers and administrators who did awesome with sharing their ideas with other schools and teachers. One example that he showed was an administrator who thought of having an Identity Fair with his students. This was when a the students made posters, like the one's for science fairs, and shared who they were with the school. Everyone got to know everyone in the school. They had a touching story, and the administrator shared it online, and it caught other schools attentions. The other school applied the new project to their school, and everyone is loving it. the two schools Skype with each other once in a while. Great experience!

Dean mentions that we should learn how to share and learn with other countries. We can enrich our learning and make it more powerful by doing so.

His final thoughts were that teacher should give time and energy for sharing, not for the money but because they love to share and they love their students. 

I thought that this very was very powerful. It showed me how important it is for us to share our work with each other. Without sharing, their might not be education. Education is sharing. We are sharing and exchanging ideas every day with each other. By doing this we are bettering ourselves and our students! More power to sharing!