Without Echo, They Were Just Bunnymen

(img credit: http://cutearoo.com/2011/08/12/bunnies-in-boots/)
You're not alone.

It's a bit of a weird title, and that's another amazing chat, but I want to talk about the echo chamber this week. Recently, I've been reading that there's too much agreement in the educational Twitter world. It's created this vacuum of people who think that student choice is best! And integrating technology is great, but it's a tool that cannot replace the teacher! And don't give homework - ever! And we need admins who support innovation!

All these things are statements that have made their rounds during the past few months, and you'd be hard-pressed to find the teachers who are going to fight any one of these concepts for two reasons.

• They are, for the most part, pretty good things to think about education.
• They are, for the most part, topics that will get you shredded by the people who agree with them should you ask a question.

Case in point: Last week in the #totallyrossome chat (which IS an edchat despite the lack of "ed" or "chat" in the title) we answered some statements that are posited in the edutwittersphere as being irrefutable. That's fine, but the group actually had some questions as to what would actually need to happen in the world at large to make these hard and fast TRUTHS a reality. The interesting thing is that the blanket statements were retweeted during the week as fact. Tweeters of these statements were called upon to look in at the discussion in order to answer some of the questions, but they were largely unavailable for comment.

The thing is, sometimes we need to challenge these statements, but sometimes we don't. Sometimes we just need to know that there's someone out there who feels the way you do. Our jobs are hard because we may have people siphoning off our energy in the place our body goes to work each day. It's nice to know we have someone in our corner when we visit our virtual spaces. Someone who gets us.

Hard being the only one who is weird where I work... Thankful for twitter pic.twitter.com/yxF88T83j4

— Toby Price (@jedipadmaster) July 20, 2015

Thanks to Toby Price (@jedipadmaster) for the tweet. It was timely.

So come to #totallyrossome tonight. Bring a friend who is new to twitter. Someone who wants to know that they're not alone in the frustrated eduworld and wants to know that they're not the only ones out there who feels the way they do.

They'll know they're not just one Bunnyman. There are more. 

And there's an Echo.

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#totallyrossome is on Tuesday nights at 9 PM EDT. We talk about being totally involved in wearing the many hats required of an educator, and we welcome all.