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Sharing is Caring
by Jim Hollis

Three years ago, I moved out of the classroom and began focusing on helping teachers use technology to improve the learning process. I went from teaching Middle School students (or as I like to call them, the "hormonally challenged") to teaching teachers. As you can imagine, the change in audience brought all sorts of new challenges. (While I was fairly adept at managing a 12 year old who was trying to text his buddy, I had no idea how to tell a teacher to stop checking their email while I was talking.)

What's great about this new focus is that so many new technologies are available that can really help teachers improve the learning process. For example, a whole new group of resources are available on the Internet that help teachers share information. I like to call these new technology resources "sharing technologies."

Sharing technologies allow us to share and access information and resources in new and exciting ways. TeacherTube, Wikipedia, Twitter, Google Reader, Del.icio.us, Blogger, etc. can all be used to share information with other people quickly and easily. You can actually set up an application like Google Reader to bring you the information that you want before you ask for it (no you don't have to go back in time).

So, what does "Sharing is Caring" mean? Well, as educators, we now have the ability to share our thoughts, our expertise, our techniques, our software programs, our ideas, our reflections, our favorite websites, our schedules, our hopes, our vision, our pictures, our dislikes, our email, our lesson plans, or our lectures. We can share these things because the technology now makes it easy and affordable. We can share these things because educators are not competitors; we share these things because that is what a teacher does.

Teachers are perhaps the most compassionate people in the world. They care a great deal for other people, and as such, they, by definition, impart what they know using the techniques that work best for them. This is what I mean by "Sharing is Caring."

Here are just a few examples of how teachers are sharing information:

• Wikis: Here's a wiki called called Math247 that contains video demonstrations of how to solve various math problems. This site also give instructions for how to create your own.
• TeacherTube: This TeacherTube Notebook Playlist contains video demonstrations of how to use the SMART Board Notebook software.
• Blogs: Here's one of my favorite education blogs called Cool Cat Teacher that contains a wealth of information on how to use technology in the classroom.
• Social Bookmarks: Here's an amazing list of bookmarks on del.icio.us that provide quick links to hundreds of ICT resources.

Please take some time to investigate all the ways teachers are sharing information. My next blog post will actually walk you through how to create your own educational content and share it with anyone on the Internet free of charge.

Until then, always remember that "Sharing is Caring!"