Engaging in Deep Learning on Twitter with @pedagoo @PalmyTeacher

If we truly want to connect with students in ways that will activate them to be self-driven lifelong learners, then we must be authentic, deeply engaged learners ourselves. Deep learning is infectious and if the conditions are fertile, it will flourish.

This is the message I shared in a recent post I wrote for another blog. Let me explain.

Invitation from @fkelly
A week ago I received my very first Twitter invitation from Fearghal Kelly to write a post for the pedagoo.org blog. He had read my sabbatical report via a link on Twitter and tweeted:

Initially, I approached this Tweet quite cautiously by doing some googling and was relieved and then flattered to learn more about Fearghal and the innovative pedagoo.org community of teachers that he has established in Scotland. 

Pedagoo.org is a collaborative blog that allows teachers to easily share with an established community. 'Setting up a blog, building an audience and keeping it up to date can be time consuming...so just post here instead!' This is the message on the blog. There are 1,200 active members in the community on pedagoo.org. @pedagoo  have 16,000 followers on Twitter! 

I decided to write my post and link it to the changes and developments happening with regards to deep engagement in learning at our school at the moment. You can read the post entitled Engagement in Deep Learning here. As soon as the post was published, I begun to receive a steady stream of notifications from @pedagoo followers. Here is a copy of one of the tweets!

The presence of positive motivation towards a learning task markedly increases the likelihood of students engaging in deep learning (Groff 2010).  I suggest that this also applies to us as adult learners. The overwhelmingly positive response to my pedagoo blogpost has certainly motivated me to continue exploring deep engagement in learning. I am digging deep within my authentic self to explore what engages and drives me to keep on learning throughout this process.

Why Twitter?

In my pedagoo blog post I shared my motivation for joining Twitter and that I have continued tweeting @jennyljackson ever since April 2014 when I began. This was my inaugural tweet.

Without realising this at the time, when I challenged myself to Tweet, I moved out of my comfort zone into the 'unknown'. I reconnected and engaged as a learner.

There are many excellent links to why we as educators should become active on Twitter. Here is a very explicit slideshow created by @ PalmyTeacher  (a very talented teacher from Palmerston North in New Zealand) that should help convince you as future focused educators to join Twitter. How did I access this? On Twitter of course!

We have to continually dig deeply within ourselves to reconnect with our passion and love for learning as educators. Engagement in deep learning is infectious and if the conditions are fertile, it will flourish.This is indeed the message from my  video.

Through being active on Twitter we can collaborate with other educators deeply connected to their own passion for learning. When we learn to do this, we connected with our own love of learning.

If we truly want to connect with students in ways that will activate them to be self-driven lifelong learners, then we must be authentic, deeply engaged learners ourselves. Deep learning is infectious and if the conditions are fertile, it will flourish.