The Magic Resource… Well at Least a Quality Resource

By Jamie Guillaume

 

Recently PBS Learning Media (pbslearningmedia.org) was presented to me as a strong site to find, gather and organize subject area resources.  I was a bit skeptical at first because who hasn’t heard of PBS? I know this is a great learning organization and produces, Sid the Science Kid and Curious George by Why I am I just now hearing (or possibly listening) to information regarding this site, specifically designed for teachers?

 

Despite my reluctance, I approached this site with an open mind and found that it was incredibly useful and completely free to use.  You simply create a login and password, permitting access to tons of resources, including videos, lessons, assignments, projects and content related games!  

 

To use this site, you type in the subject area in which you are searching and tons of resources appear.  You are also able to categorize searches by grade level, which will narrow down the resources presented, making it a little less overwhelming.  My favorite feature of this site is that when you find a site that you like, you categorize it as one of your “Favorites,” allowing you to always be able to locate it.  Many times when searching for information I will find something useful but then have a difficult time relocating it.  PBS’s “Favorites” feature allows useful information you discover to be saved in one location for easy accessibility.  

 

Educators are presented with the challenge of pulling resources from a variety of locations. Mainly because we have yet to find a single location that houses intriguing lessons and rigorous assessments, aligned with the standards; hence requiring us to use a variety of resources.  PBS Learning Media is by no means the magic resource where you are going to find all of the information you need for all of your subjects, causing you to never have to search any other site again.  However it is a great source for quality content to store in your bag of tricks!

 

MAX is a PIRATE and He Increases Student Engagement?

By Phil Zellers

This blog kind of serves as a book review of a couple of different books I am currently reading.  One is the MAX Teaching book Jody gave us in department meetings and the other is a book the eLearning coaches are reading called, “Teach Like a PIRATE.”  Both have to do with increasing student engagement and nothing to do with Max the Pirate.    

 Collecting Content
Over the last couple of years, I have begun to realize the importance of incorporating literacy standards into my classroom on an everyday basis.  I am in the early stages of doing this and still have a lot to learn but I would like to share some of my experiences along with some of what I have learned from the two books listed above.  In my Social Studies classes, the students complete about 8 PBL units (each representing a particular theme) per year.   I have begun to create text sets for each project or theme we do.  This is far from being done but I have a good start.  Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day (I know, typical history teacher saying!) and text sets shouldn’t be either.  I gather interesting articles, videos, maps, graphs, etc. throughout the year and organize them by theme.  This allows me to have and build on these resources from year to year.  We don’t have to build our content from scratch, there are a lot of great resources out there to help with this process.  A simple Google search is a great place to start.  

 “Hooking” Students

In “Teach Like a PIRATE,” the author talks about creating a “hook” to grab students’ attention.  Moving away from the textbook has been a freeing experience for me.  The last couple of years I have just used the textbook as a resource.  It has freed me up to incorporate a lot of engaging content into my classes.  I have pulled in articles from books like “,Oh Yikes!  History’s Grossest Wackiest Moments.”  From some of these articles, which are written in a language the students can understand, students have learned the process for mummification in ancient Egypt.  They especially like the part where it talks about removing the brains through the nose!  I use articles like these as a “hook” to grab their attention and get them engaged.  Gross, weird, or shocking always grabs their attention (especially 7^th graders!) but we can also “hook” them by making the content relevant or by showing them the real world uses of the material. 

 Teaching Students to Learn

A quote from MAX Teaching that I really liked was, “I learned how to facilitate active learning from students.”   I have begun to realize the importance of becoming a facilitator of their learning rather than being the content expert that just tells them all the right answers.  Another way to put it is “students learn better when they are coached through a process in which they are active in trying to make sense of something.”  Being a coach, I can’t go hit or throw a pitch for a player.  I have to coach them through the process of learning how to do it themselves.  To me, this makes a lot of sense in the classroom as well.  Teaching students how to learn is just as important, if not more, than the content we teach.  MAX teaching is a three step process where students are first Motivated to engage in learning, second Acquire new information, and third eXtend beyond the text.  With the right content and strategies, students can be engaged in reading in the content areas and learn how to learn.

Technology and Reading in Content Areas

It’s really not about the technology here.  Creating an engaging content area reading lesson could be done with no technology at all.  Since we have it though, there are some great ways to incorporate it and take engagement to another level.  Students can deliver what they know through creation tools such as Animoto, Easel.ly, Prezi, and others.  The discussion feature on MBC could serve as open dialogue for the class to discuss the reading.  If you are reading a novel or a nonfiction book in your class it could also serve as a host for a book club.   Some online resources for gathering content are Google, YouTube, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Edutopia, Thinkfinity, as well as others. 

Like I said, I am not an expert about this but have a lot of good resources to help.  I would like to work with you to help in any way I can.  Together, we can find engaging content, find strategies and activities that work best for your class and content, and help find creative ways for your students to show you what they know.  The eLearning department would be happy to help with any of this or any of the tech tools listed above. 

How to Become a Twithead Part 2

By Kris Walsh

Last week I blogged about how to get your account up and running, this week is more about getting the most out of your Twitter account. I will talk about list curation, Twitter terminology, Twitter chats, and the power of the hashtag.

It has been said that getting information from the internet is like trying to take a drink from a fire hose.

The internet is a wealth of good information. But if you type a search term into Google, you will get all kinds of information shooting at you, and it can be hard to decide which information is most useful. Nothing out there can help with this problem better than a well-curated Twitter account.

If you have a Twitter account up and running, you probably have a list of people who you follow. It is important to make sure that the list of people that you follow contains people who have opinions and ideas that you respect and that they can be trusted sources of information on a given topic. I have many people that I follow on my Twitter account who I don’t even know personally, I have participated in Twitter chats with them or other people have retweeted what they have said and that compelled me to find out more about them and follow them.

Last week I touched on several terms and ideas linked to having a Twitter account, and this week I wanted to explore them more in depth.

Tweet- This is the message that you or other users send out to their follwers. These messages can only be 140 characters in length including spaces and punctuation. This leads to some interesting grammar, but it forces you to get to the point quickly. If you want to share links on Twitter, it is a good idea to use a URL shortener to save you some characters. (we can help you with this or it may be explained in a later blog) You can also share pictures on Twitter.

Hashtag- In Twitter, this is represented by a #. This is a way of tagging information so that it can be found easily. When searching for information on a particular topic, instead of searching for a person, enter a hashtag and then the topic (ex- #inelearn, this will bring up all tweets that have this hashtag in them. (this is the hashtag that the state has established for tweets about elearning in Indiana) This will show you anyone’s tweets on the searched topic no matter if you follow them or not)

When you Tweet, this makes your topics searchable and lets people find what you are talking about. If you tweet without a hashtag, it is likely that the only people who will ever see your tweet are the people who follow you. If you want to reach a wider audience, always use a hashtag.

Retweet- This is often abbreviated with RT. This is a way of sharing a tweet that you like with your followers. You simply click the retweet button at the bottom of the tweet (looks like 2 arrows going in a circle) to retweet a tweet that you like. You share “credit” for the tweet with the original tweeter, and your followers get to see the tweet, link or article that you shared. The original author of the tweet gets a notification that they were retweeted and they can feel all warm and fuzzy inside :)

Mention-If you are mentioned in a tweet or if you mention someone in your tweet using their handle, the person being mentioned in the tweet gets a notification that they are being talked about. It is a good way to get someone to chime in on a conversation that you are having or to give thanks for a good idea that you got from a fellow twithead.

Favorite- If you see something that you like, but you do not want to share it with your followers, but you want to have quick access to it, you can click the star at the bottom of the tweet to favorite it. This will notify the author that their tweet was favorited, but your followers will not see the tweet. It will put the tweet on your favorites list so that you can see it again or look more into something when it is more convenient.

Reply- Somewhat self-explanatory, but you can reply to the author of a tweet directly. If you reply from the tweet itself, it will be part of your feed and your followers can see it. If you want to have a more private conversation with someone you can…..

Direct Message- This is an option to send a message to a particular user that is not published on either of your Twitter feeds. It is a way to keep a conversation private. It is still subject to the 140 character limit though.

Twitter Chat- Often, there are scheduled times when groups are on Twitter to have a discussion. To participate, you will need to know the chat’s hashtag and search it during the time of the discussion. This way you can keep up with the conversation going on even if you do not follow all of the participants of the chat. I will post a schedule of education Twitter chats and their hashtags below.

I promise that I have tried to keep both of these blog posts as short as possible. It is tough to cover all of the possibilities of Twitter though. Please feel free to contact any of us if you are interested in using Twitter more. I was not sold on it right away, but now, as I have learned more about using it, I find it to be a very useful tool.

Follow us! @mrkriswalsh @jguillaume1 @zellersp Our hashtag is #pcelearn please feel free to search that tag and use it when posting about technology use here at Perry Central.

Schedule of education based Twitter chats and their hashtags are located at this website

bit.ly/officialchatlist

A directory of specific indiana Twitter profiles can be found here:

http://inelearnchat.blogspot.com/p/inelearn-twitter-lists.html

 

How to Become a Twithead (has nothing to do with Mrs. Rowland)
By Kris Walsh

Happy Connected Educators Month!

October is connected educator month. To celebrate, we thought that our topics this month would share information about becoming more connected with other professionals and people that share passions that you do. Today’s Techy Tuesday is an intro to Twitter.

Why Tweet?

This is a question that I often hear when talking to people about Twitter. Many people are a part of Facebook or other social networks and wonder why they should follow something else. I love my Facebook and check and post to it on a daily basis, but I find that for most people, Facebook serves a more personal purpose than their Twitter accounts do. If you were to look at my Facebook page (feel free to friend me J ), you will find pics of my girls, funny stories about my girls, and posts about TV shows and video games that I like. I occasionally post stories about happenings that I am a part of at school. I also share professional articles that I hear about online, but you are more likely to see me share a comic or ecard.

On the other hand, my Twitter account (@mrkriswalsh- follow me J) is more professional. I follow people and topics that are of a personal interest to me, but the vast majority of my tweets are professional in nature. I use my account to follow other educators and tech professionals across the state, participate in professional Twitter chats, and get updates about news both in and out of the education field. Twitter is a great place to network with people who you may not know on a personal level and get their thoughts about specific topics that interest you.

First- Create an account

Twitter is a social network, much like Facebook. You simply go to Twitter.com and sign up for a free account. You can choose a username or “handle” and a password. You can (and should) write a short blurb about yourself for your profile and select a picture that you want to be your face on Twitter.

Second- Follow some users

This is the most important aspect of Twitter. Your Twitter feed is only as good as YOU make it. The more selective you are about who you follow, the better information you will receive. If you follow someone that you find is not meeting your needs on Twitter, simply unfollow them. If they have a large following, they will likely not realize that you have stopped following them.

Simply use the search bar to search for people that you know who use Twitter. You can type a name with no symbols (Kris Walsh) and it will list people who match or closely match that name. When looking for users and you know their username make sure to use the @ symbol first so Twitter knows that you are looking for a specific user. (@mrkriswalsh)

There are several of us “Twitheads” here at school, or you can search out professionals that you have interacted with at trainings or in classes that you have taken.  You can also follow news sites such as CNN, organizations like the DOE, sports teams, celebrities or other personal interests. When you find someone, simply click the follow button and you will start seeing their tweets. Unlike Facebook, typically you don’t have to be accepted by the person that you want to follow. You can set your account up to be private, but it is not the norm on Twitter.

Other ways to find users-

On the left side of the page, Twitter will list suggestions for people to follow based on the people that you currently follow. Simply click the follow button.

My favorite way to find users to follow is to “stalk” the following lists of other people with similar interests (It’s a common practice, anyone who says they don’t do this is lying). If you click on someone’s name and then click on following, you can see who they follow. If any users interest you, you can follow them too.

This is all that you need to do to get your Twitter account up and running. There are some more advanced ideas and tools available through Twitter that I will share at a later time.

Let any of the eLearning coaches know if you have questions about how to use Twitter. We would be glad to meet with you on an individual basis or in a small group to help you get an account up and running.

These are the basics that you need to know to get an account up and running. You can look forward to a sequel that will include information about hashtags, retweeting, mentioning, Twitter chats, and other Twitter jargon. Please let me know in the comments if you have any specific questions that you have that I may address in part 2 of Twithead.

Happy Tweeting!!

@mrkriswalsh, @Jamieguillaume1, @zellersp

This is not an all inclusive list, but a good place to start. Teachthought itself seems like a good organization to follow or like on Facebook.

http://www.teachthought.com/social-media/50-educator-twitter-accounts-worth-following/