Should educators share? What does that even mean?

Post Two - Let's See How This Works

So, let’s talk about sharing. I’ve been trying to figure out my thoughts about this topic for a couple days now.

In tech class last week, we watched a video presented by Dean Shareski on what he claims is our “Moral Imperative” to share. Not knowing Mr. Shareski, I have no idea what his intentions were, but I know that I got a bit ticked off. My first thought was “how dare you speak to me about morals,” since you don’t know me, my world view or my moral code. Besides that, what gives you the right to pass moral judgment on me about what I do? I’m not much into the Judeo-Christian beliefs, but I’m pretty sure there’s a few things in there about “judge not lest ye be judged” and the like.

Then I calmed down, a bit. I still was ticked though, because he seems to be saying that the only way to share is in the world online social media. While this is an amazing tool, I think he is doing a disservice to some by implying if you don’t jump into the online sharing world you are immoral.

So, I pretty much got to the point where I tried to eliminate his view from my mind and thought “Do I think I need to share things as a teacher, or even as a professional?” From this point, it was easy. Of course I do. In my engineering career, I have been members of professional societies where I have learned more than I could imagine from people willingly sharing their knowledge with me. (Sure, some of them were doing it to promote their consulting businesses, but that was the formal stuff. If anybody has been to a professional conference or trade association technical committee meeting, you know that much of the real work happens through social and informal interactions after the meetings. That’s when colleagues really share what they know.) These associates (many who I’m honored to call friends) allowed me to further my career by standing on their shoulders. I have always hoped that what I gave back to the group was just a stabilizing hand as others climbed up. While I don’t want to sound braggadocios, I think I have a pretty good history of helping others in my past life – I ran an internship program and have trained several young engineers in my previous life.

With all this background, why am I still ticked about Mr. Shareski’s premise? I think there are two points in Amy Burvall’s video Iste2014 Ignite: #daretoshare that I can use to help explain. At one point, she talks about pushing something to the top of Google. As a cynic and skeptic, I am very concerned about the ways that people can be manipulated by the algorithms behind “news feeds” and “search results.” (Lest you think I’m sitting here wearing a tinfoil hat, I’m not so much concerned that people are trying to manipulate us online as that as a society we’re not very good at dealing with it. As long as people exist, some of us will try to take advantage of others. Education is part of the process of steeling future citizens against these schemes.) Are we, as individuals in a society, more concerned about the number of views and likes our posts get than the positive impact they make (Think Kardashian here)?  Is it more important that 1000 people see our post than 1 person gets something from it?  Ms. Burvall also mentions “knowing what to share.” This is where many sharers fall down (Again, think Kardashian here). Oversharing leads to noise and we as people and members of our society are very poor at filtering said noise.

So, where do I stand?  I don’t want to bring morality into the topic, but sharing is at the heart of any educator. That’s what we do. Whether it is in close groups (lunch rooms, staff meetings and yes, maybe even happy hour) or whether it is online, teachers helping each other is as basic as teachers helping students. The focus should be on the message, not the medium

(Maybe I’ll use a future post about writing styles. I heard a bit of a story on the radio about an English teacher that hates style books. I tried to write this post without obsessing about form and style. I hope anybody who reads it can understand it.)

Thanks,

Kevin