Once upon a time, there was a Spanish teacher in a rural county that faced diminishing budgets and increased need for documentation and accountability. The county where she taught bright, inquisitive minds was also riddled with poverty and need. Supplies and resources were scarce, so anything that made classroom teaching more efficient and effective was welcomed with sincere appreciation.
One day, this teacher was introduced to My Big Campus, an on-line learning management system. At first skeptical of the resource, this teacher decided to test-pilot a few features on her own before revealing it to her students. She found she was easily able to find other professionals with like-interests. She networked, made connections with other Spanish teachers, and also teachers that shared her passion for educational technology. When she finally introduced her students to My Big Campus, she immediately saw a higher level of engagement- and a connection between her students and herself.
You see, her digital natives were very comfortable and used to communicating on-line. Adding schoolwork and providing students with academic resources in the same venue that they communicated on proved a seamless transition from her traditional methods. Add the bonus of 24/7 access to resources for students, no more lost work, unlimited file storage for everyone, and no more lugging papers back and forth from home and we were all sold.
Furthermore, she and the students benefitted from a shared social-media site that allowed for communication and connections to be made in a safe environment. With countless taboos about student-teacher relationships in social media, this teacher certainly did not want to create problems. The issue, though, was that when the teacher made herself completely invisible to students, it created another divide between her world and theirs. My Big Campus bridged this divide and allowed all parties involved to have an outlet to not only discuss academia, but also have more informal communication that is so critical when establishing rapport.
When she got a little braver, the teacher wanted to flip her classroom, but there was no one in this rural community to help. She reached out to educators all across America through My Big Campus and they coached her through the process. She also found lessons, videos, documents, and assignments in the shared library that educators had added for teachers like her, all ready-to-use. For her part, this teacher also decided to contribute and coach others along in her areas of expertise. She felt empowered by this exchange of information and rejuvenated in her classroom seeing her students benefit from countless, engaging lessons that she never would have had the time to put together on her own.
This story isn't just about one educator, though. This story, or a similar version, can be told by myriads of educators all across the My Big Campus community. This particular version is special to me, though, because it is my story. My story of the connections I make do not end here, though. Most recently, I found an amazing educator on EduTalk and, after several months of correspondence, we organized a full-day My Big Campus training for 10 counties in our area. In this training, I met over sixty educators who are now a part of my professional network- and I continue to hear from their colleagues as I watch my connections grow. I am honored to be a part of a learning community that is armed with experts in just about any topic or subject I encounter in education. My Big Campus has transformed a rural, isolating experience into a resource-rich, collaborative community.
And we all learned happily ever after.
The end.
