Posts Tagged ‘Teaching’
Preventing Teachable Moments
Posted on: May 23, 2010
How many teachable moments do you find in a day? How many do you think your students need?
Preventing Teachable Moments
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A Few Cool Resources
Posted on: May 11, 2010
This link is not exactly related to social media, but I share it here because all of in elementary education work daily with the children of special needs. If we are going to teach all kids, we need all the resources we can find.
50 Free Open Courseware Classes for Special Education Teachers.
Editorial: Threats to innovation
Posted on: May 6, 2010
In a recent speech, Education Secretary Arne Duncan argued that schools should have more flexibility in how they get all students to achieve. Unfortunately, his rhetoric doesn’t match reality.
Isn’t it time we started listening to the real stakeholders in education?
PLN’s – Social Media and the Network
Posted on: May 1, 2010
I have been learning a great deal since I began working this blog. I need to pause a moment to reflect on my journey and consider my next steps as an educator.
I begin my career in the classroom four years ago. From day one, I have used every available technological tool to impact my students and their learning. As I have developed global learning partners through networks like ePals and Global School Net, I have met some wonderful educators and made a number of friends.
These meetings led me to discover blogging and the nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas and information through social media tools like FaceBook and Twitter. Before I knew what it was, social media was intwining itself into the fabric of my life. Before I knew what it was, I was a member of a Professional Learning Network (PLN).
Social Media really began for me in September of 2008. I had played and explored NING in Education, a teacher networking site that helped educators find others with similar interests. That September, though, was when I joined the Global Virtual Classroom Challenge and was partnered with Marsha Goren of Ein Ganim School in Petach Tikva, Israel and Matt Kuntz of Lincoln Elementary School in Oak Park, Illinois.
Our job was to work together with our students and create a website that somehow wove the concept of kindness into school life. In an effort to help our students communicate more quickly and more effectively, we used blogging and podcasting in addition to email. In all, more than 2,000 messages were exchanged in the course of our project.
As the project drew to a close, my daughters and grandkids introduced me to FaceBook. They used FaceBook to replace a site our family had on Yahoo Groups. Logging in and out of that had become a bit tedious. FaceBook was always at our fingertips.
I got a bit more involved in a Web 2.0 section of the Ning in Education network. I started visiting the blogs of other educators. Some were using Twitter to share short messages and links to specific sites about issues in education. Intrigued, I joined Twitter.
Twitter led me to new relationships that covered a wide variety topics. I found others who were boldly bringing social learning activities to their students. I found others who were using tech tools I had only seen on television. I found others who were on the front lines of policy making at both local and national levels. I found all of them wanted nothing more than to use and share their skills to bring the best possible learning opportunities to all students. I found friends.
In a very short time, I had a growing, evolving PLN of my own. Networks within networks have made for incredibly rich learning opportunities for me and now I realize something really important. None of this would have happened without social media. Within an hour of opening my Twitter account, I was well on my way to having a successful PLN. I could not have had that success without social media. To form such a network earlier in my life would have been incredibly time consuming and nearly impossible.
My PLN consists of education professionals and technology experts from around the world. I can share and learn in webinars, direct emails, follow some to their classrooms, learn how to use the tools I have more effectively and so much more. If I didn’t require sleep, I still would not have enough time to explore the endless flow of information. I can reach multiple members of my PLN anytime, day or night.
Though I am far from an expert, I have learned so many things that provide engagement and authentic learning for my students. Now, I have a goal for them. I want the students in my classroom to reap the benefits of their own PLN’s. I want them to reach out to members of networks I help them create and share ideas, problem-sovle, and inspire. Isn’t that the way we learn? Isn’t that the way our students should learn? Networked learning removes the limitations of time and space. Networked learning makes the content of our standards meaningful, contextual. Networked learning is real.
How will I accomplish this? I don’t have a clue, but I know where to start. I’m headed to Twitter right now. I’m going to ask my PLN.
Rick
Today was our school district’s annual EdCom celebration. EdCom stands for Education Communication. Students, individually or in groups, spend most of the school year doing deep learning on a project of their choice. More than 600 students participate in the project.
My students joined with another fourth grade classroom and my technology club to share their learning life as digital natives. They shared their Global Virtual Classroom website, their podcasts, FaceBook reports, animations, and Indiana research activities. They were clustered around their laptops as parents and appraisers questioned them about their learning.
One of my students was showing off a FaceBook template he had used to share the life and accomplishments of famed basketball coach, John Wooden. He was very much into the process and detailed how he had used social media to show the character of a very famous Hoosier.
As he took questions about his work, an appraiser sidled up to his laptop. The appraiser, an IT specialist from a large, local corporation, asked a pointed question. “If you and your family went on vacation, what would you post about it on FaceBook?” My student was quick with his reply. “I would never post anything about our vacation. I don’t want anyone to rob us because they know we aren’t home.”
More questions about cyber safety and social media followed. The two were engaged in a steady conversation. The appraiser came to me immediately and told me to be very proud of my student. I replied that discussions about cyber safety and proper use of social media were topics of regular discussion in my classroom. He went on to say that he had been asking the same question of adults and children of all ages for a number of years. My student, he explained, was the only one who had ever gotten the right answer.
A teacher always hopes that his students are listening and understanding the things they discuss in the classroom. I took my student aside after the presentations. He beamed as I told him about my conversation. He left the presentation full of pride and confidence. His good work had been affirmed by the adults in his world.
Rick
Social Media and Education 
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