Many is the blog post which highlights the ways in which Twitter is the best staffroom in the world but I've not seen too many that highlight the ways in which we can use Twitter in the classroom. Many teachers love to use Twitter as a resource to share, explore, discuss and 'magpie' ideas from other teachers and as a vehicle to help develop their own ideas and their own practice too. It's great for that… no, it's absolutely brilliant for that! So how can we capitalise on the 140 character legendary social media king to help learning in the classroom? Here are some do's and don'ts to help get you going.
"I have discussed and promoted the need for educators to reflect deeply on their beliefs, processes, and practices in several of my posts: Where is Reflection in the Learning Process and Teacher Agency: Coming from a Strong Foundation. As another strategy for engaging in this type of self-reflection, I developed these questions to have educators assess their pedagogical principles and instructional preferences:"
"Here I am at 365 days, my last post in a year of daily blogging about the science in my life. True to my usual form, it's been a jam-packed day and I've spent it doing a multitude of activities, all the while turning over in my head what I might write. I started the morning with a long run through the Adelaide's inner western suburbs and along the River Torrens."
"People complain that they want privacy, and then they put all their information up on Facebook. Thus, hacking is ultra-easy. I have seen teenagers post pictures of their first credit card, then a month later their new college student I.D. These kids are so excited to have signs of growing up, but as we grow up our lives need to be more private to guard from hackers. Now I am a culprit of being very relaxed about my online privacy, meaning, I have the same password for multiple sites, I use my high school name as my clue, and the name of my high school is on Facebook somewhere. So hack away, I look forward to meeting the person who decides to take up my identity!"
This is a great article. I never thought about fraud or being hacked on the internet, until I uploaded a picture of my working with children check for in the Northern Territory onto Facebook. Straight away, my mum called me and told me to take it off! even though my Facebook is set to private, she made me realise that anyone can still find it and use it! I've always been one to be super careful of these things and now am even more careful when I hear about people's email passwords and Facebook passwords being changed without them knowing!
I think if my students were to have online accounts such as blogs etc. I would make sure they had them all set onto private so that they can't get hacked, especially of their identity.
"When I first began blogging with my students some years ago, it did not occur to me that digital portfolios were possible with young children. I saw their blogs as a place for them to write. Period. But as they continued to write regularly and I watched their collection of blog posts expand, I saw the potential to showcase the tremendous growth in writing that students experience from the beginning to the end of grade one."
"I pointed out recently that many of the older theories of pedagogy were formulated in a pre-digital age. I blogged about some of the new theories that seem appropriate as explanatory frameworks for learning in a digital age. These included heutagogy, which describes a self-determined approach to learning, a new model of peer-peer learning known as paragogy, a post modernist 'rhizomatic' learning explanation, distributed learning and connectivist theory, and also a short essay on the digital natives/immigrants discourse. I questioned whether the old models are anachronistic."
This blog was created by Rory Gallagher @EddieKayshun and Julie Daulby @julesdaulby to offer teachers a space to define who they are by what they do. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to post your story on here!
"A rigorous and engaging classroom….what does that look like? Recently I tweeted a link to an article by David Price that challenged the current perception of what student engagement looks like. The article was a summation and analysis of a 20 year longitudinal study of Australian students. Using the study, David's article addressed the following myths.
1. I can see when my students are engaged
2. They must be engaged, look at their test scores
3. They must be engaged - they're having fun
The article (found here) was an incredibly interesting read but the Twitter conversation after my post was for me the most interesting part. "
"Teachers and their students are moving more and more online. Kids are blogging their learning as an excellent way to build confidence, reflect and gather feedback. Schools are showcasing the best of their students' work on their websites.and the educational world is benefiting from a collaborative worldwide connections. That's all exciting and positive but we have one important question: Who owns the material and it's components when it's published? This is where we must all be careful. A quick Google search will find a growing number of cases where people have sought damages for even single images republished on both blogs and social media like Twitter. This link tells the story of a bad photo taken on a phone that was found on Google and used In a blog Post resulting in an $8000 out of court settlement. Every photo is owned by the photographer automatically and if you choose the wrong image you can loose out substantially."
"Canva provides teachers and students with a simple new way to design. Its drag and drop functionality enables them to create presentations, posters, one-page documents, and social media posts."
"I normally blog on business issues, but something happened at my house yesterday that compelled me to write this post. Please share it with the people in your life who use social media. Everyone needs some social smarts."
"I usually just do a year-end list on Web 2.0 Applications For Education and many other topics, but it gets a little crazy having to review all of my zillion posts at once. So, to make it easier for me - and perhaps, to make it a little more useful to readers - I'm going to start publishing mid-year lists, too. These won't be ranked, unlike my year-end "The Best…" lists, and just because a site appears on a mid-year list doesn't guarantee it will be included in an end-of-the-year one."
"I recently worked on a book with Bill Ferriter and Jason Ramsden entitled Essentials for Principals: Communicating & Connecting With Social Media. As I was working on the professional development section I delved into the topic of Personal Learning Networks (PLN's). Now I fully realize that the majority of educators immersed in social media understand the importance of a PLN and how to establish one. Well, this post is not for you, but instead for a teacher or administrator that you work with that needs either a a little push to set one up or further explanation on it's value."
"Welcome to the ultimate guide to YouTube. Unless you've been living under rock throughout the 'Noughties' YouTube is quite simply the world's largest collection of video content and as an educator it is an amazing resource that you SHOULD NOT be without. I say should because I appreciate that not all teachers can access YouTube at your school for either political or technical reasons. If this is you then please do not give up on this post as much of the information included will apply to using any similar video service such as the now terrible and ridiculously over advertised teachertube. "
"Dropbox, the app we all (at least many of us) know and love, has a plethora of advanced uses to make life so much easier in managing data between multiple computers and online. We've posted several roundups of tips and tricks for Dropbox and now we present our ultimate toolkit and guide.
We've pulled all our tips and tricks together and added quite a few more. Additionally, share your Dropbox tips and tricks and we'll update the list to share the fun with everyone."
"If there is one subject that most bloggers have written about, it is probably the act of blogging. I know for me, as well as many of my blogging friends, it is nothing like we imagined before we were immersed in the "blogosphere". Bloggers start their blogs for many different and personal reasons. One step common to all however, is that it does take an act of courage to publish that first blog post."
"Educators like to tweet! Out of the 1/2 billion tweets that post every day, 4.2 million are related to education, according to Brett Baker, an account executive at Twitter.com. To put this in perspective, while you read this past sentence, over 3,000 edu-related tweets have flown across the Twitterverse."