Entering The Dark Side: Twitter Chats? LIS568

Well I have officially entered the “dark side” folks.  I have not only created a Twitter account, but I have also attended many Twitter chats!  I discussed Twitter in a broad sense in an earlier posting, however I wanted to give a more detailed look at the truly beneficial aspects of utilizing Twitter chats for professional development.  I have never had the urge to join Twitter, thus I just never did.  It could have been that I honestly felt it was completely useless to me personally and professionally.  However, through conversations with friends and colleagues I kept being introduced to many useful and beneficial functions of Twitter.  My biggest draws to Twitter were its, what seems like endless amount of, educational resources and the ability to essentially take part in professional development at a whim.  The following is a review of one of my first chats that I was a part of.

Some questions still existed though.  How can Twitter, a vast and diverse social media outlet, provide professional development for educators, and what kind of quality could it truly offer.  After I did some setting up and browsing, I was ready to put Twitter’s ability to provide professional development to the test.  Using a resource called Participate I was able to locate some Twitter chats.  Participate is a great website that provides its users with a very organized calendar with times that Twitter chats will be taking place.  Although, my first two attempts to join a chat were not successful, as nobody seemed to be active, by the third attempt I fortunately entered a lively and thriving discussion!  Organized by tweets (posts) being labeled with Q and A with their corresponding number (ex. Q1: or A2:), the Twitter chat was flowing basically like a normal conversation, but at a slower pace (typing instead of speaking) and with many active individuals (well over 10).  I was quite impressed with its simple yet effective organization.  A great feature was that there were two main users introducing/facilitating the new questions.  Questions were also tweeted earlier in the day, thus allowing individuals that planned to attend the chat to have the chance to review such thoughts.

Overall, the chat was very useful and extremely easy to be a part of.  I really enjoyed how Twitter limits the amount of characters one can use for each tweet.  I feel that such limitations truly provides users with more concise and to the point discussion.  Although, at times I did find myself having to look up some acronyms as users tried to limit their character usage.  With the slightly slower pace of conversation, I did not feel that this took away from my overall experience with the chat.  Where there were tons of useful content being shared, the overall acceptance that I felt into such a professional learning community (PLN) was quite impressive.  After all, this was my first time joining in on a community that seemed to have been meeting on the same day of the week (Wednesday) at the same time (8:00P.M. EST) consistently in the past.

I feel that the benefits educators can gain from taking part in Twitter chats certainly makes it a useful professional development tool.  Not only do users get exposed to relevant and rich information, but by using resources such as Participate users can pick and choose which chats they want to take part in.  Ultimately, allowing its users to easily be part of a diverse range of content areas.  I’m not sure how successful such professional development can be implemented at a district level, but on a personal level educators can surly reap in the benefits.  With such a networking opportunity being totally free, I feel it would be foolish to not take advantage of Twitter chats.  After all, isn't our main goal to provide our students with the best education that we possibly can?  Utilizing such an easy-to-use, yet extremely beneficial, tool seems like a very rational opportunity to take advantage of.

A Rational Approach: Using Twitter As Professional Development and Possible Classroom Implementation! LIS568

When I finally signed up for Twitter, after many friends were consistently encouraging me to, my initial response was that I can really see certain functions of Twitter providing me, as an educator, with quality professional development (PD).  After spending a little time with Twitter my initial response to its use in the educational world still holds true.  In fact, once my professional learning network (PLN) began to slightly grow I started valuing Twitter for more than its Twitter chats.  Where Twitter chats certainly provide an amazing opportunity for professional development, the overall functionality of Twitter when used only for professional aspects provides a diverse, vast, and organized educational resource.  A resource that allows educators and students to easily search for specific topics through the use of hashtags, ultimately allowing educators to partake in quality and convenient PD while students are introduced to a vast and quite organized resource.

Let me first start by saying that this is a truly unbiased discussion.  Meaning if I found no value in Twitter in terms of providing me, as an educator, with assistance to my day-to-day tasks I would not waste my time sharing positive thoughts of such technology.  With that said, the most useful function of Twitter to me, as of now, is its ability to provide me with quality conversations that fit into my schedule.  These conversations, referred to as Twitter chats, are conversations that truly provide me with meaningful and relevant professional development.  The best part of such PD is that it doesn't interrupt my daily schedule.  I can literally be laying in bed at the end of a long day gaining more engaging and beneficial PD than if I attended a workshop in the evening.  Don’t get me wrong, I have been involved with many workshops that I truly have found valuable to my professional career, but if I had to choose staying at work for another 3 hours, of course after waiting an hour or two after school for the workshop to start, or going home after a long day, I think it is obvious I would choose the latter.  Through using resources such as Participate or Education Chat Calendar, one can easily locate Twitter chats to partake in.  The most important and beneficial aspect of Twitter chats is that users can pick and choose exactly what conversations they want to be a part of.  Feeling like you need a little pick-me-up in regard to education technology search #ATchat, or search #elmused if you want to focus on elementary art.  If there are two chats you find intriguing that are scheduled for the same time on the same night, why not partake in them both at the same time?  The flexibility, diversity, and overall quality that educators can receive from twitter chats are what makes it such a valuable resource for educators. 

Although Twitter chats offer quite a lot in terms of PD, the overall PLN that Twitter provides educators with is truly a meaningful function.  By following other professionals, users are able to build a network with other educators that offer ideas, materials, resources…etc. which can be utilized with ease.  As Scavitto (2015) states discussing her Twitter usage, “The people in my PLN share amazing materials about all aspects of education.”  Not only are educators able to gain valuable resources, but the diversity of such material allows users to become exposed to new and innovative aspects.  More importantly, discussing such vastness of resources Scavitto (2015) states, “Articles like this would have been buried in the vastness of the web for eternity-but I get to read them because they appeared in my feed.”  With the utilization of hashtags users are able to have an organized system for storing and finding resources.  As Pitler (2015) suggests, “The secret to getting the most out of Twitter as an educator lies in knowing how to use hashtags (#)- those things we used to call the number signs last century.”  For example, if you are in need of a poster creator for students to use as a summative assessment tool but want to use a different tool than the typical Google Docs or Pages, a quick search using an appropriate hashtag such as #edtech can introduce you to the application Google Drawings.  Even more impressive is that if you are following the “correct micro-bloggers” in relation to a given interest, as Scavitto points out, information regarding Google Drawings could have just simply been present in your feed.  Thus, the importance of following the most beneficial micro-bloggers in regard to a given interest is extremely important.  As Scavitto (2015) states, “If you’re going to use Twitter for things beyond curating a collection of educational resources, I suggest having multiple accounts.”  Mixing interests outside of a professional focus will simply provide a user with additional content that can lead to an overall scattered and overloaded feed. Thus, defeating the purpose of using Twitter as professional development means.

Overall Twitter can provide educators and students with vast, diverse, and meaningful content.  Educators can advocate and implement for their students to utilize Twitter in very similar ways that they would.  However, being familiar with its functions and how to navigate the resource will help lead to a positive and beneficial experience for you and your students if you implement such features into your instruction.  Twitter chats offer an incredible opportunity for educators and students to partake in active and relevant discussions surrounding basically any topic of interest.  More importantly, through utilizing resources such as Participate and Education Chat Calendar, users have the ability to plan ahead as well as have the flexibility to attend Twitter chats through the comfort of their homes.  It is common for Twitter chat users to follow the other professionals that were part of the chat, ultimately allowing for a meaningful PLN to continually grow.  With the nurturing of a quality and relevant PLN, other professionals’ posts continually show on your home feed allowing easy access to resources, ideas, materials…etc.  With the understanding and the use of hashtags, students and overall users are able to be easily organized with such a vast amount of materials.  However, users must be mindful of only following other users that add to their repertoire of educational resources, ultimately creating a meaningful, relevant, and vast professional learning network.  As Pitler (2015) states, “Once you get started you just might become an evangelist.”  Of course, we can assume Pitler’s thoughts are to convert the non-Twitter users to simply Twitter users, not to turn such non-users into Christians!

References

Berger, R. (2015). Using twitter to supercharge your professional development. ConnectedEducators. Retrieved from http://www.connectededucators.org/using-twitter-to-supercharge-your-professional-development/.

Scavitto, D. (2015). Teachers: embrace twitter for professional development. Edudemic. Retrieved from http://www.edudemic.com/teachers-embrace-twitter-professional-development/.

Collecting and Saving Information: Diigo vs. Pinterest LIS568

Something I never truly spent time thinking about is the idea of gathering and storing information accessed on the internet, specifically the benefits of doing such collecting.  As we all know, the internet is such a vast tool.  The amount of information that society is sifting through on a daily basis is unfathomable.  Now, something to think about is whether or not you want to try to make your time (and your student’s time) efficient while “surfing,” or you are fine continuing your mindless browsing.  I personally have found it very beneficial to start organizing quality information, that information that is helpful to my profession.  Don't get me wrong, I still have mindless “surfing” moments.  Although, they tend to be less and less these days.  My point is that I have had countless times that I needed some idea for a project, resources for my students, resources for myself, etc. in which I turn to the internet for assistance.  There has been many times that I have had to go back through my search history to try and find a certain website that I discovered a few days ago.  The wonderful thing about such a vast resource as the internet is that it provides us with exceptional tools that can help with such organizing.  The power that these tools can provide not only yourself but your students as well is immense.  I present to you Diigo vs. Pinterest.

Let me first start by saying Pinterest is mainly image centered, whereas Diigo focuses around the actual website as a whole.  There are certain aspects when you begin to use information organizing tools, such as Diigo and Pinterest, that you start to appreciate more than the others.  Tagging, being one of those aspects, allows a user to attach keywords to saved material.  Thus, the ability to find certain information in the future becomes much quicker and easier.  Diigo and Pinterest both incorporate tagging into their application.  However, Diigo allows its users to attach tags to saved material, whereas Pinterest only allows its users to search for new material using tags.  Although, I suppose creating boards in Pinterest and putting certain information on relevant boards can be considered tagging.  With Diigo the home screen of your account allows you to view your saved material.  It gives you the option to search through your material by typing keywords or choosing tags that you have created.  Pinterest opens you up to a home page that has all different resources depending on the interests you choose to be informed about, not your saved material!  With Diigo you can access suggested material through a “discover” option.  Where Diigo allows its users to copy and paste content into descriptions of saved websites, Pinterest only allows you to add a description to the boards you create.

Living in a socially connected world, having the ability to essentially “socialize” on applications is important for users.  Both Diigo and Pinterest allow you to follow other users and be followed by other users on the same application.  Pinterest allows its users to send messages, easily search for people by name and by content, and comment on both saved (pinned) and unsaved material.  Diigo allows its users to simply comment on individuals’ posts that are in the same group as them.  You have to first create a group to search, invite, and slightly interact with others while using Diigo.  Both Pinterest and Diigo do an excellent job with being able save content found on others’ boards (Pinterest) or libraries (Diigo).  However, Diigo only allows such functions with others’ content when following those users, whereas Pinterest allows such functions with whoever.  With that said, creating a class group on Diigo allowing students to add resources throughout the year can act as a valuable resource for students to use during the year and possibly their future years as well.

Pinterest certainly excels in the social aspect of the application, however Diigo seems to trump its counterpart in the more professional aspects, you know those functions that make your job easier.  Diigo allows its users to highlight, comment on highlighted text, and overall annotate any content saved to the application.  Sadly, Pinterest does not allow for any such functions.  The closest function Pinterest has in its annotating abilities is providing its users with the privilege to comment under an image.  Both applications allow for a browser extension.  The extensions for both applications certainly provide a better overall experience for its user, as they simply make the purpose of both applications easier to accomplish.  However, I feel for professional aspects Diigo’s extension blows Pinterest’s out of the water!  Using Diigo’s extension on my toolbar allows me to save websites to my Diigo library, annotate the article as is, annotate any PDF I drag into my browser, annotate the screenshot of the website I'm on, and more.  Pinterest’s browser extension, on the other hand, only allows me to bring up all the images found on the website I am currently visiting.

Although both applications are used for similar purposes, they are actually quite different.  Overall, they both store and organize information found on the internet, but depending on what type of individual you are will determine which application you will enjoy more.  If you are an individual who gets easily distracted by images, you will find Pinterest more of a distraction than useful.  However, if you need more visuals to help with your organization Diigo certainly will not do the trick with its wordy ways.  For me, it comes down to functionality for my personality type.  Pinterest simply distracts me, it is difficult for me to visualize its organizing ways, and overall too socially driven.  Diigo provides me with what some might consider an archaic organizing method, but that archaic organizing method is extremely efficient with its new age tags!  Not only that, but the functionality of the browser extension is super useful for my profession as an educator.  I can easily highlight areas of text and make comments directly on web sources, as well as annotate any pdf or screen shot.  For the assistance Diigo provides me in the classroom, I would be silly not to use this on a daily basis.  Furthermore, I feel that Diigo provides my students with a resource that exemplifies the power of connectivity through a less distracting and overall more beneficial way.  From organizing to functionalities, Diigo trumps Pinterest.

To Blog or Not To Blog LIS 568

Being part of the 21st century and living in this always evolving technology generation is a pretty awesome thing!  I feel as if I could honestly learn something new everyday of my life off of the internet.  As teachers, having the World Wide Web is such a valuable aspect to education, especially when utilized effectively in the classroom.  Being in a district that provides students with 1:1 iPads, I absolutely take advantage of the benefits digital devices with network connection provide my classroom.  It certainly takes work on my end to stay up to date, and do my best to learn new practices as technology continues to develop and grow.  However, the benefits are well worth it.  

After some research on the possibilities and benefits of blogging, I truly would like to incorporate blogging into my curriculum.  Where there are many ways one could use blogging, both for personal development and classroom practices, having students construct and post short book reviews fits into my curriculum perfectly!  I teach at the elementary/middle school level, thus I encourage reading throughout each year by tracking our overall classroom progress with a tracking chart.  It’s actually a cool tracking chart that I made in undergraduate work many years ago of a mountain and a little hiker dude that treks up the mountain as students complete books.  Students can earn parties when reaching camp 1, 2, and the summit.  Anyways, I have students complete a short book review worksheet that I check and give credit for completion.  By having students simply blog their book reviews, not only would the book review be easier for me to look at, but other students could read the reviews as well.  Thus, helping my classroom become that much more student centered.

Throughout the school year, I always try to incorporate current event work.  I like to add in speaking and presentation skills with the current event work as well.  I provide students with an organization template that allows for them to summarize their articles they read.  Once their research is complete, students present their article and their thoughts to the class.  In future years, instead of just having students present their finding to the class I want to introduce blogging their thoughts and summaries of the current event articles as well.  Students can then present to the class using their blog on the overhead, or students could check out other students’ blogs and comment on their posts…etc.  It should be interesting to see the growth of students’ posts from the beginning of the year to the end.  

Whether you are a classroom teacher, library media specialist, or any other special area educator incorporating blogging into your curriculum can be a great way to work on English language arts skills, technology skills, and collaboration skills.  More importantly, students are learning to become content creators rather than simply consumers. As stated by Broad (2015), “Engaging students in activities that align closely to higher-order thinking skills like creating, evaluating and synthesizing certainly seems more transformative than asking them to search for information on the internet.”  Being content creators rather than passive consumers allows our students to truly engage in a relevant and rigorous task, ultimately allowing them to gain experience in 21st century skills.  Such 21st century skills can be very important for their college and career success.  Some free resources to start such blogging adventures are as follows: Blogger, WordPress, and Weebly.

Get out there and start blogging, or don't, totally up to you, but I definitely am!

References

Broad, S. (2015). Creators, not consumers. Education Technology. Retrieved from http://edtechnology.co.uk/Article/creators-not-consumers.

Social Networking: Do Yourself a Favor!

As we continue to grow as educators in the rapidly growing technology focused 21st century, keeping up with innovative technology can certainly pose a challenge.  Not only must educators stay up to date on the current technology they are using, but any emerging tools as well as all of the pedagogical approaches for each of the tools are also of critical importance.  How do you keep up with so much information on top of doing your day to day job?  Well, honestly you probably don’t!  However, joining social networking groups, which the majority are free, can at the very least provide you with an organized approach to keeping up with such a vast amount of continually flowing information.  Social networking groups are just what the name suggests, a network of individuals that socially connect with each other via an organized group.  

When considering a social networking group to join, one must first consider what exactly it is that is of personal interest or relevant to them as an educator.  There are a number of social networking websites that organize a vast amount of groups depending on the overarching focus of such websites.  For example the Flipped Learning Global Initiative (FLGI), a social networking site that is of personal interest and I feel does a great job with its content, has a vast amount of information and resources surrounding the flipped classroom.  Through the Flipped Learning Network I am able to connect with individuals that share my interest of the flipped classroom, allowing me to collaborate with others in an organized fashion surrounding many different aspects of such a pedagogical approach.  Flipped Learning Network provides me with many different interest groups, such as ELL, Schoology, Flipped Learning within Google Classroom…etc., that I am able to join for an even more focused approach.  Although I am not sure how useful, one can become a certified flipped learning educator by utilizing the networks training center.  That being said, the aspects of the network that I find most useful at this time are the blog and the radio.  The blog section allows me to have an organized location of blog posts focusing on all different aspects of the flipped classroom.  Being a member of FLGI allows me to add my own blog posts as well as comment on any posts as well.  The Flipped Learning Radio (FLR) is such a great resource that FLGI offers, allowing me to have access to a vast database of recordings surrounding different aspects of flipped learning.  It can’t get much easier than playing a recording found on FLR while driving to and from work or simply “kicking it” around the house!

It is obvious that, as educators, we are very busy on a daily basis.  Do yourself a favor and join a social networking site.  Flipped Learning Global Initiative is just one of many sites that offer a vast amount of tools and resources that can easily be accessed and utilized.  Networking with other like-minded individuals allows you to have the opportunity to stay up to date, become informed on innovative ideas/technology, and ultimately make your day to day job easier.  Professional development is essential to truly be successful in the education of our youth.  Becoming part of a free and easily accessible network of other professionals seems like a very rational approach to continue developing professional skills and knowledge as a life long learner.