Three Essential Shifts in Learning I recently asked a group of middle school students to name their favorite use of technology for learning. An eager eighth-grade girl said, “My work has gotten so much better since we started using Facebook to do homework at night in my math class. We’re all online together, so if I have questions, I get them answered while doing my homework, instead of the next day or even later. Her face turned horrorstruck, and she said, “You’re not going to tell our teacher, are you?” Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of education in the 21st century: a student describing her most powerful learning experience—and begging me not to tell her teacher about it. Three Shifts Scratch the surface of this anecdote and it reveals several essential shifts in the way we think about learning. Shift #1: Great teachers online outnumber the great teachers in our schools, and some of them are 13. Shift #2: Learning is faster on the Web, and this means that schools need to move faster as well. One Last Shift
Tweeting Your way to Academic Success Twitter is one of those pieces of technology that people either love or hate. For the haters, it seems like a superfluous, narcissistic, even petty platform through which people who think they are more important than they really are share their most intimate details with the world. For those who love the medium, it is a way of filtering and digesting a vast world of digital information quickly and efficiently. Some even see it as a possible vehicle for changing the world. Others have begun using Twitter in education with positive results. Twitteracy Findings, No Surprise Literacy as a general concept has changed dramatically in the Information Age. These are some of the many ways that Twitter is being considered as a new form of literacy and which may prove beneficial to learning at all levels, not just in higher education. The best way to understand how any hi-tech tool could benefit your students is to begin using it yourself.
Why I try to follow every teacher I can on Twitter cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by stevegarfield Tony Baldasaro wrote a blog post yesterday that is getting a lot of attention regarding why he “unfollowed 5000 people on Twitter” and how he is going back to starting over. There is a lot of powerful thoughts in his post on how we actually connect with each other in this space: As I pressed unfollow 5,000 times, I realized that I didn’t know most of the folks that I was unfollowing. Actually, it was more than that, I had no clue who these folks were. Now I don’t want to say Tony is wrong, and from my several meetings with him I can tell you he is an awesome guy, but I do want to offer a different perspective. Several years ago when I first started Twitter, I thought, like many do, that it was probably the dumbest thing ever. A year later, I was coaxed into trying it again and people blindly followed me knowing how I easily gave up on it in the first place.
QR codes and documenting brilliant learning One of the most powerful influences on a student’s passion for learning is how others notice their efforts. To notice what they have done; the hard work, the progress made, the energy used, the mistakes learnt. This is going to be my number one priority to work on developing this year. The passion which students have to develop, improve, to search for greatness can be seen as an intrinsic quality. A fixed mindset; where people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. Do our schools make students believe that through determination anything is possible? I look back at the awe inspiring opening ceremony of the London Olympics, devised by the remarkably grounded Danny Boyle. A growth mindset; where people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. There were times watching the Olympic ceremony where I felt passionate about my country. Now.. So.
How I Use Twitter In My Classroom My students hate writing, especially in math. To create a happy medium I decided to integrate the use of micro-blogging into my classroom to motivate my students to begin to at least use mathematical language in class. I thought this was going to be another project gone bad! To my surprise since teens love texting, they also loved micro-blogging! In our class we use Today’s Meet and Twitter as digital tools to encourage students to speak and write their mathematical ideas and thoughts. We have been using Today’s Meet, but recently started with Twitter. I created a class Twitter account and came up with 25 writing prompts for students to write on. The Steps Step 1: Create a class Twitter account. Step 2: Have students create an individual Twitter account. Step 3: Assign a time to integrate writing into the classroom. Step 4: Create prompts for your class to tweet on…Visit my blog for a list of Twitter Math Prompts. Tips: ~Protect your tweets and make them private. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
10 Ways Teachers Can Use Twitter for Professional Development This is our third consecutive post on Twitter. Now that you have a roadmap on how to use Twitter in your classroom and after you have identified with the different educational hashtags you need to follow as a teacher, let us share with you some ideas on how to leverage the power of this social platform for professional development purposes. Talking about using social networking to grow professionally brings to mind LinkedIn. 1- Create a strong profile page The first thing to do is to let people know about you and your interests. 2- Keep your profile professional One of the mistakes some teachers do is that they create one account and share everything in it. 3- Proper use of etiquette As an educator , etiquette should not be an issue at all. 4- Know who to follow Don't be obsessed with having a 5 digit number of followers. 5- Use Hashtags Hashtags are a great way for engaging in professional conversations.
Blogging is the New Persuasive Essay Teaching Strategies thinkstock By Shelley Wright As an English teacher, I’ve had numerous conversations with college professors who lament the writing skills of their first year students. I spend three years teaching my high school students how to write a persuasive essay. Part of the problem is that our current school systems — and not just in Canada — aren’t great at producing independent thinkers. I love writing essays. So for three years, I write for them, and with them. The truth is lately I’ve come to question the point of much of this. While traditional essay writing may not help alleviate this situation, I think blogging can. For one, the paragraphing is different. Instead, blog paragraphs tend to be shorter. Sometimes a paragraph is one simple sentence, used for emphasis. Another thing is the thesis statement. Blogging also requires a different voice. In a formal essay, I would never use a sentence fragment. I think blogging is the new persuasive essay – my thesis, finally. Related
Using Twitter for Teachers' Professional Development I am actually engaged in an extensive review of the literature written on the use of Twitter as a Personal Learning Network ( PLN ).Twitter is the core topic of my MAEd thesis and I am trying to approach it from different perspectives : academic, social, and even personal ( for professional development ). Academically speaking, papers investigating the use of Twitter in the world of academia are still scarce and the empirical research done in this field is still very limited. From time to time I feature some of the resources I am actually reading and which I know will be of great interest to my readers here in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning.For instance, today I am sharing with you a treasure trove ( I really mean it ) of Twitter lists to subscribe with and follow to stay updated about the latest news, resources, links, researches, and many more according to your area of interest.
Top 25 Twitter Tips for Your Professional Development Although LinkedIn gets a lot of love as a professional social media site, Twitter is a force that can’t be ignored by up-and-coming young professionals. It’s a great place to get connected and informed, and an especially good resource for growing professionally. But how exactly can you use Twitter for professional development? Check out our list to find 25 different ways. Keep your Twitter profile employer-focused: Maximize the space that you have in your profile to share a professional description of yourself. Hobbies show personality, but accomplishments and professional interests might help you land a job. Once you’ve started connecting and sharing on Twitter, consider how you’ll manage your presence on the site.
Developing the growth mindset in schools. There is often an uneven balance between lessons which provide a platform for instruction and information, and allowing students to explore the characteristics of the mindset needed to be an expert in a subject. The ability to notice, analyse and record are a group of skills which feed into many subject areas. In my subject, Art, the key skill of the artist is to notice. As a student, the teaching I received in Art was superficial. We had 2 to 3 hours to work on this. Week after week, we turned our drawings round and there would be 20 or so strong, confident and fairly accurate drawings and then my, well.. Interviews for universities were coming up fast and I knew how important life drawing was seen by the colleges I wanted to apply for. An artist has the ability to notice. Now, back to the growth Mindset bit. Then there’s the growth mindset-people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point.
Twitter as a Curation Tool | Langwitches Blog I have written and spoken extensively about the use of Twitter in education: In addition to the above mentioned uses of Twitter, I am increasingly becoming aware of the importance of Twitter as a CURATION tool for me. The term “curation” in itself has become quite popular recently. I am not sure yet, if it is another term destined to become a victim of talking at cross purposes among the educational community. Mike Fisher has blogged about curation and what it means versus the concept of collection. Collecting is what kids do when asked to find resources for a particular topic. Mike created the following image to point out the continuum from collecting to curating The stages and progression of using Twitter as a mere consumption tool of collected information (by others) to curating information, adding value with additional perspectives, connections, resources or interpretation, the platform of Twitter as a potential tool for curation becomes evident. Ex Follow #hashtags of topics or groups.
10 Steps to Kick Start Your Twitter Network Computer programming and the trouble with collective nostalgia Lord Puttnam said something every interesting at an E-Learning Foundation Conference. Having been a film producer, he said that up to about ten years ago, to be a successful cinematographer you had to be able to take a camera apart and put it together. Now, none of those sort of skills are required: you need a whole different set of skills in order to find employment in that occupation. I believe a similar thing is true in the realm of “digital education”. Almost nobody needs a gasp of computer programming, and even fewer need to know how computers actually work. You don't need to know how it works Now, if you’re talking about computational thinking, to use the Royal Society’s term (Shut Down or Restart?) “Computational thinking” offers insightful ways to view how information operates in many natural and engineered systems. There is currently a sort of collective nostalgia for the time when you had to do real programming. One thing I did like doing was making and editing films as a hobby.