TeachThought's Attitude of Gratitude Blog Challenge question of the day got me Googling for resources. In order to answer, "What is the most powerful aspect of being a connected educator? What are you grateful for?" I had to find out exactly what a "connected educator" is.
My cursory research failed to uncover a single, unitary meaning, but a common theme did emerge. Connected learning has to do with leveraging social media, digital technology, and mobile devices to foster connections and collaborations inside and outside the classroom.
A post in The Learning Network, an online affiliate of the New York Times, says that connected learning has to do with "using technology to build communities and share knowledge." I'm down with that definition. And I am on the path to being connected.
The blog post Ten Tips for Becoming an Connected Educator claims that being a connected educator has to do with habits of the mind and heart. Sure, being connected is about technology. But being connected, according to blogger Elana Leoni of Edutopia, has just as much to do with embracing mistakes, expecting the unexpected, and "just jumping in" as it does with technology. This sounds like me, too. Or at least the "me" when I'm at my best.
In terms of what I use to build community and to share knowledge, Twitter, Pinterest, and Blogger are my three "go-to" social media platforms. In addition to "pushing" content to students via Twitter hash tags, I tweet out to musicians, poets, and scholars who we study.
We've virtually connected with folks in Colorado, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain, demonstrating how what we study in our corner of the world is of interest to folks on the other side of the planet. Plus, students get a kick out of seeing when someone we are studying favorites or retweets a comment from our class. They've even started to tweet out to people we've studied, too.
I use Twitter to follow #reflective teachers, #sdawp, #nwp, and #cwp, and a host of other educators and education groups. I also follow journalists, authors, and entertainers. Pinterest is where I go for inspiration and ideas. There's a feed to my tweets and pins in the column on your right.
I've only been using social media for professional development for a few months. But the effect has been phenomenal. I don't feel so alone. I feel part of a larger community. I have access to so many great resources, ideas, and support from around the world. On my time. And in the short blasts characteristic of tweets, pins, and blogs (that aren't as wordy as mine!).
Today's Attitude of Gratitude Blog Challenge question is "What tech tools are you most grateful for? Why? How have they changed what you do?" These are the first ones that popped into my mind:
Haiku Deck: I like this free presentation service. Haiku Deck forces me to rely more on visuals than on text. I keep reading how too much text on a slide defeats the purpose of presentations, so this tool has my name written all over it. Super simple. Plus I like the notes function and the fact I can embed the slides into our Blackboard, our learning management system. Below is a presentation I cobbled together, hacking the MAPS (medium, audience, purpose, situation) acronym for my Filipino American Learning Community, students who would appreciate this salty, greasy, sweet mnemonic.
SPAM! - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
Screencast-O-Matic/Powtoons: I am at the bottom of the learning curve for these video tools. I have fantasies about flipping my classes, But that's not going to happen any time soon. It's time consuming and a bit challenging. But I do enjoy learning how to chunk-out my lessons into short, digestible pieces that complement or clarify a lesson. Screencast-O-Maticmakes it easy to turn my slides into YouTube clips. Powtoons is a bit fancier, allowing me to use narrative and animation to make lessons appealing. Both are fun to use, which is big reason why I'm willing to spend the energy it takes to get proficient with these tools. Check out this post for samples of my Powtoon experiments.
Tumblr: I use Tumblr to store images memes, and quotes that I might use on Haiku Deck or for sponge activities to get class started. Here are some of my "go to" hash-tags: writing process, rhetoric, and college success skills. I don't assign students to use Tumblr, but I do introduce it as a mode of curating inspirations for their writing projects - or any interest they want to follow: current events, professional interests, political issue, hobby, wherever their passions lie. I want them to see social media as something they can leverage for more than socializing. Maybe I should just admit I am addicted to Tumblr and that any use I get out of it for teaching is an excuse to play around on social media.
With the exception of Powtoons, these tools are free. And luckily, I got on board with Powtoons when it was testing, so the price was reasonable. I enjoy the process of learning how to use these tools, and I introduce these tools as options for students to use for their own work. An added benefit is there is always at least two or three students in my classes who are much more skillful with these tools. When that happens, I urge them to take the floor during lab, letting them be the expert. Students get a charge out of teaching and learning from each other, and I can model that I'm learning, too.
This notion of curating student work is, I'm embarrassed to say, a new one for me. I teach at a community college, schlepping myself from one class to another. So I don't have wall or halls that I can use to post students work. But I am experimenting with curating because i see the value of doing so. The primary way I curate work is digitally. Here is a short list of what I'm using.
Blogger: This is the third or four year of assigning students to create their own blogs. It's been highly evolutionary, meaning each semester has been quite different. I'm learning on the fly, but it has been highly rewarding to see students creating and publishing their work. Currently, I'm working on figuring out how to get students to publicize their blogs, to build an audience for their work. It's amazing how much harder students work when they know someone - other than me! - might read their work.
Facebook/Twitter: Last semester, I started using private FB page as a vehicle to share questions and resources. This semester, I've started snapping random, unposed photos of students giving presentations, working in collaborative groups, or some other activity. While I'm not curating the actual work, we are documenting them working together, sharing and recording memories. I'm pleasantly surprised at how simply posting pictures of students invigorates the class. Now students are posting photos, too. We do the same on Twitter, too. Each of my sections has its own hashtag, for instance #bayanswc and #SWCENG115. Some students excel at commentary and "back channel" editorials that capture what's going on in the class. Others are developing a skill for joining these type of digtial conversations. As with Blogger, I'm still at the beginning of my learning curve. But I know enough to be excited about leveraging social media for educational purposes.
Storify/Google Presentations: I discovered Storify last semester And I'm finally feel confident enough in my own Google Presentation skills to ask students to curate and produce materials that we use for assignments and display in class. I'm encouraged by how "making" gets students more invested in the lessons. I'm providing students authentic opportunities to write for real audiences. And the tools themselves, when I use them with intention, enhance the writing process.
Today's questions is about the ed tech tools we use in my classes. Here's are the ones that are on my mind right now since we're in the midst of using them.
We use a range of Google apps in my class. We use and share Google Docs and Slides. Currently, my classes are learning how to use the "comment" function on Docs to facilitate peer revision. A third Google app we use is Blogger. This semester, students will publish between eight and twelve blog posts. This is my sixth semester using Blogger.
Another blogging tool we've used and will use again is Storify. Storify is an online tool that allows users to curate a variety of Internet sources: web pages, tweets, Tumblr and Facebook posts, and YouTube clips. The feature that makes Storify special is its ability to sequence the clips into a coherent narrative. Between each clip, you can include your own text to set up a "story". Your text stitches the together, providing transitions, explanations, and statements of significance to tie the different clips together.
I've used Storify to "flip" lesson, to curate tutorials. And I've assigned students to curate their own stories. Here's a post I curated to leverage the Donald Sterling story to teach a rhetorical concept. Here's another one about rhetoric.
To communicate with students, I use three different "channels". Our learning management system, Blackboard, has an email function that lets me contact students all at once, in groups, or individually. Blackboard is my purely academic/class-matters channel where I discuss assignments and content. It's also the channel I encourage students to contact me. Students can also communicate with each other through Blackboard without having to share their private email addresses.
We also use a secret Facebook group page. Because it's a "secret" Facebook page, students don't have to friend each other (or me). Our Facebook group page is the channel we use to share information about the campus and the larger community. Folks announce sports and campus events. Or they can post community events that are related to class content. Or web links and YouTube clips related to class. Students use our private Facebook page to encourage each other and to vent. Students can ask each other what's going on in class or for assistance. But if they ask me questions on the Facebook page, I'll direct them to use my email address.
This is my second semester experimenting with Twitter. We use Twitter as a "back channel", for folks to comment and curate what's happening in class. Students often take pictures of what I've written on the board or of each other working.
I use both social media channels to "push" content to students. I may share a "teaser" of an upcoming class or a video that we discussed in class. Or an article I found that relates to a class topic. Something short and sweet to whet the appetite and to extend our discussions beyond the classroom. Doing so encourages students to post content, too.
I am experimenting with more ed tech tools: Haiku Deck, Padlet, Professor Word, and others. Still on a learning curve with those programs - still trying to figure out if I'm being seduced with cool web tools or if these tools will enhance reading and writing instruction.
