Week #4 - Open Access Learning

Today we are talking about open access learning and promoting an open access environment in the classroom. I really like the open access movement and think that it is the future of our education and society as a whole. In the age of internet, social media and infinite sharing possibilities, it doesn't really make sense for things like text books and learning activities to be propriety knowledge, owned and distributed by million dollar businesses. In the age of the internet, where our children are learning how to skateboard, tie a tie, braid, cook and drive on YouTube, it feel unnatural for knowledge to be limited to a classroom and a text book. 

Now I understand why text books are proprietary, it takes a lot of time and effort to publish these learning materials! Someone deserves to be paid for making these things? Right? I guess the argument here is that we should be moving away from a society that sees educational techniques as objects to be sold, and more towards a society that sees these things as essential to our own human growth! Our K-12 education is provided for by the government. If education is seen as an valuable entity that needs to be distributed for free, why then can't the materials be seen in the same light? I really like the open ed program provided here, and think that the 11-state OER initiative referenced here is at the forefront of this issue.The problem is, it takes time to compile good education techniques, sometimes lifetimes! People should be paid for their lifetime of work, right? If so, who should pay them? The government? 

This is a tough question. As a teacher and an artist myself, I am very aware of these kinds of debates. There was a huge ordeal when the sharing of music first became available on the internet via websites like Limewire and Napster. Many artists were outraged that their lifetime of work was available online for free with no proceeds going to themselves, the rightful owner of the material! How is that fair? In order for this open access philosophy to work, many people need to participate, and everyone has to have the same mindset. We as educators all need to be equally participating in the sharing of our own material, as well as the taking from others. If all educators share their work and take from others simultaneously, then we should be able to foster a community that is very successful. 

An extremely underutilized resource in the field of education, in my opinion, is YouTube. Kids learn how to do everything on YouTube, why can't their educational resources be there as well? Imagine if all the textbook companies spent their time translating their curriculum oriented textbooks into video productions and playlists for youtube? If their videos were to be used by classrooms around the country and around the world, they may be able to make good money off of YouTube ad revenue. Good educational resources on YouTube have thousands and thousands of views. Someone could potentially make content that would be excellent for classrooms, and then still make money through YouTube ad revenue. I think that our society is heading towards this kind of learning material model, and I expect textbooks, in the traditional sense, to be obsolete relatively soon. 

As an educator, we can capture the spirit of open and participatory communities in our learning environments by being transparent about our learning techniques. When completing a project borrowed from an open source, we can view other results from that environment as a class, and even share our own learning experiences with the world at large via the internet. Another thing that you can do in the classroom is to create a class or school blog that is kept by the students. Students and teachers can share what they have done throughout the year on the blog. In this way, students will see first hand that education is something to be shared, and not to be kept to self. We should be encouraging our kids to share their educational experiences with the wold, and to use the internet to their advantage to obtain and share information as much as possible! 

Week# 3 - Sharing

After watching Dean Shareski's video, Sharing: The Moral Imperative, I have done a lot of thinking about sharing in the context of education. In his video, Shareski makes the argument that sharing effective teaching practices, particularly online, is not only necessary, but it is our moral obligation as educators. This idea of  sharing is not at all unique to the field of education. Many in the tech industry are believers in "open source" programming, the idea that source code should be laid bare for everyone to see and edit so that the industry can grow and prosper more effectively. Athletes share lifetimes of learned techniques via coaching to advance their sports. Throughout history, the sharing of ideas across cultures has advanced progress and growth for entire civilizations! Generally speaking, sharing information spurs progress. Sharing ideas with one another is the very core of education, and effective educational practices are the cornerstone of any successful community. 

We as educators share information with our students every day. We get paid to do that. Many of us probably even participate in staff meetings and collaborate with other staff members at our respective schools, sharing techniques with one another and reviewing effective research practices so that they can be implemented school wide. I do this every week. Most of us have gone to school and spent countless hours learning about effective education practices and sharing with other students in the process. But for some reason, as I read across countless articles that talked about the importance of sharing in the field of education, I couldn't help but feel turned off by some of the rhetoric being used. Though I mostly agree with his premise, I even found myself rolling my eyes during Shareski's video a few times! Does this make me a bad person? A bad teacher? I don't think so. 

The truth of the matter is, I am a very effective sharer. I teach and share all the time, every day actually. Although I am an educator, the place that I find myself sharing the most is in my Pokemon career. That's right! I play the Pokemon Trading Card Game competitively. I travel to tournaments all over the country, and even compete in the World Championships every year. I have accomplished a great deal in my five years with the game so far, and have become a well known figure within the community. After my first big regional win, I started writing articles for PokeBeach, a renown Pokemon news website. I created competitive articles where I disclosed all of my best techniques so that the community could read and learn from my experiences. I participated on message boards, responded to direct messages, the whole deal! In the past few months, however, I have transitioned away from sharing through writing, and started my own YouTube channel. My channel, Derium's Competitive Pokemon, has over 20,000 subscribers, which is fairly impressive considering I have only been creating content for two months. I have started promoting my brand through Facebook and Twitter, where I can instantly target thousands of people with the same interests. In fact, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are the three ways that I communicate and stay relevant in the Pokemon Trading Card Game. Absolutely everything that I need to know about the competitive game at any given point in time can be traced to either of those three resources. The primary online gathering space for the Pokemon community, however, is none other than Facebook. There are a couple of groups on Facebook that are moderated by people involved in the community that can be seen as the "hive mind" of the Pokemon Trading Card Game. Between these two groups, there are nearly 30,000 people joined, sharing their ideas about the game at any given point in time, any day of the week. Quite frankly, if you want to be involved in competitive play, your first step is to join these Facebook groups and start reading around. 

Just last week, I made post about social media in education here on my blog. I think that social media, while sometimes a distraction, can be an excellent tool for communication and productivity. I use social media to connect with thousands of Pokemon players every day! My question is, why can't this community exist for education? (At the time of writing this, I stopped what I was doing, made my way over to Facebook, and conducted a search for "Special Education." Turns out, there are two groups with over 10,000 members each for Special Education! I requested to join both and I am currently awaiting administration approval.) 

I think that I may have been turned off by the sharing rhetoric I was reading about because I don't like blogging, and everyone here seems to be very much about blogging. Blogging is, in my opinion, the most tedious and annoying way to share information! I feel like I am just sputtering nonsense out into the internet with no direct audience and no direct purpose! Not to mention, these posts are long! They take forever to write, and for what?

In my opinion, I think that moderated groups on social media are the future of networking and idea sharing. People talk about not having time for blogs, and unlike the sources I cited above, I think that those who don't have time to blog are completely justified. This stuff takes way too long and is far too impractical for the majority of people to keep up with - honestly! Most teachers in their 20s are not going to upkeep blogs where they talk about and share their ideas. I think that the idea of blogs is just a little outdated and inefficient. Trying to convince teachers to creep around on other people's blogs looking for useful information is also a lost cause. Young people today do not like to spend time tirelessly googling things and searching through articles and blogs. This, in my opinion, seems like a largely inefficient way to research and connect. A realistic proposal, however, might be for all educators to hop on Facebook, which they already have and use every day, and look for a group of relevant educators on there that they can connect and share ideas with. I cannot speak for the education community on Facebook as of yet, since I have not been approved to the groups that I have tried to connect with, but my hope is that I can find a community of educators on there that I can seamlessly connect and share ideas with on a regular basis! 

Overall, I agree that sharing, especially among educators, should be constant. Education is not a competition, we are all in it, hopefully, for the betterment of society and the world we live in! For that reason, we should always be trying to improve our community of educators by sharing ideas with one another. The most efficient and realistic way to make global idea sharing a reality is by utilizing social media, like Facebook. I think we will be hard pressed to get most educators to upkeep blogs, but Facebook provides an immense and ubiquitous platform for people to connect with a targeted audience on. And hey, you know what's cool about a focused Facebook group? You can even share your blog posts there if you want to! 

Thanks for reading,

-Andrew Mahone

Week #2 Blog Prompt - Introduction and Initial Thoughts on Social Media in the Classroom

Hello! My name is Andrew Mahone. I am 28 years old and currently working as a teacher at the Phoenix Alternative School in Akron, OH while attending the University of Akron. I began working in the field of special education 4 years ago at the Kennedy Krieger School in Baltimore, MD as a one to one aide. I loved the work and decided to pursue a Master's Degree in Mod - Intensive Intervention Specialist Licensure.

In my free time, I play the Pokemon Trading Card Game competitively. This hobby is pretty serious! I travel to tournaments all over the country to play. I am a well known player within the community, having won a Regional Championship and placed at the World Championships before. This past year, I finished 7th at the North American International Championships in a field of 1,400. I even run my own YouTube account where I discuss trends and strategy in Pokemon! With all this going on, Its safe to say that I am a very busy person.

I use social media to communicate and I have many social media apps on my phone, including Facebook, Snap Chat, Instagram and Twitter. However, as the years have gone by, I have intentionally distanced myself from social media. Currently, I only use Facebook and Twitter regularly, as they are the best forms of social media for promoting my YouTube channel and communicating with the Pokemon community. About a year ago, I decided to try turning all of my notifications off on all of my social media accounts to see how it would affect my life. I loved it. I felt liberated from the addicting pull of my smart phone, and felt more in tune with the world around me. Although some of my peers expect me to respond on social media in a timely manner, most of them have gotten used to the fact that if they want to contact me, they will have to wait. This has, quite frankly, changed my life. No longer do I feel the need to garner attention online and respond to anyone who wants my attention on a whim. I am an adult with goals to accomplish and things to do! I don't have time to chat meaninglessly or scroll through feeds all day. Instead of scrolling through feeds of my friends thoughts and pictures on social media, I spend most of my free time on the web reading articles that are of interest to me and educational in some way or another. 

Maybe this all just means that I am getting old! As I have aged, I have become far less fond of social media. It feels like walking into a crowded mall where a bunch of people I don't really want to hear from are shouting from the top of their lungs. When I do use social media, it is with purpose and intent. I use it to contact specific people with specific purpose. I can't stand the endless scroll of social media, and honestly I think its turning much of our society into zombies. 

I think social media as a form of communication and outreach for teachers to continue connecting with and teaching students after school ends is a great idea. Why not post notes from class online so all your students can review them? Why not make yourself available online so your students can ask you a question through Instagram or something about a homework assignment if they need to? I think that social media can be constructive as a communication tool between educators and students, but could also get out of hand. Obviously, students and teachers shouldn't really be chatting it up on social media in a casual way. Conversations should be professional, and teachers would have to maintain professional distance from their students while engaging with them on social media. I also think that phones have the potential to be hugely distracting in the classroom in general, and I am very skeptical of them being incorporated successfully into daily classroom functions without getting out of hand, especially with middle and high school students. 

Ultimately, there does not seem to be any stopping social media from taking over the lives of our young people. So much of their internal rewards systems are constructed around attaining likes and attention online. As much as I hope that kids will learn to value real life experiences and endeavors over manufactured digital ones, I don't think there is much I can do about it. Kids will do what they want! As a teacher, I hope to use technology and social media to make myself and my lessons more available with my students, however, I am also very skeptical of where social media is taking us as a society. 

First Post

Hello world! My name is Andrew Mahone. I am currently persuing my master's degree as a moderate to intensive intervention specialist at the University of Akron. I am creating this blog to connect with the greater special education community through the internet, cool!

I teach at the YMCA Phoenix Program, a behavior school in Akron, OH. I work with a variety of students who have a wide range of abilities and special needs. Though challenging, I love my job and the work I do, and hope to continue to grow as a special educator through this master's program.

For fun, I enjoy skateboarding, running, and playing Pokemon Cards! I travel to tournaments all over the country to play, and even create content for my own YouTube channel!

Thanks for taking the time to check out my blog. I will be posting more as the semester unfolds!

-Andrew