Tech Talk 113 Fall Edition
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Category Archives: Personal Learning Networks
Friday Favs Videos Episode 5
Hope you find something valuable from this week’s video highlighting five of my favorite educational resources!!
Summer Tech Trainings in USD 113
Summer is a great time to refresh and recharge with a little staff development. Here’s what I’m offering this summer for the teachers in my district!
Committed to Improvement: #Edublogsclub
I’m excited to be participating a in weekly blog challenge project that starts here at the beginning of the new year: #Edublogsclub! Each week, members of the challenge receive a prompt and are challenged to write towards this prompt during the week and publish their blog post. If you want to try the challenge along with me, click HERE to learn more and sign up! This is my first weekly challenge where the prompt was to write a post that “tells your blog story.” So here goes:
This is not my first blog post, but I also don’t consider myself a successful blogger because I haven’t been consistent in my blogging practices in the past though I’ve tried several times to improve! I read other blogs through a feed reader (Feedly) so that I can just quickly skim the headlines. My favorite blogs are ones where new resources are shared as I used those to stay abreast of new ed tech that I then share out to the staff I support in our district. I also read posts suggested by members of my Twitter PLN. I’m choosing to participate in this challenge to try to establish blogging as more of a professional habit. I hope that by receiving and responding to the prompts, I’m challenged to add other blog posts that are relevant to what I’m learning and sharing with others as well.
My biggest fear as I get started is that my posts will be long and wordy. I know that other writing I do (emails, etc) can sometimes get too wordy and hard to follow, so I hope to keep things succinct and easy to read. I’m also worried that the time I spend blogging will not be worthwhile since hardly anyone reads my posts. In response to this fear, I hope to be able to focus on finding value in the process for professional growth and reflection of my own whether anyone reads or not!
Give it a Try: Twitter Chats
I’m getting ready to try my hand at my first opportunity to co-host a Twitter Chat and I wanted to make a brief guide for some of my colleagues who might have never taken part in a Twitter Chat before! So this guide assumes first that you have a Twitter Account. If you are brand new to Twitter, a better place to start is here: http://cybraryman.com/twitterforbeginners.html. Otherwise, follow these steps and tips to make a Twitter Chat a good experience:
- Use a third-party app to help manage the “flow” of information during the chat. I like, HootSuite but TweetDeck is also good. These tools both have both app versions and desktop versions. I prefer to work from my laptop AND iPad during a chat! Once you choose one of the above tools, set up a column to follow the hashtag of the chat you’ll be participating in. This filters out all the other Tweets and allows you to focus on just the relevant information at the time the chat takes place.
- Understand the lingo and shorten words where you can to save characters. Otherwise you won’t be able to fit your comments into 140 characters. Ss = students, Ts= teachers, convo = conversation use the ampersand (&) and drop a few vowels where it won’t make the word impossible to read: frm = from, f/ = for Think about how you took notes in your college classes and shorten things up in logical ways!
- Questions will come out with a label: Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 and you should respond to questions with answers with corresponding labels: A1, A2, A3, A4. If you forget an post with it…not to worry this happens occasionally and others will still be able to tell what you’re responding to most of the time.
- MOST important tip: If you respond, be sure to include the hashtag of the chat so that others following it will see your contribution! #CSedChat is hashtag I’ll be adding to the end of each of my tweets during the chat I’m helping to moderate! It will be in each question and each answer! (Bonus: after the chat, I can still search for tweets that were made using that hashtag and find them all when I have more time to look through the resources!)
- Lurking is ok…jump in and watch if you’re too scared to contribute. That’s a fine way to start! But don’t be shy about sharing your expertise!
Why Consider Why?
Why? One simple word can make all the difference. Whether planning a learning experience for young people or adults, “Why?” is an important place to start. Today during the early Saturday morning educational Twitter chat I like to participate in, #SatChat, someone shared the following video, that made me start thinking about that little word: “why?” Take a few minutes to watch:
Watching the video and reflecting a few minutes on it, reminded me of a conversation I’d had a day or two ago with colleague where I shared some thoughts I had after watching a TED Talk given by Simon Sinek, the author of “Start with Why.” A few months back, I jotted a little “note-to-self” to look up “Sinek’s Golden Circle,” probably after reading about it on a blog or seeing it mentioned in a webinar. I can’t even recall today where my first exposure to it was, but I can tell you that it motivated me enough to write myself a reminder to learn more about it! I ran across my note the other day on one of the many Post-it notes that are on my desk, and I took a little break from work to start my research. I started by Googling the phrase and looking at some of the images that came up. I dug into the concept a bit more and came across the following video of Sinek giving a TED Talk on his ideas. The video is at the bottom of this post; it’s a little longer, but worth the watch. I started thinking of all the applications the idea of “starting with why” has in the field of education, and I began to believe it is an important reminder to us as educators. Children, young adults and especially adult learners we work with need to know the “WHY?” behind what we are teaching them.
Just as important as activating prior knowledge, explicitly pointing out the learning objectives for the lesson, or framing lessons within essential questions, the learners we work with need to know why what we have to say is important. And for us to convey “The Why” to our students, we have to be able to articulate “The Why” ourselves. So I challenge you today to add a step to your lesson planning or professional development planning that focuses on “The Why” of time you’ll spend with your learners. What is “The Why?” How will you communicate “The Why?” See how it changes your planning process and delivery of your lesson or professional development!
Personalize Your Professional Learning!
One of our optional tech training sessions I offered this summer was all about taking your professional learning into your own hands using technology tools. I put the resources I shared with participants into a LiveBinder to organize things and share some of my own thoughts and challenges with them, and I wanted to make it a little more accessible. So I’m posting access to the “binder” here on by blog as an embedded object for you all to use! Take a minute to comment and let me know what you like and what I should add to this binder! And have a great time learning about the things you’re passionate about!!
Click here to open this binder in a new window.
Maker Spaces: Reflections from #SatChat 11/1/14
Questions for today’s #Satchat discussion on Maker Spaces are posted. pic.twitter.com/U7m7Vgj2JA
— Brad Currie (@bradmcurrie) November 1, 2014
My responses from this morning’s chat:
Q1: A1: in Edu a maker space can be any area that encourages any type of making with technology (or without??) #satchat
Q2: A2: maker spaces needed in school for opportunity to develop grit, problem solving, creativity, & undrstnding of design process #satchat
The rest of the Questions: I was just lurking on these answers since I don’t have a lot of hands-on experience. Was fun to read all the responses, though!
Going from Effective to Highly Effective: Reflections from #SatChat 10/25/2014
This morning’s #SatChat Twitter chat topic was “Going from Effective to Highly Effective.” The questions posed by the chat moderators and my own response tweets are here:
Q1: Pedagogically speaking, what does a highly effective teacher’s classroom look like? #satchat
A1: Ts make clear WHY they teach WHAT they teach by helping Ss see connections to own lives & do so enthusiastically. #SatChat
Q2: How can school leaders support teachers as they move from effective to highly effective?#satchat
A2: Model differentiation! Get to know Ts as individuals. Their strengths? needs? what type of praise does each respond to? #SatChat
Q3: Do teachers need to be connected on social media to be highly effective? Why or why not? #satchat
A3: no but they are missing out on lots of personal growth and opportunities to help their students connect globally if not! #SatChat
Q4: How can teachers be highly effective when using technology? #satchat
A4: Allow S choice of what tech to use & when to use it based on task at hand. Use it to make “expert” connections for Ss. #satchat
Q5: What characteristics are symbolic of a highly effective school leader? #satchat
A5: Same as HE Ts: keeps Ss at center of decisions, focus on relationships, willing to differentiate, praise & critique #satchat
Q6: Please share resources that can help educators move from effective to highly effective.#satchat
A6: VIDEOS https://www.teachingchannel.org/ MOOCS https://www.class-central.com/subject/education WEBINARS http://simplek12.com & BLOGS http://feedly.com/ #satchat
A couple of links I gleaned from the talk this morning:
8 Ways Teachers can Talk Less and Get Kids Talking More
Great Bloom’s Taxonomy Chart for Teachers
And finally, I’m exploring a tool I’ve seen for a while that is useful for curating information found on line, Storify. Here is my first Storify “story”:
Reflections from a Twitter Chat: Connected Educator Month
As part of my “celebration” of October as Connected Educator Month, I thought I would post a short reflection following my Saturday morning Twitter chat today. I like to participate in #SatChat which occurs every Saturday morning at 6:30 am Central Time (where I live). It’s pretty early, but I’m a morning person, so I’m already “up” if not fully awake…a couple little dogs are on a morning routine that helps ensure that I’m ready to go when 6:30 rolls around. So I grab my coffee and log in to HootSuite, the tool I like to use to more easily follow the chat messages as they come in. This morning, I just climbed back in bed with my laptop and participated in my pjs…now that is some convenient professional learning, right there!
As I was participating in today’s topic of “Game Changers,” I was challenged by some of the questions the moderator posed, especially Q2: How does your philosophy of education impact student success? and Q4: Does your philosophy of education make you a game changer? So I thought about how I could have an increased impact and be more of a game changer. This reflection combined with Connected Educator challenges I’ve been working on resulted in a conviction to be more reflective and regular in my blogging practices. I frequently share things from my Saturday morning Twitter chats with individual teachers or administrators in our district, but I don’t know if I have ever actually blogged my reflections for all to see. Who knows…maybe someone, somewhere will read my reflection and be challenged to impact students under their direction in a positive way. So, here is my first post reflecting personally on #SatChat October 18, 2014:
Game changers are important to keep education moving because the world is constantly changing. We’ve all seen the quotes about how industry has changed so much in the last 100 years, but if a teacher from 100 years ago walked in to a school or classroom, they would know just what to do because education has changed very little while other industries have been through total transformations. I hope in the schools I support, a similar transformation is starting. We don’t need to change everything…just the things that are not the BEST. Keep what’s best and change the rest.
A couple of quick resources to share that I gleaned from this morning’s chat:
1. An article to read about Rigor: 22 Ways to Add Rigor to Your Classroom
Although the term “rigor” is not a new one, the emphasis on rigor in education today is high. We see it mentioned in new standards, new teacher evaluation tools, and lots of educational commentary. I like the definition of Rigor from The Glossary of Education Reform which includes this phrase:
” instruction, schoolwork,learning experiences, and educational expectations that are academically, intellectually, and personally challenging”
You can read the whole article explaining rigor here: http://edglossary.org/rigor/
2. A blog post that could challenge you, but also might help you maintain sanity as a teacher: Buried Alive: A Cautionary Tale about Piles of Work
In this post, Starr Sackstein reflects on sharing responsibility with students as a way to both empower students AND maintain a reasonable work load for the teacher. While she is a journalism teachers, her post has relevance for teachers of all subjects.
In the future, I’ll try to be more reflective following my Saturday morning Twitter chats, so that others can also benefit from my early, weekend morning forays into professional learning in my pajamas!