Sharing: The Moral Imperative

In the video entitled “Sharing: The Moral Imperative” Dean Shareski talks about the importance of sharing and the ease to which today’s technology allows teachers to share with each other.  He even goes so far as to say, “Protecting our work makes us the antithesis of a teacher... sharing is the teachers role.  Teachers love to share!”  The video goes on to show that teachers do indeed love to share and we can see the impact this sharing can have and the reach we as teachers can have through technology today.  

One of the main points I took down during this video was that teachers share resources that could be package and sold to them, so that teachers help one another instead of profiting off each other.  This sort of thing strikes me as really cool, because as teachers so much of what we can do in the classroom is limited by the resources we have access to in our schools.  Through sharing we can gain free access to new resources, try out new ideas, and even share ways to stretch classroom budgets.

It occurred to me that Dean Shareski was right with his proclamation about teachers loving to share.  Yes, we share knowledge with our students.  But we also learn to be teachers from the student-teaching experience where teachers take us under their wing and show us all their tricks and give us the benefit of their experience.  Then we continue that by doing it in the future for the next generation of teachers.  And finally we share with each other through PDs on an ongoing basis throughout our careers.  Using blogs, social bookmarking, PLNs, etc. is just an extension of what has long been established as a part of being a professional teacher.  When Dean Shareski  says, “Sharing allows us to do our job as teachers better and more broadly.  If learning shouldn’t be confined to the 4 walls of your classroom, should teaching?  Why would we hoard good teaching and learning?  There is something very unethical about that.  I believe that good ideas and great work should be shared with as many people as possible” I have to agreed.  A culture of sharing in education would make us all better teachers and result in strong learners in our students.