KENNEYCLASS
More Twitter Reasons in the Classroom
I came across some other great examples of twittering in the classroom. I am excited to try this in my 5th grade class. Although many students may or may not have access to a cell phone with text min. or a computer at home. I was going to assign a "twitter student" a day. This student has free access to one of the computers in the classroom and will routinely tweet what we are doing and learning throughout the day. Maybe we can find other classes throughout the world that are doing the same thing and we can follow them and vice versa? Steve Wheeler's blog shares some good twittering ideas:
1. ‘Twit Board’ Notify students of changes to course content, schedules, venues or other important information.
2. ‘Summing Up’ Ask students to read an article or chapter and then post their brief summary or précis of the key point(s). A limit of 140 characters demands a lot of academic discipline.
3. ‘Twit Links’ Share a hyperlink – a directed task for students – each is required to regularly share one new hyperlink to a useful site they have found.
2. ‘Summing Up’ Ask students to read an article or chapter and then post their brief summary or précis of the key point(s). A limit of 140 characters demands a lot of academic discipline.
3. ‘Twit Links’ Share a hyperlink – a directed task for students – each is required to regularly share one new hyperlink to a useful site they have found.
4. ‘Twitter Stalking’ Follow a famous person and document their progress. Better still if this can be linked to an event (During the recent U.S. Presidential elections, many people followed @BarackObama and kept up to date with his speeches, etc).
5. ‘Time Tweet’ Choose a famous person from the past and create a twitter account for them – choose an image which represents the historical figure and over a period of time write regular tweets in the role of that character, in a style and using the vocabulary you think they would have used (e.g. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar).
6. ‘Micro Meet’ Hold discussions involving all the subscribing students. As long as everyone is following the whole group, no-one should miss out on the Twitter stream. All students participate because a sequence of contributors is agreed beforehand.
7. ‘Micro Write’ Progressive collaborative writing on Twitter. Students agree to take it in turns to contribute to an account or ‘story’ over a period of time.
8. ‘Lingua Tweeta’ Good for modern language learning. Send tweets in foreign languages and ask students to respond in the same language or to translate the tweet into their native language.
9. ‘Tweming’ Start off a meme – agree on a common hash-tag so that all the created content is automatically captured by Twemes or another aggregator.
10. ‘Twitter Pals’ Encourage students to find a Twitter ‘penpal’ and regularly converse with them over a period of time to find out about their culture, hobbies, friends, family etc. Ideal for learning about people from other cultures.
5. ‘Time Tweet’ Choose a famous person from the past and create a twitter account for them – choose an image which represents the historical figure and over a period of time write regular tweets in the role of that character, in a style and using the vocabulary you think they would have used (e.g. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar).
6. ‘Micro Meet’ Hold discussions involving all the subscribing students. As long as everyone is following the whole group, no-one should miss out on the Twitter stream. All students participate because a sequence of contributors is agreed beforehand.
7. ‘Micro Write’ Progressive collaborative writing on Twitter. Students agree to take it in turns to contribute to an account or ‘story’ over a period of time.
8. ‘Lingua Tweeta’ Good for modern language learning. Send tweets in foreign languages and ask students to respond in the same language or to translate the tweet into their native language.
9. ‘Tweming’ Start off a meme – agree on a common hash-tag so that all the created content is automatically captured by Twemes or another aggregator.
10. ‘Twitter Pals’ Encourage students to find a Twitter ‘penpal’ and regularly converse with them over a period of time to find out about their culture, hobbies, friends, family etc. Ideal for learning about people from other cultures.
Here is a great video about Teaching with Twitter:
Educational Uses of Second Life
There are so many different focuses of educational uses of Second Life but first I Let's talk about how teachers are using Second Life in RL (real life). I will share some great worlds and share some ideas on how they are being used or how you and I can use these tools in the classroom.
Centre for Water Studies @ Better World Island (click on links to Teleport to world)
This world includes six distinct habitats that simulate real water life. Each habitat includes notecards, animals, plants and environment. Group students into cooperative groups and assign a water habitat such as: Mangrove Swamp, Pacific Northwest Rainforest, Pondlife, Waterfall with pool and stream, Coral Barrier Reef or Ocean beach with undersea marine life. Students will explore their area read information about each distinct habitat. Student then will research and determine dangers to this habitat and report on it to class.
Learn about sustainability in Etopia Island
After students research their water habitat the cooperative groups can research sustainabilities of the environment in Etopia Island. This world showcases renewable energy, organic living in an authentic environment.
- Have students take the sustainability quiz and elicit background knowledge of subject
- Take a bike ride around the world to see what looks interesting or take the train around to get a quick glimpse of the world.
- Learn about Wind, solar and water energy
- Have students learn about cohousing communities and is this something they see themselves using in the future?
Think it is difficult to teach empathy? Try simulating a
"This clinic building is based on the hallucinations of two specific people with schizophrenia. They were interviewed in detail and gave feedback on early designs for the hallucinations. While the hallucinations are not glamorous, they fairly accurately reproduce these patients' experiences. You should get a sense of just how intrusive the voices of schizophrenia really are." At the end of the experience students take
a survey to reflect on the experiment.
History comes alive in Second Life!
Visit Land of Lincoln and your avatar can put on authentic clothing and listen to the Gettysburg Address. Take a carriage ride and visit Linco
ln's birth home or a Antebellum Southern Plantation. Don't just read about a time and place, experience it!
In Lincoln Land students can visit the lending library and read literature from the time period. Open the books just as you would the real books.
Second Life and Education
As I have been playing with Second Life over the past month I have thought of many different ways to bring this into my classroom. First my thinking was using the rich culture worlds and students can role play in Egypt, Nazi Germany, Mexico and I even went swimming with sharks. So much can be done with this but, there are so many barriers that make it difficult to break through.
Ross Perkins, Ph.D is an instructional designer and has designed many of the educational sites for Second Life. He states that although this is a terrific tool, many teachers still are using the same old teaching techniques but, in SL. If it can be
done in Real Life (RL) then why do it in SL? For instance; meeting in a community room in SL as avatars and using a white board as an instructor lectures. Yes, innovative in the fact that it is in SL but not unique. Where SL has it's benefits is g
oing to places that students can't go. Some great sites that educators can visit and provide a virtual trip to hist
orical and educational sites.
Teleport to Ancient Rome: http://slurl.com/secondlife/The%20Roman%20Empire/103/3/22
Teleport to Astrono
my Planetarium:
Experience a Tsunami @ http://slurl.com/secondlife/Meteora/202/32/2
Live and experience Native American lands @ http://slurl.com/secondlife/Native%20Lands%20East/212/34/23
Podcasting in the Classroom
WHAT IS PODCASTING?
It is a relatively new form of communication. Merging or "Mashing" Blogging and radio together. The difference is that anyone can do it! You don't
have to have a radio studio, radio show or even a radio to share or listen to a podcast. Podcasting can be listened to with any computer or MP3 device such as an ipod.
Listeners are notified through their RSS feed that new content is available. After you have downloaded the podcast to your device you can then listen or even watch it at anytime.
Anyone with a simple computer and a microphone can be a podcaster.
Podcasting can contain other media elements such as audio, video, images, PDF or other.
Students, teachers, administrators, classrooms, administrators and more are podcasting on a regular basis.
So what can a teacher do with podcasts?
Grammar Girl: Daily Grammar tips such as: Starting a sentence with "however", the difference between who and whom, collective nouns and so much more! This would be great with a high school Language Arts class. This can be a podcast that can be used in a station or center for remedial help.
Writing Fix: A website dedicated to inspiring students to be better writers. One of the key pieces of this site is teaching with ipods. Rob Stone shares his lessons using podcasting and ipods.
Willowdale: A great site to see how elementary students and teachers are using podcasting.
Storynory: A great site filled with podcasts rich with storytellers! New fiction, fairy tales, myths, historical fiction and more! Students listen to rich storytellers using their talent to create a dynamic oral story. This pod and many more can be found on itunes as a free subscription.
Sample uses of podcasts in the Classroom:
Weekly News Broadcasts: Local or school current events, lunch menu and assignments. Have students produce these broadcasts for parent communication.
Document a Field Trip: Students can report and document on a field trip recently taken
Book Talk: Students read literature and instead of writing a summary about students give a podcast on the book.
Record lecture or class discussion: Record discussion so students absent may listen at home.
Fluency Lesson: Students practice reading aloud a book a few levels below. After significant practice students read aloud the picture book into recording and submit it to itunes. Share the digital book to lover level grades or even the local children's hospital.
Free software and news feed for podcasting:
Garageband (MAC)
RSS FEEDS -THE NEW PAPERBOY
Remember when the paperboy would throw the newspaper on your driveway once in the morning and again in the afternoon? That was how we got the latest news of the day. Now we are inundated with news, news on the cell phone, news on the computer at work, news on the computer at home, news on all more than 20 Cable channels. News, News everywhere. So now we are blasted with news everywhere and it is difficult to filter what is important to us.
RSS feeds is the new sophisticated paper boy. Not only does he deliver the information to you directly but, he delivers the news the news you want and filters out the rest.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and the news aggregator is the program you download to read the RSS feeds. Meg Ormiston describes it as "the News Aggregator is the television set and the RSS feeds are the channels you can select".
The news aggregators are sites you can download for free such as www.feedreader.com. Once you have that whenever you are on a news site, blog or journal site you can then click on the RSS feed and it will send all new updated information straight to you. See it is our own personal sophisticated paperboy.
RSS FOR TEACHERS:
As a teacher you are on all different sites researching lesson plans, methodologies as well as fun ideas. So many different sites to choose from and my bookmarks are getting to long to even remember what and why I liked them. Using RSS feeds allows you to quickly look at the feeds for the day to see if anything new and interesting has changed. If you like what you see you can quickly click on the link and it will then go to the site for full review.
- Teacher can assign students a RSS feed to subscribe to, they are responsible for summarizing newsworthy information and can then update class. (great for current events)
- Have students subscribe to your class blog and when new and important information comes in they are sure to see it quickly.
- As a teacher if you have assigned students to create a wikki, blog or other site then as a teacher you can subscribe to their RSS feed and when they update you get the information.
- Instead of journaling students can create a blog for all journal entries. When the journals have been updated the feed goes directly to the teacher for grade.
- Educators can follow other educators and capitalize on each others work in a collborative fashion rather than reinventing the wheel each time.
- Professional Development on demand: Educators can keep up with their favorite author, blogger and podcaster. Follow them and watch/listen/read when you have a free minute or two.
"So What are you Doing?" Twitter and Education
A year ago very few people had ever heard of Twitter let alone twittering, tweets, tweetpics, etc. However more than 22 million people a day not only know what a twitter is but, they do it too! Twitter or microblogging is a form of digital communication that sends short messages to friends, family, co-workers and just about anyone else who wants to know what you are doing or thinking. The catch to this form of microblogging is to keep the characters under 140 characters. Short and simple or Keep it sweet and simple. Is this a social media Fad? Will this be here today and gone tomorrow?
In order to understand why everyone is getting on this "band wagon" or at least why educators and teachers find it appealing, you need to understand what are some of the benefits.
- It is attractive to newer teachers who are in search of mentors and support. By following educators tweets you can keep up with trends, find resources and good ideas. (NEA)
- In a lonely classroom teachers find comfort in educational friendships as well as learning from each other what is working and what is not working.
- Inside the classroom teachers can review lesson plans and remind students what homework assignments are due.
- Teachers can tweet a provocative question and students can tweet back the answers via cell phone or computer.
- Teachers are using twitter as an innovative way to share a creative story. Each student shares a small piece of the story.
- Twitter quick and easy, not labor intensive or frightening for students who don't like to write. In otherwords... NO ESSAY!
Still not convinced? Here is what some teachers are saying about Twitter:
- Together we are better
- Global or local.. your choice
- Self Awareness and Reflection
- Ideas, workshop and sounding board
- Time sensitive
- Immediate newsroom in a fast paced world
- Immediate quick professional development
- Communicate, communicate, communicate
- Your students are doing it... why not have them learn something with it!
Wondering what to tweet about? Here are some suggestions from Carol Coopers blog:
- Who or what has your attention?
- Need an opinion ?
- Tweet about other people's blogs, tweets
- Make it useful.. give advice, show pictures (at twitpic.com), great ideas and websites
Educators are finding more and more benefits to using Twitter in the classroom. Some educators are finding that "chatting" about learning activities do not just end in the classroom but, with Twitter then continue throughout the day in their home lives as well. This also is another way of extending the classroom community.
Tracking a word, Twitter has the ability to track a word and find all postings about this word. This was apparent when recently Iran came under the headlines of the news when an eruption of civil content broke out in the country. When news media couldn't get out Twitter could. By tracking a word such as Iran anyone could track people living in Iran and first hand get accounts of what was happening.
Instant Feedback: Because Twitter is instant, it allows for instant feedback. A teacher can provide a quick instant tweet sharing a positive feedback or information needed for an assignment.
As I have posted here many different ways to use Twitter in education I think I am saving my very favorite for last; Metacognition:
Thinking about our thinking process is a powerful learning tool and sometimes very difficult to teach and explain. Twitter is a fun and motivating application that allows for metacognition on a easy level. Twitter can allow users to be brief and to the point while reflecting. As an educator we can reflect about what we are learning through professional development and ask students to post a quick reflection about what they are thinking about in regards to a learning activity or reading.
Thanks for the tweet pic!
Social Bookmarking
Links are as old as the first website. We need a code/ URL/ www address whatever you want to call it to go where we need to go. As the world wide web grew and grew and multiple computers are in each household, we needed a better system of remembering the addresses to our favorite sites. Windows Explorer started with "Bookmarking" on individual computers. This created more complications such as favorite web sites were bookmarked on multiple computers at home, work and school. Then when we wanted to share some of our favorite bookmarks with others we had to get a "pen and paper" and write them down and share them that way. In an age where we "claim" we are going paperless, we seemed to be spinning our wheels.
Social Bookmarking is not as much new as it is now more widely used. Social Bookmarking enables everyone to use a common site to bookmark our favorite web sites, tag them with key words for easy recall and share them with whoever we want.
Social Bookmarking is a teachers BEST FRIEND! Check out D-Lib Magazine and their article about social bookmarking.
- Social bookmarking has many advantages. First as a teacher your students can be researching a topic and all team members can bookmark sites and everyone can get to those sites with little effort from any computer.
- Teachers can use social bookmarking to organize bookmarks efficiently and effectively and then retrieve from any computer.
Some good social bookmarking sites that are good to consider are:
- www.buddymarks.com - a good bookmarking site that filters inappropriate sites so good for students K-12.
- http://delicious.com - popular bookmarking site
Social Bookmarking takes all of the favorite Web 2.0 tools and combines them into one.
Features of social bookmarking that help Educators:
- Managing and sharing bookmarks: This is the collaborative portion of the tool. As educators we can share what "goodies" we have found and share with our other colleagues. Students can work on projects together and share common information and sites to help one another. Management of social bookmarks is easier and more efficient than the standard google search. As we find relevant sites we tag them with key words that help identify what the topic is and make it easier to find. This management is also a good organization format for students to learn.
- Tagging and Commenting: By tagging the sites students as well as educators are able to get to the relevant information. Social Bookmarking allows for users to make comments and provide a quick summary of what they can find on these sites. This is a great summarization tool.
- Reusability: By using social bookmarking sites a user is able to find and share bookmarks from any computer over and over again. Even when the computer crashes the bookmarks are still there because they are saved on the internet instead of the personal computer.
Brainify is a site dedicated to social bookmarking for education. It is geared towards educators and students. Collect and share the academic websites that other students and educators have found useful. Looking for professional development ideas? Looking to get some information about an assignment? Use Brainify, find your topic and on the right in the section click "ask questions." Collaborate with other students and educators to find your answer. This is what Web 2.0 is all about!
Diigo is my personal favorite social bookmarking site. Diigo allows for users to tag, add a quick description as well as highlight or even add comments to the page you have bookmarked. Teachers are using this as a great summarization and research tool.
Social Bookmarking Activities:
Anticipation guide: Teachers pose a topic to be discussed in an upcoming unit.
Brainstorming: Teachers provide a topic for unit, have students bing or google the topic and socially bookmark with tags and teacher name. Students then take their top 10 sites that were bookmarked and make a comment. Teacher then can then search for bookmarks with teacher name and tag and assign a grade.
Check out the bookmarking Tutorial:http://tinyurl.com/kogkur
A brave new World-wide-web video
What a great video explaining how new technologies can influence and change our educational system.
Social Bookmarking
It is EASY! Yes, easy to bookmark using social bookmarking. I have been resistant to try this new tool. But, I jumped in and now wonder what has taken me so long? I cherish my bookmarks because when I find something great I want to make sure I can get it back. Now with the social bookmarking I can get those bookmarks from any computer (yes, work and home) as well as see what good "stuff" others have found. Now I the question is.... do I go back and bookmark everything in delicious.com or just start marking from here on out? Well if you are interested in seeing my bookmarks check out mine at:
www.delicious.com my username is: allytalks
check out this video about delicious.com
Blogging and Education
We are living in a new time where information is readily available, communication is instantaneous and collaboration is used at a remarkable level. As educators we are bombarded with cell phones and ipods, computers and technology. Many teachers look at these items as distractions to education. I look at this as motivators and engagement in learning. Blogging is one of those "technology" sites that were frowned upon a couple of years ago in my district. The possibility of students making comments and feedback was frightening so walls were built and blogging was shut out. As educators use these tools more and more they are not at frightening, in fact they are very motivating and engaging. Luckily blogging is one of the tools that have been reopened to the district. So now it is even more important to use these tools so that the educational system can start to embrace the ideas of web 2.0 applications.
There are many great resources for blogging in education. First before starting a blog consider some of these things before jumping in.
1. Who is your audience? Are you writing to parents? students? fellow teachers? Make sure you know who your audience is and write to them. Make sure it is engaging and relevant to the needs of your reader.
2. What is your topic? Will you be talking about your class? maybe a topic a day? How about discussions? How do you want to handle that? By answering these questions ahead of time you can stay focused and organized in your blog.
3. Collaboration? Will this be open to all? Do you want the collaboration to be open to everyone or just those you allow?
There are some more blog basics to consider at: http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/howtoarticles/blog-basics
So who is blogging anyway? Teachers and students are blogging, professionals and stay at home parents are blogging. In fact the BBC spotlighted a 7 year old blogger. This 7 year old has a very large following and he discuses everything from his friends to homework. Turnbull says that "The children using weblogs are streets ahead of their peers in IT, and they have made greater advances in literacy than we would normally expect for their age group." (turnbull, 2004)
Some of the greatest blogs are not formal, they are not filled with useless information but, they are concise and more importantly they have a voice and a personality. Bloggers are a community, a community of voices sharing their thoughts and ideas. Efimova states that just like a classroom or even a neighborhood blogs have a community spirit. A spirit that joins people with common interests. When once we were limited to who we are closest to in proximity of our neighborhoods or communities. Now through blogging we can reach worldwide for collaboration and community. A student may blog about a piece of literature and they may bond and learn about another student in China who shares the same interests. Our world has become smaller and as Thomas Friedman says Flat.
Technology supports blogging now more than ever. With the costs of netbooks at around $300.00 and phones now have access to internet. Blogging is in the hands of everyone including our students. Blogs are an effective teaching method because it allows for students to reflect and communicate while learning. Although blogs cannot replace a good instructor it can effectively motivate the learner and add to the educational experience.
Educational Blogging - How to make it effective?
I found a good site that had a count down of 10 ways to use Blogging in your classroom. Here is a quick summary and a link to this site:
1: Post Materials and Resources
2: Host online discussions
3: Class Newspaper
4: Get students writing through postings on the blog
5: Share lesson plans
6: Calendar, organization, assignments posted
7: Integrate video's and podcasts
8: Get feedback from students and parents
9: Communication
10: Blend blog into a full functioning website
For more great ideas on how to integrate blogging into the classroom check out this site:
Virtual Field Trip- ANY WHERE!
I love google earth but, at my district I can't get it because it is a server hog. So I have been looking at some other sites that are similar to google earth. I FOUND IT! I FOUND THE PERFECT ONE! 360cities.com allows you to travel to some of the most amazing places on earth and get an up close and personal view. You can see china, the pyramids, as well as get inside of a jet fighter plane.
What a great way to share geography with your students, don't just show it on a map- have them experience it!
Check it out and share some of your favorite views in the comment section.
http://www.360cities.net/image/lijiang3-china
ENJOY!
Paper Less Teaching???
Now this is a idea that I think we need to look further into. Paperless Teaching, can we do it?
I know that the state of Florida has decided to go paperless.. but, that means, post it on their website and expect everyone to read the information. But, here is the kicker.. the memo's on the website instruct the teachers to "document" all progress monitoring. This made me laugh, they expect us to "document" using ... yep you guessed it. PAPER! How many trees are we cutting down for this? What do you think the principal does with the "memo" from the Department of Education? Yep he makes a copy of it and puts one in each teacher box. We have got to get better than this. SAVE THE TREES!
Well, I came across a great educational blog that is tackling this issue called "Teach Paperless"
http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/
This blog even has a mission statement:
MISSION STATEMENT
Cool new tool for 7/8/9
Take a bite out of your twitter page.. and paste it into your blog. A mosaic of all of your followers.
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