Growing Your PLN with Tweet Chats

People are always touting the value of having a personal learning network, or PLN. Whether it be a Facebook group, the College Board communities, an email listserve, or a physical group like the Western New York Writing Project, it is easier than ever to expand your professional network and find people and places that offer insights and resources for good teaching.

Many people celebrate Twitter as being vital to their PLN due to the easy access it provides to teachers from all over the world. If you have a Twitter account and don't quite know what to do with it or are looking to find other professional uses for it, read on.

Most subject areas have people who have stepped up to organize weekly content area chats. These real time chats occur at a preselected time and usually are organized around an overarching theme, question, or topic. For instance, this past week digital writing guru Troy Hicks hosted #nctechat (National Council of the Teachers of English) and led participants in a discussion of questions leading up to Digital Learning Day this February 6th. Teachers discussed their first brush with technology, ways this experience changed them and possible reasons why this first experience was so powerful. The conversation evolved over a series of questions and teachers ultimately traded ideas about tech tools they might try personally or in the classroom in 2014.

Teachers all over the country are using this tool to connect and share. Here are a few weekly chats you might be interested in:

#ntchat - New teacher chat (Wednesdays, 8-9 PM EST)
#engchat - English teacher chat (Mondays 7-8 PM EST)
#sschat - Social Studies chat (Mondays 7-8 PM EST)
#satchat - School leader chat (Saturdays 7:30 AM EST)
#edchat - general discussion of education and policy (Tuesdays 12-1 PM EST and 7-8PM EST)
#blendchat - blended learning pedagogy chat
#gtchat - chat for teachers of the gifted and talented (Fridays 7PM)
#4thchat - one of the many Twitter chats for specific grade levels (Mondays 8PM)

That is just a bit more than a handful. For an amazingly exhaustive listing of other offerings, check out this spreadsheet created by Cybraryman with the collaboration of countless others.

Simple Planning with a Dash of Differentiation

Last week a few teachers involved in the Virtual Advanced Placement grant attended the New York State Educational Technology (NYSCATE) conference in Rochester. We spent three days attending a variety of presentations given by teachers from around the country. The topics ranged from getting tech ready for PARCC to Google Scripts to flipped and blended classrooms to assistive technology. It was a whirlwind three days and our group walked away with much to think about.

As I am in the midst of "blending" my classroom (part online, part face to face) I tried to steer my focus to those presentations so if you are interested in this topic, send me an email. I also signed up for a Coursera massively open online course (MOOC) on gamification after attending a particularly interesting session. Again, if you have any questions, gamification is something I will be studying over the next few months and would love to talk about.

I am still processing most of the presentations but I wanted to pass along two simple tools I learned about that might make an immediate impact in your classroom.

• The first, Planboard, is an online lesson planning app. I have been playing with this tool over the past few days and the site has a lot of potential. Planboard provides a cloud based lesson planning platform that basically does what you expect a lesson planning app to do. However, it goes beyond by offering collaborative planning and easily accessible Core Common Standards. If you are looking for a simple planning solution that is available anywhere you have an internet connection, this may be it.

• The second, Newsela, provides nonfiction articles for students to read. The cool thing about this site is that it provides the articles in different lexile range. For example, this article provides versions ranging from a 680 to a 1200+ lexile range. The company hires writers to simply the more advanced originals. This could be an interesting tool to help differentiate your instruction. Cooler yet is the fact that you can set your entire class up with accounts using their school issued Google Apps for Education email account. Students could then visit a specific article, choose a level they are comfortable with and take a quiz to give you feedback on their comprehension. If you would like to use the tool more basically, you can simply print out articles at the varying reading levels.

Infographics and The Smartest Kids in the World

Two weeks ago I mentioned that Diane Ravitch appeared on +Daniel Pink's  podcast Office Hours. This past week writer +Amanda Ripley  was featured on the hourlong show discussing her new book The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way.  

In the book Ripley interviews American high school students about their experiences studying abroad as foreign exchange students. Ripley weaves these anecdotal observations into her research on different educational trends and practices. I have yet to read the book but the podcast was an interesting hour of audio which I offer up for your multitasking drive time or treadmill pleasure. 

Sample infographic from OpenColleges

For the past couple of months infographics have begun to loom larger and larger on my radar. As you know the Common Core literacy standards state that students must "use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.6)." This is one of my favorite standards but I often wonder about how to craft assignments with a lower barrier of entry than podcast creation or film production. Infographics might be an introductory way for students to start thinking about design and research.

On that note Edutopia had a nice piece from +Sarah Mulhern Gross (@thereadingzone on Twitter) about how students in her class create infographics sharing their reading histories. The article details the specific web tools her students use and she also provides samples of student work.

Before we part ways, just a few more notes. Next week I will be heading off to the New York State Association for Computers and Technology (NYSCATE)(#nyscate13) conference in Rochester along with a couple of teachers and administrators involved in the Virtual AP grant. I will be sure to share anything of note in next week's post.

Lastly, I was wondering if I could get some brief feedback from you regarding possible future professional development courses. I would like to build a few courses for our teachers but I wanted to gauge interest before beginning development.

If you have two minutes*, please fill out this Google form to let me know your interest in learning about four tools (Google Drive, Evernote, Infographics, and podcasts for personal/professional consumption) at possible future professional development workshops.

As always, thank you for reading and keep on keeping on.
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*Seriously. Two minutes might be overestimating. The survey is five questions requiring quick clicks.

Things to Think About While Flipping, Helping Out, and Hanging Out

Check out this Infographic on Flipped Classrooms

Well, it is a busy time of year! Seniors are applying to colleges, juniors are ramping up for the SAT's and teachers are being approached with requests for letters of recommendation. 

Good times. 

This week there have been two really interesting sources in the news regarding student web practices, digital citizenship and college admission. 

The first, They Loved Your G.P.A. Then They Saw Your Tweets, is from the New York Times and shares insights about how colleges are mining social media to find out more about the character of applicants. It could make for a good article of the week. The second, 12 Things Students Should Never Do On Social Media, offers more food for thought and fleshes out a larger picture of risky student online activity. Both are interesting reads.

On a completely separate note, a few folks in the high school are working on integrating flipped models of instruction in our classrooms. We are exploring the use of instructional videos and thinking about the ways we ask students to use our time both in and out of school. If you are interested in reviewing this concept or learning a bit more about the flipped model, Knewton just published a handy infographic which sums it up nicely and offers more things to consider. 

In other news this week Google announced a new initiative called Google Helpouts. This program aims to put people within a quick video conference to find tutoring in finance, cooking, carpentry, and pretty much anything you can think of. Truthfully, I am not sure what the implications are for classroom use. Is it a new platform where teachers like you and I can offer assistance to the masses and add a little income after school? Is it a model to explore for providing extra remedial to students through Helpouts' cousin, Google Hangouts? I'm not too sure and as the program is in its nascent stages it is too early to tell. But here's a quick review of the program from CNET if you want to catch the wave before the swell. 

Finally, the district technology committee will be meeting this Thursday to discuss parameters of "technology take home" and "bring your own device" policies. If you would like to weigh in on this matter shoot me an email as your thoughts can help inform our discussion. 

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This is reposted from the technology integration blog, Connect(ed) School, that I have created for my position as high school technology integrator. For past posts please visit the site over at www.connectedschool.blogspot.com. 

Stealing Time with Podcasts

Welcome to November! This week I have a fairly random assortment of things to share.

First, I don't know about you, but I like to maximize my time. There are so many tiny little dead spaces in life that are perfect for passive consumption. While some of these dead spaces are perfect opportunities for quiet contemplation, other moments beg for something to step in and fill the intellectual void.  

Today, the majority of Americans have powerful personal devices in their pockets. As these devices have proliferated so too has free content. In many cases this content is junk. You get, as they say, what you pay for. In other cases, however, free content is professional and thought provoking and can provide a wonderful diet of fodder for learning and growth. 

Which brings me to podcasts.

Podcasts? you say. They are so 2002!

That may be true. However I've found that since the recent redesign of the IOS Podcast App that these nuggets of wonder are more accessible than ever before. These 20 minute to hour long audio programs are perfect for the drive to work, a long run or in the background while cooking dinner. There are podcasts available for a variety of topics; education, health, music, arts, business, and many more. IOS has a native app while Android devices offer Pocket Casts or Podcast Addict. 

I have found a number of these podcasts to be enlightening for my teaching. For instance, Daniel Pink has a weekly hourlong podcast called Office Hours. Each week Pink invites a guest in to interview and fields calls from listeners. Recently he has had popular authors Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, and David Allen on his program. This past week he interviewed Diane Ravitch about her book Reign of Error and there was great discussion about what Ravitch sees as shortfalls in our current educational system which she asserts favors testing over learning and privatization over developing the public good. 

I also listen to The Accidental Creative, Entrepreneur on Fire and the TED Talks podcast. While some of these podcasts are not directly transferable to the classroom I like what they do for my learning and creative mindset. Good stuff. If you have an smartphone or tablet, take a gander at the podcast app and find something you like. 

Secondly, speaking of current educational reforms, there was an interesting article in yesterday's Buffalo News about school districts, InBloom and privacy concerns. 

Finally, a couple of our tech forward social studies teachers have been experimenting with Remind 101, a texting service which touts itself as "A safe way for teachers to text message students and stay in touch with parents." These teachers are using the service to mass text reminders to students about upcoming assignments, tests, etc. Here's a quick promo video which explains the service. 

Everyday We're Scriblin'

Last week we surveyed local schools to find out about their cell phone policies. The results indicate that many districts are relaxing their policies and at the very least allow use in classrooms with teacher discretion for educational purposes. Other districts allow use in hallways, cafeterias and during study halls. Certainly this information is something to consider as we move forward.

Now, on to useful tools for the classroom. Scrible is an online text annotator which allows students to easily highlight and annotate webpages. Students install a toolbar, visit a website and highlight and annotate away.

When students have finished marking up a page they can save the page and their notes as a unique URL saved in their Scrible personal library.

The Common Core calls for a large increase in nonfiction reading, an increase in research writing and for reading and writing to take place in all content areas. Scrible is a great tool for this type of work. The tool is free and students with educational emails are eligible for account upgrades. 

Cell Phones: To b(an) or not to b(an)

Many schools grapple with the idea about what to do about smartphones in classrooms. Should we embrace this technology as an opportunity to bridge the digital divide and teach kids to leverage the tools in their pockets to enhance their education? Do we ban phones outright to avoid the privacy, bullying, and distractedness problems that they could possibly afford? Or do we somehow find a middle path which allows the best while managing for the worst?

This is a complicated question to be sure.

Here are two recent articles which explore interesting aspects of these questions.

California school district hires firm to monitor students' social media - (via CNN) An article about a California school which has hired an outside firm to monitor Tweets and Facebook postings in an interesting way.

5 (good) ways smartphones are being used in high school - (via NBC) The title of this piece sort of says it all. This is a quick primer to think about how cell phones can be used in a high school setting.