Lurking we shall go. . .



I decided to look at reddit for my exploration of personal learning networks. I have some experience using reddit for hobby interests, but I have never considered it as any sort of professional tool. I decided to make a new account with the sole purpose of following education related topics, subscribing to the teachers, education, elateachers, and teachingresources subreddits. The first thing that jumped out at me, and it was honestly something I expected from previous experience, is that a lot of the threads were people asking for very specific advice. Things like what to expect on the first day of teaching, how to find a job, what sort of clothes to wear were all pretty common. I would see lots of the same type of thread started by different people, because they are typically only interested in their own issues rather than discussing in larger topics. There were also a lot of random or irrelevant topics (in my opinion at least) that needed to be sorted through, even when I was only looking at the four subreddits mentioned above.

I didn’t really engage in any discussions (lacking both the experience to offer advice and not really having questions at my current stage of my path towards teacherdom), but I saw a lot that could be quite relevant in about a year. In particular the threads about how to get jobs, and how to adapt to life as a new teacher. However, one issue is a lot of these were quite region specific, with not all advice being transferable to other geographic localities. This seems to be one of the big flaws of more generalized, online networks like this. I also read through a thread on the use of technology in the classroom, and one poster brought up the idea that technology should not create a classroom culture that erases the need for interpersonal engagement. This seems like something a network like reddit could easily do. Especially when the platform is anonymous.



I think communities like this definitely have a place in a teacher’s toolkit, but I don’t think I am fully sold on this sort of online network being the primary tool for inter-teacher discussion and knowledge sharing. It seems like a community built within one’s district or school would be a much better resource where things from other places like reddit or another online community could be brought in and discussed and dissected in more detail. However, reddit could definitely be a good place to start or get a random question answered you might not want it known that you asked. A perfect example of this was the several people inquiring about the best way to look for a new job while they were still working at their current school.

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