Communicating & Connecting with Social Media

My head is still spinning from 3 days' worth of sessions at Solution Tree's AuthorSpeak in Indianapolis this past week. I will be posting my thoughts and reactions to the sessions I attended in hopes I can pay homage to the fantastic author-presenters I saw and as a way to connect those educators who were unable to attend to some of the information and resources.

 The first session I want to share is around the book Communicating & Connecting with Social Media by authors Eric Sheninger (@NMHS_Principal), Bill Ferriter (@plugusin) and Jason Ramsden(@raventech). I almost skipped this presentation. I consider myself to be reasonably well along the technology uses spectrum in personal, professional and instructional uses of technology.  I figured I needed to see presentations that pushed or challenged my thinking rather than going to one that I knew I was going to agree with everything said.  But I kept heading back to this choice, in no small part because I was curious to see some of my twitter heroes in person.  As it turns out, the session was interesting, challenging and gave me some new great ideas for ways our school and district should be promoting their image.

About Twitter
This session focused mainly on professional uses of social media in education; for learning, sharing and getting the positive word out on our work and our schools.  I have been using Twitter for over a year but seem to go through bouts of furious tweeting followed by droughts of nothingness for sometimes months at a time, depending on how crazy my schedule at school is - and honestly, when DOES the school year slow down?  It doesn't.

Think of the 17-year locust - on a smaller scale, my contributions and consumption of social media goes through more famine than feast.  What I liked about the presentation were the concrete ways in which social media can contribute to our learning, why building learning networks and communities outside of our own schools is so important and the message that if we don't promote our own good news, someone else is going to do it for us and probably in a negative light - to get control of our  message, we have to have a message out there (#ihtech; IHMSHeybruch).

The beauty of social media is that it "redistributes" expertise - the voice is truly with the collective rather than in single traditional forces of media. This should be an empowerment - to every educator - to get the positive things that are happening in your classroom each day out to parents, community members and other educators.  Thanks to the model set by some amazing voices for educational reform, I plan to be a more "balanced" contributor to the cyber and concrete worlds we now inhabit.  Plus, you have to love that typing in less than 140 characters at once makes it feasible to contribute on a regular basis.  What will you do to be a positive change agent in your school, community and twitterverse?

Check out the book by Bill, Eric and Jason for more great ideas on how to use social media to broaden your PLN.

I Vote that Teachers Go Away....

....to attend professional conferences, that is...


Dollars for professional development, like for all other things in our schools, are evaporating.  Getting support, permission and hopefully  funding to attend a conference is becoming more challenging, especially if the conference is farther afield.  There is a movement to rely on in-house expertise to lead professional development and a move away from bringing experts to schools or allowing teachers to travel to see presentations.  I get it - we need to rethink the old ways of doing business.  I am a huge supporter of developing teachers as leaders in all areas of school management.  But where do teacher leaders get their training and ideas from?  What are the advantages to sending not just individuals,  but teams of teachers, to a professional conference?

Professional conferences do have an important place in building capacity, for teacher leaders and also in building relationships between members of teams. If we hope to encourage teachers to be more reflective, scholarly and research oriented concerning their own practice, then we need to provide opportunities to allow teachers to learn from other practitioners and scholars. Conferences can provide time and space to think about learning and to plan ways to incorporate that learning into action in the classroom.  Conferences can give a great injection of new ideas and strategies. If we truly want to take advantage of conference learning, however, we need to be sending groups of teachers as teams.  Allowing teams of teachers to travel together to attend conferences can create an environment of sharing and collaboration around all the great ideas learned.  As we articulate our learning to others, we clarify our own ideas and become more likely to put what we have learned into practice. At the same time, we might convince our colleagues that these are good ideas for them to also incorporate into their own classrooms.  Do teams who travel together, stay together?  It is true that colleagues to spend time together outside of work are more likely to work longer and harder to collaborate inside of work.  I propose that this could be an additional benefit to allowing teachers to attend conferences in teams.  By sending a team rather than an individual, more sessions can be seen, and more information can be shared with the staff or other teachers.  A group may als be more likely to discuss different ways of disseminating their learning to others and may be able to reach more staff members back at their site than an individual teacher.

Conferences are expensive and it makes sense for teachers and schools to be choosy about the types of professional conferences they attend based on goals and needs of the school, district, department and/or grade level.  The payoff can be beyond just new learning for individual practitioners. If we treat conferences as a PLC learning opportunity, then we can increase teacher learning, improve bonds between PLC members, improve the chances of information being shared in a meaningful way with the rest of the school/district,  and increase the likelihood that the new learning translates into classroom practice.

Are You a Polite Challenger?

In discussing technology access in schools with my online graduate class, one of the participants made a reference to colleague and called him a "polite challenger". In order to gain access to the technology he needed for his students, this person would often push back at the restrictions in place. It is true that schools treat technology and the Internet as something to protect students from rather than a tool that provides some of the most exciting learning experiences we've ever had access to. Yes, we are in charge of student safety when kids are in our classrooms, but most "blocking" programs are ineffective - they tend to block more good content than bad and students often know how to get around these programs to get to the "blocked" site they want to get to in any case. Wouldn't it be great if decisions about what sites were open in your school was decided by a committee of teachers rather than a random technology person? Wouldn't it be nice if every teacher had the power to add sites he or she wanted to use with students to the "nonblocked" list at the time they needed them? Wouldn't it be nice if we were trusted to act as professionals and that those teachers making bad choices were dealt with individually rather than punishing all teachers and students by assuming we are incapable of making good decisions?


I am going to continue to be a "polite challenger" in my own school. I hope you, too, will stand up for the things you think are important for your own students!

Review: Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton M. Christensen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I may have read this before - oh well - great ideas and deserves a second look after more grad classes. This was an interesting exploration of innovation in schools. I'm not sure I agreed with all of the business model solutions offered by the author but I do believe there is plenty of room for innovation in schools to improve student learning and that the only way we will be able to explore some of these options is by "disrupting" some of the traditional constraints that we take for granted as the "way of doing business". This is a great book to challenge the thinking of those of us who have been in the education game for a while and have forgotten that nothing should be assumed or taken for granted if one sees an opportunity for change.



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Review: The Book Thief

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Recommended for Grades 9 and up - and I can see why. This story is heart-wrenchingly poetic; tragically beautiful. I was sobbing by the end of it. It's story about an unlikely heroine living in Nazi Germany and her newly discovered past time - stealing books. She evolves from a late starting reader to a writer of her own story. The writing of the story is evocative, as is its narrator. The way Zusak brings alive these dynamic characters is magical. This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Definitely worth the time and tears!



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Review: It's Not All Flowers and Sausages: My Adventures in Second Grade

It's Not All Flowers and Sausages: My Adventures in Second Grade by Jennifer Scoggin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Mrs. Mimi is hilarious - and inspires all teachers to be Super Colleagues for their "little friends" and fellow teacher types. In this book, she shares the best of her blog including why she loves her students, sharpies, sales at staples, and fab shoes. If you're a teacher, especially of the elementary school variety, you are going to love this book and might catch a glimpse of your fabulous self in a story or two.



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"Novelty Excites the Brain"

Wormeli, 2007, p. 107

I am currently reading Rick Wormeli's Differentiation: From Planning to Practice Grades 6-12.  Under his chapter about tips to differentiate, he mentions that we can all use a break from our routines and changing things up can help gain students' attention.  Don't get me wrong, routines in the classroom are a good thing - they help students know what to expect, speed up classroom tasks and help things run more efficiently leaving more time for learning.  That being said, Rick's point is that we all like to have a fresh perspective every now and then and as I was reading this section, I realized that I have probably allowed more of my own classroom routine turn into a rut at times.  Each summer always brings time for reflection and renewal and I do bring in new tools, new strategies and new perspectives about the work I do with my students, all the same, perhaps my routine should build in some more novelty. 

Suggestions from Rick's list include things like asking students to teach a lesson with you, or asking students to think divergently.  In my classroom, these things have become pretty commonplace.  It's time for me to try a few new options.  I don't think I am interested in velcroing props to my person and using them in a lesson (yes, that's on the list).  Since most of what I do in working with my gifted students in process and skill oriented rather than content based, I do think I could incorporate more simulations, field trips (the kind where you get out of your classroom - doesn't have to be a big old bus trip) and possibly music as a part of what we do.

Gee argues that even the most "reluctant" learner is often spending his or her out of school time plugged into technology and specifically, gaming.  What's the connection?  While I don't think we need to turn school into an arcade, I do think the fact that students are interacting with complex environments requiring a wide variety of skills should mean that learning in school could maybe capitalize on this idea.  Part of Gee's premise is that video games have a wide following because they are complex, but offer scaffolding to help players get on board quickly, they give A LOT of just-in-time feedback to help learning happen even faster and to let gamers know they are moving in the right or wrong direction, and the learning happens in the context of the game.  Kids aren't reading the manuals until they've already learned the basics and then if they need details, a manual might be referenced, though it's usually online.

One of the ways I'd like to explore novelty in my own classroom is to consider how gaming is put together and then replicate a similar experience in the classroom - sometimes, this might be a direct use of a game in class. I'm considering using the free online version of SimCity to teach my 7th graders about urban planning before we start to build our own cities of the future.  In other situations, it might just be about anytime access to resources, more models for expectations, better feedback, social interaction built in as a part of the learning, and more student choice in products or learning tasks.

How about you?  What are you going to do next school year to incorporate a little more novelty?  I know someone out there is already attaching velcro to their math manipulatives or rock collection...