It’s culture. I’ve been on staffs where sharing and being together is the norm. In other districts, schools, it is seen as grandstanding. In my own district, I try to share for others, it’s not always the best but it does help others see the value. I’ve been in charge of our district website for the past 6 years. About 5 years ago, I began using the front page to post successes, stories of various schools. Sometimes I’d do the write up myself but once it began to get popular, people started sending me stuff to share. They felt safe that they weren’t grandstanding. Today, in our 35 schools, I get around 3 submissions everyday for “frontpage” worthy stories. What we’ve decided is that unless they share it on their own websites, we won’t post it to the front page. This is a small step in building a culture of sharing. At this point, the focus is on PR, which isn’t the worst thing but it’s still basically publishing. Sharing involves more of a remix culture. We aren’t there yet but this might be a start.

Jan,
the related post is a WP plugin. I have no idea how it works but yeah, that seems awfully closely related.

@ Joe, it’s the perennial problem. My observation is that those who share successfully (meaning there is up-take of ideas) do it humbly, with a bit of courage, and one colleague at a time–and boy, that’s hard work.

Jan Smiths last blog post..When You Make a Campaign Promise…

My question is: “How do we get teachers to share best practices, resources, ideas and strategies freely?”

There is sometimes a building culture where sharing these things is looked at as grandstanding, which causes teachers to refrain from sharing?

Any ideas?