Rubric for Online Communication Tools

With such a variety of communication tools available online, it can be hard to figure out which ones are best for use in the educational setting.  Our group of me, Tricia Bursey, and James Hoisington created this rubric to help with the process of evaluation.    Our next step will be to put it to work.  Please feel free to post thoughts or suggestions in the comments.

To view a larger version of the rubric, click here to see the original document.

Web 2.0 for Educators: My Top 3 Chapters

Virtual Environments:

This is my first time learning about Second Life (in Chapter 7- Virtual Environments), and I am amazed at how BIG it has already become.  I ended up watching several episodes on YouTube of The Draax Files: World Makers, a series that profiles the creative people behind many of the worlds and content in Second Life.  Over the last few years, I’ve gone from thinking of creating and functioning in virtual worlds as escapism and avoidance of real life to seeing the many benefits.  People featured in The Draax Files speak of how they’ve actually GROWN their friend groups and gained confidence to be themselves.  Second Life provides the outlet for everything they WANT to do but cannot in real life, either due to physical limitations, location limitations, financial parameters, etc.  Many people actually MAKE A LIVING in Second Life.  They create and showcase their artwork, musical talents (some folks in actually in bands with other people, or rather, with the avatars of other people), create movies, and more.  There are support groups, and many people feel like they’re are freer to talk in these virtual situations than they are in real life.  In The Draax Files: World Makers, Episode 13- Creations for Parkinson’s,” Fran talks about how Second Life has been huge for her after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s.  She feels like she is in Second Life, she gets to be the person she feels like in her head. There is a lack of dopamine that comes into the brain with Parkinson’s, and acting as her avatar in Second LIfe is a way of getting that back and having emotional, therapeutic experiences.  Her daughter Barbie Alchemy created a therapeutic world called “Creations for Parkinsons,” where people with Parkinson's can select calming or fun activities to do.  Barbie says that her mom used to hold onto her when walking to the car, but relays that Fran actually stated that she knew in her mind that her avatar could do it with no hands, and knew that she could, too, then actually DID walk to the car without holding on to anything!  Think about what this means for kids!  They can be the person they really want to be, act how they really want to act, create worlds of their favorite things, AND share these worlds with others!  Students could create virtual worlds as settings for their stories, recreate historical situations, and more!  I haven’t explored wether or not Second Life can be set to child-friendly settings, but I do know that Minecraft EDU has really given this some thought.  I would really like to devote more time to exploring how virtual environments like those mentioned in this chapter can be used more in school.

Blogs:

Blogs are another tool that I adore and want to encourage other staff members to use.  Solomon and Schrum write that “Because they are predominantly a written medium and are on public display, students have to learn to write carefully, think about their ideas, and communicate effectively.”  There isn’t the distraction of having to build a virtual environment before writing.  Blogs are about writing with the knowledge that other people are going to read your writing.  Students LOVE knowing that classmates will be reading their work!  There is always such excitement involved around logging in to read comments that people have left!  Much like virtual worlds, students can find and read blogs about topics that are of interest to them, but again, the focus is on writing and reading.  I would like to further explore using blogs as part of the writing PROCESS- having students do their pre-thinking via blog, rough drafts on blog, … and gather feedback from their peers along the way.  Most of what I’ve done has involved students writing a finished and final piece and then taking feedback.  I think it would be so valuable to embrace the interactivity of blogging and have peers to weigh in with advice for direction, intros or hooks, phrasing, and such.

Visual Learning Tools:

I definitely am a visual learner.  I much prefer to see an image rather than hear someone talking about it or read about it, so maybe that’s why Visual Learning Tools is one of my top three favorite topics from this book.  I also love digital visual learning tools for their ability to personalize learning.  Renee Owens is quoted as saying, “One of the greatest benefits of flipping with video in my classroom is the ability for students to rewind. They cannot rewind what I am saying and doing in class, but with a video that models the process, key ideas, skill, etc., they can rewind as needed. What this means is that a student who needs to hear it again, watch it again, stop and pause— can. In a heterogeneous classroom, how can you teach at the perfect pace? You will inevitably be too fast or too slow for someone.”  I am constantly aware that so many students are learning at varying paces, so to hand them the controls to the pace of learning is so valuable.  I also value visual learning tools when students can contribute to them, and often do so interactively.  I love that Google Slides can be an interactive process, with multiple students working on the same project at the same time.  Digital portfolios is a huge thing I’d like to push in my district, so finding a few visual learning tools that I favor and spreading their awareness will be a huge piece of what I do next year.

Solomon, Gwen; Schrum, Lynne. Web 2.0 How-To for Educators (Kindle Locations 608-609, 2587-2588). International Society for Technology in Education. Kindle Edition.

Module 3: Feeding on Blogs

Information constantly bombards me from a thousand sources, and I often catch too much of one thing, less of another, and leave some topics by the wayside when in fact they should remain front and center.  I'd used an RSS feed about 4 years ago, but gradually moved away from using it.  However, I'm in major information collection mode right now and using an RSS feed may be just what I need.

I selected five blogs to follow and made comments on three of them.

1. Markey's Musings-  Jason Markey is a principal in Franklin Park, IL.  I met him when I attended two of his learning sessions at the GAFE Summit in Montreal this past weekend and was very impressed with his thoughts on the role of principals.
• Comment: "As the observation unfolds it is the role of the anthropologist to look without seeing anything other than what is happening and not be swayed to believe they are seeing something based on previous experiences or assumptions." - Jason Markey. What an immensely valuable notion to embrace in the school setting: "As the observation unfolds it is the role of the anthropologist to look without seeing anything other than what is happening and not be swayed to believe they are seeing something based on previous experiences or assumptions."  Applicable to so many scenarios, but what first comes to mind is that often, teachers, schools, and/or school districts who have cruised along in a top bracket for quite some time would benefit from this lens to avoid assuming that students are being provided with the best experiences possible.  A newly-hired secretary has filled this role for one of our elementary schools this year.  Old habits die hard, but she's determined to be the honest eye we've needed!
2. The Making of an Elementary School MakerSpace- I used to teach at Dyer Elementary from whence this blog originates, and am completely excited to keep track of their work in building and running their new MakerSpace since I'm currently helping to do the same at my schools.

• Comment: “Staff meeting time is dedicated to tinkering and collaborative making experiences.”  What a valuable part of building whole-school buy-in!”

1. SketchPad- This is the blog of the Tinkering Studio located at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.  
2.  EdTechTeam- I love everything this team embraces.  They're the planners behind the Future Ready Summits.
• Comment: Sylvia, Thank you for the suggestion to create a folder and drop in the links to areas where I'm least confident.  I definitely see that I'll be filling that folder faster than I expected!  Good tip.
• This comment was a learning moment- I got a message back saying that only members of the EdTechTeam can comment on the blog, so my comment was never posted.
3. Reflections of a Lifelong Learner-   Kim Meldrum writes this blog with a keen eye toward the integration of technology

 

My New RSS Feed, with blogs followed on the left

I have started following a few more blogs recently, but wasn't thrilled that the notifications of their publication were cluttering my Gmail's inbox.  I had put filters on my mail to mark such notifications as unread, but then I was doing the opposite and forgetting to read the blogs altogether.

It would be great if Feedly could change the way readers can view blogs.   I feel like if I click on the group of 5 that I'm following, I can either see a list of the most recently published posts, or a scroll of thumbnails to recently published.  I would like Feedly to allow for a way to view about 6 different blog thumbnails at one time, along with a little number by each one for the number of posts the author has written that I haven't read.  That would be the visual reminder I need about which blogs I'm actually following.  There are certainly other RSS feeds, and I'll be looking forward to reading the posts of my fellow classmates in EDU568 to find out what other feeds they liked.

I DO appreciate the fact that I can group feeds into "Collections," since there are so many topics I often read about.  The current 5 I'm following aren't really of the same category, but it looks like I can move them around.

As I read the blog posts of others, I'm seeing that even blogs associated with a school or someone's job tend to have a higher amount of information about the author than I would think to include.  However, after reading in Enhancing the Art & Science of Teaching with Technology about how "Mr. Flannery uses social media to support interactive engagement among his students," I may be seeing more value in creating those connections.  He starts the year by posting questions that get students to start talking about themselves, therefore helping them build connections with both he and their peers.  He responds to the inquiries as well so that students get a better feelings for who he is.  Another suggestion was to use positive emoticons to "demonstrate respect and value" to students (Element 39).  Using Bitmojis would be my go-to choice in such situations, since many of them are funny but still appropriate.  Students would probably LOVE to have a teacher who made personal connections with fun emojis and bitmojis.  That would be akin to a teacher drawing a distinctive happy face with flair on one of my papers when I was in school.  I thought it was fantastic!

There are definitely so many positives about blogging, both from the teacher and student standpoints.  I'm looking forward to feeling that incoming information is more organized as I set about to learn from other people. 

Source:  Magana, Sonny and Robert Marzano:  Enhancing the Art and Science of Teaching with Technology.  Marzano Research Laboratory:  2014.

Reflections on My First Twitter Chat

The value of Twitter has increased for me ten-fold now that I know how to participate in Twitter Chats.  For me, the number one reason to use Twitter is to accumulate new ideas, methods, and resources to better the work that I produce and my mindset as a professional educator.  Twitter Chats provide a way to have real-time conversations with other professionals about a topic that interests me.  Furthermore, the conversations are then searchable using the  corresponding hashtag (and even more detailed information), and I can refer back to everything that was said.  

There are several take-aways from these initial Twitter chats.  

• First, When I went back to review my tweets from the chats, I panicked when I couldn’t find all of them.   Then I realized that I was focusing only on my Tweets, and that I needed to hit “Tweets and Replies” to see more.  I wish now that I hadn’t hit the reply button during the Twitter Chat, but had just responded to a question using the appropriate hashtag and answer coding (A1, A6, etc.).  That way, the progression of thoughts that I was going through during the chat would be clearer if someone happens to scroll through my tweets and not my tweets and replies.
• These Twitter Chats were almost like taking notes., but with a fun adrenaline rush as I tried to keep up with the real-time conversation and respond with insightful contributions.
• I met people who are NOT teachers or at least don’t teach at the elementary school level.  It’s refreshing to hear from people who have an entirely fresh or different point of view than my own.  One of my current favorite mantras is “You don’t know what you don’t know.”  You don’t know SO MUCH that could potentially benefit you, and somehow you have to make yourself accessible to that information- to put yourself out there in the path of the oncoming traffic basically.
• I do like that anyone can access the information about the chat at a later date, but there was something so exciting about being very present in a conversation with people from all across the country and world.  I liked that both chats began by having participants introduce themselves because I was immediately hit with the fact that information would be coming from people in a wide cross-section of experiences, careers, and locations, but who all had a shared interest in the topic of conversation.  How valuable is that!

I appreciated the fact that even though I’ve been using Twitter for a year, I’d never done a Twitter Chat on my own.  I’d contributed ideas but not been the person tweeting, which this assignment forced me to do.  I will definitely participate in further chats in the future, and hopefully on a regular basis.