"What resources do you use to teach x?"
"What is the best online tool to do y?"
"I am faced with situation z in my classroom. What can I do?"
I see teachers post questions like these on Twitter all the time. If someone has a good group of followers, such questions can generate a number of answers within a matter of minutes. This phenomenon is such a powerful tool for crowd-sourcing knowledge that these groups of expert followers have been dubbed "Personal Learning Networks." Some even hail them as a new, more efficient form of Professional Development. For the most part I, too, am excited by their potential.
However, I also think there are limitations to this arrangement that must be acknowledged, foremost of which is that the quality of information and discussion provided by a PLN depends on the quantity and quality of the experts in that network along with an individual's ability to capture the experts' attention. Ultimately, these are both time-consuming tasks, and time is not a resource that most teachers have in abundance. Frankly, the effort of regularly posting and developing a following is a barrier that a significant proportion of teachers, perhaps even a majority, will not feel that they can overcome.
Fortunately, I believe the online community of programmers has created the perfect tool to address these issues, at least for the Q&A portion of PLN discussions. It is a site called Stack Overflow that is free, open and democratic. Individuals ask questions that are answered by other programmers. Good answers are rewarded with votes from other users, quickly identifying the consensus best answers. Votes also confer reputation points to answerers. Cumulative reputation points identify those users who have contributed the most to the community. This simple system has several advantages:
- New questions are posed to the entire community and displayed on the front page, so answers are often posted within minutes of the original question.
- The community voting identifies the best answers, which are then displayed most prominently.
- The voting/reputation system encourages thoughtful, correct answers. There is almost none of the flaming or "you should have read the manual" condescension that plague other programmer forums and message boards.
- The questions and answers are some of the best resources available on the Internet. A Stack Overflow question usually appears in the top 5 query results when Googling a programming topic.
- Even novice programmers can ask questions of some of the most experienced professionals in the field, many of whom do regularly participate in the site. There is literally no barrier to entry beyond the ability to ask a good question.
I want to build a similar site for expert educators to ask and answer questions about our profession. I think such questions could range from the deeply theoretical, like "What is the most important and applicable finding in the area of brain research that I should know about?" to the day-to-day practical, like "What is your favorite activity for teaching the causes of the Civil War to a class of eight graders?" But, that just my opinion, and that is where I need help.
The creators of Stack Overflow want to develop similar sites for areas of expertise other than programming. They have named their Q&A software platform Stack Exchange, and they have created a democratic process whereby groups of experts can define the parameters of their own site. I have submitted a proposal there, called "Pedagogy," and presented some examples of both on- and off-topic questions for the site. At this stage of the process, we need more people to look at the proposal, submit sample questions, and rate the sample questions as on- or off-topic. Once a consensus is reached on the scope of the site and a certain number of people have committed to participating, a closed beta begins. Then, if the community can produce a critical mass of questions and appropriate answers during the beta, the site goes live.
Personally, I have found Stack Overflow to be an unparalleled tool to learn about programming. I also think its Q&A model is extensible to any group of experts, and in particular I see a lot of the productive behavior it encourages already occurring in groups of teachers online. Where Stack Exchange has potential is in (a) bringing these disparate groups together to broaden the range of expertise available and (b) lowering the barrier for new and less-technologically-savvy teachers to using the online community a resource for professional growth.
If you agree, please head over to the Stack Exchange proposal, follow it, and add to the discussion there. You can also check out the Stack Exchange FAQ. Thanks!
