ProfessorTOSA Blog

Last year, in an effort to create a layer of equity across the district, I worked to refine all of the hundreds of kid links on teacher sites. There were hundreds, but these resources were not equally shared on all websites – teachers didn’t have equal numbers of links.  Some teachers had a few and others had the lion’s share.  Websites were duplicated across classes, grade levels and sometimes on the same resource page for the same teacher.  Needless to say, many teachers seemed to have a resource page because they likely felt they needed to have one and significant research or thought didn’t go into the content of those links. Strange?  Actually, no.  In my research and collection, I traveled to websites across the globe and saw the most amazing teacher resource pages, but most of those pages shared my colleagues need for bulk and often had dead links, inappropriate advertisements on their resources, or just an overwhelming lack of focus in their work.  Certainly there were exceptions, and from those sites, I gathered many links, but it was eye opening and task-affirming to see the need for my task.

After all of this, I whittled down the sites and left room for additions, I added grade levels and categorized by subject and sent the wiki online.

Months have now passed and a new year has begun.  Last week I revisited the site.  Now, at the end of last year and a few months of the wiki published online produced a hundred or so hits and a few different CA based visitors (says my Clustrmap), but revisiting the site the other day, I was astonished to find over 600 visitors and dots covering the entire US and other scattered visitors around the world!  Wow.  Even better, checking the site just a few days later, I found that the hits jumped to over 800 visitors! The wiki is a hit.

In reflection, this site must be something that was urgently needed.  My goal of adding equity accross my district seemed to travel farther than Solana Beach and it speaks volumes to the point that teachers don’t need to work separately and harder to best teach our kids, they need to work together.  I see this in many areas and continue to see teachers that need their own resource page instead of just adding to this one!  Maybe it’s professional pride and maybe it’s just insecurity, but with technology there is just too much to tackle alone. Hopefully with a raised proficiency among my peers, they will realize how no one needs to be the expert (even me) and instead, take the help that is available and work together.