Presentation at – http://www.slideshare.net/hblanton/twitter-me-this – Tools to create your Personal Learning Network

Idea of PLNs – not new – technology just makes them easier – and you can spend as much or as little time as you want

What is a PLN?

• PLNs are about what YOU are interested in
• Group of folks you can collaborate with
• Where is your network? – With technology comes from all over the world! Can tap in to the knowledge from everywhere and any time – limitless
• There’s a lot of variety in how to build your PLN
• Opportunity for differentiated Professional Development – interesting thought – Your PLN IS tailored to YOUR needs

Vide0 – A Brave New World Wide Web (Find Teachertube version so it will open in school)

Twitter

• “The dumbest tool you’ll ever love…”
• In last year’s conference – pulled FIVE(!) pages of resources from people in Twitter PLN
• Sometimes the best professional development does not occur in the sessions, but in the “backchannels” on Twitter and over lunch/dinner
• Twitter has transformed how news is being reported

How do you build your network? – Who do you follow?

• Twitter4Teachers – to learn how to use and find people to follow – http://twitterforteachers.wetpaint.com/
• Follow folks from the conference
• Follow VSTE folks
• K3 Teachers Guide to Twitter – http://www.k-3teacherresources.com/teachers-guide-to-twitter.html
• Twellow – http://www.twellow.com/ – yellow pages of Twitter

Ning

• “Swiss army knife social media…” – it will do just about everything
• Great for social networks for educators  – more “professional” than “personal” (as opposed to facebook which is personal)
• VSTE Ning – http://vsteonline.ning.com/
• Classroom 2.0 – http://www.classroom20.com/
• ISTE Ning – http://www.iste-community.org/

Blogs

• “Sharing stories one teacher at a time….”
• Coolcat Teacher Blog – http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/
• Teacherlingo – VERY cool – directory of teacher bloggers – http://teacherlingo.com/

Social Bookmarking

• “This is the coolest link, everyone should know about it!”
• Simplybox – http://simplybox.com/ – Box it and save it for later – “librarians love this”
• Stumbleupon – http://www.stumbleupon.com/
• 7 Things you should know about social bookmarking – good article – http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7001.pdf

Second Life

• MUVE – multi-user virtual environment
• VSTE Island in SL has a Jamestown simulation! Very cool – Avatar (in life digital persona) can actually visit and explore! – http://vsteonline.ning.com/group/secondlifevstemembers
• http://vsteonline.ning.com/video/vste-jamestown-settlement – video about Jamestown settlement in SL
• There ARE teen islands in Teen SL where different schools are running different projects – creation of civilization/society experiments and projects – good for government and life skills?
• VSTE members who are running VSTE Island in SL – very active and helpful!

Webinars

• “Connecting Learners the world over…”
• VSTE Webinar Series – not free, but not too expensive, and they are good
• Classroom 2.0 Live
• ISTE Webinar Series

Social Aggregators

• Friendfeed – http://friendfeed.com/

Additional resources on last slide in presentation (see above link)

I wrote about Twitter.com last year. This is a GREAT place to start. I know some folks will say, “What? Why on earth would I want to know what other people are doing during all hours of the day, every day of the week, and in 140 characters or less?!?!” Well, the key is in WHO those other people are. In Twitter you “follow” people with similar interests and backgrounds. They, in turn, “follow” you. It may sound like one big stalkfest (I know stalkfest isn’t a real word. But this is a blog and not even remotely close to anything resembling literature), but Twitter has proven to be the most valuable online tool I have used during the past year. After logging in to Twitter, within minutes tips, tricks, and resources come flying in.

If the key is in who to follow, how do you find the people? Twitter4teachers provides lists of educators on Twitter by subject area. Once you find folks that post information that you find useful, check out who they are following and follow them, too. If you know of others in your field, you can search for them on Twitter. It’s amazing how many people are tweeting–authors, professors, politicians (and, yes, Ashton Kutcher is tweeting, too, if you are into that sort of thing). Or, you could check out who your friendly-ITRT is following and start there. You will find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tekkieteacher.

Once you have started setting up your online PLC, the next step is to actually post something. For those of you who are a bit shy, try “re-tweeting”, or just re-posting someone else’s post that you found useful. Be sure to include the “RT” indicator and attribute the post to the original person with the “@” symbol like the example below:

When working within an online PLC, you will get more out of it if you are a contributor to the conversation rather than just a bystander. Before you know it, people will start following you, too! I recommend always screening your followers and blocking anyone that you aren’t sure about. However, I have to admit that it was also very cool once some of the big names in the the Ed Tech world who I was following started following me, too!

Our PLCs are about helping and learning from each other to improve ourselves and the instructional process. There are 195 people in my Ed Tech PLC and I am much better at what I do because of them. Come join me!

To get started, I recommend copying/pasting your favorite poem or a couple of paragraphs from your favorite book to see what kind of Wordle is created!

For the past year, the Tech Team and I have maintained Hylton’s webportal at http://guest.portaportal.com/pwcs. However, I recently moved all of our links (and added lots of new ones!) to http://delicious.com/hyltonhs. Both PortaPortal and Delicious are online bookmarking tools. However, Delicious has proven to be much more user-friendly. It is easier to create bookmarks, and it is also easier to search your bookmarks. Once you have over 100 bookmarked sites (we currently have 297!), the search capabilities become very important!

Hylton’s Delicious site hosts a collection of bookmarked sites for teachers, students, and parents. Just go to http://delicious.com/hyltonhs, and use the tags listed along the right side to find tons of links to online tools for virtually every subject. We will continue to add bookmarks, so check back often to find out what’s new! And, if you know of a site that you would like included, forward it along to your friendly ITRT.

Hylton’s PortaPortal site will remain “live”, but no new bookmarks will be added. Instead, everything new will be posted at http://delicious.com/hyltonhs.

Enjoy!

Presenters:

Will Richardson (http://weblogg-ed.com/)(@willrich45)
Cheryl Nussbaum-Beach
21st Century Learning – Here Comes Learning – check out Wiki

How learning looks different today

Important to be Learners, not teachers, first

YouTube video – Help with Bow drill set – example – Richardson
-Wasn’t afraid to not know something
-Showed what he did know and then asked for help – made it easy to teach him
-Didn’t ask teachers/parents – went to Web 2.0 forlearning
-Asked for feedback – plz, plz, plz – b/c it’s on YouTube there’s a large number of people who can help him
-Very comfortable with technology
-No name, no face – privacy
-How did he know he would get a response? Intriguing question
-Learning environments are changing

Connecting and Community – Cheryl
-New teachers – afraid to ask questions within their schools – fear of it being evaluative
-set up virtual community for PLN – Cheryl set up online mentors – ENDAPT – for new teachers
-found mentors did not lead the learning – everyone taught each other – virtual community of practice
-can learn and grow without feeling like they are being judged

-21st Century Learners Project — http://abpc21.org
-funded through grants (P21?)
-21st Century Learner’s Goals
-insight from project “necessity for change” – professional development needs to be centered around managing change

Richardson
-can’t look at classrooms the same way as we have in the past
-”Here Comes Everybody” – book recommendation
-Importance of forming groups – techtonic shift
-we are not fully aware of what is occurring right now – Iran and Twitter is example – can no longer be traditional journalist
-”Smart Moms” – another good book recommendation
-Connect around the tools
-Orbitz response to twitter complaint – called him!
-NCTE – Definition of 21st Century Literacies – much more complex today
-We form groups around what we write(Wikipedia) and what we read(Diigo – with comments!)

-kids moving into hyper connective and hyper transparent world – foreign to us – kids ARE using these technologies
-using them to socialize – MacArthur study – must read
-connecting to people they do and do not know
-that is a GOOD thing – millions of potential teachers for our kids – doing it without us because we don’t have the same type of context for learning in this world right now
-Some kids have no adults teaching them to use technology effectively for learning
-teachers need to be learners in this context, too – they have to connect, too

Cheryl
-Education operates on deficit based model, not strength based model
-ask them – what do YOU want to accomplish, learn, etc.
-from classroom to community structure
-teachers as colearners
-connecting and collaborating – for professional development
-What works for adults – job embedded learning – like getting personal recognition
-The Medici Effect – more suggested reading
-Professional Development – team approach – with learning communities – online ones!
-Different from the workshop driven approach
-Community Definition – from Wikipedia
-Communities of Practice – Community instigator/leader – one of the top 10 jobs in the next 10 years
-need to evolve over time
-product is co-created and collaborative with opportunities for feedback and ownership
-The Scaling Framework (From Microsoft?)
-PLP Delivery Model – Powerful Learning Practice – built on professional learning teams

Case Studies
Archdioces of Philadelphia – Nancy (@ncara)
-Technology Plan
-Team approach to putting together the plan – used online tools, too, (Twitter, Delicious, Ning)
-”surprised to find a social network could turn in to a professional network”

One to One program – Professional development for it
-Using PLP professional development worked better

Back to Will
-It’s all about being able to build a fire – figure out how to get your questions answered by being a global learner
-expansive and personalized
-Revolution isn’t online learning, it’s personalized learning
-Be Learners first, teachers second

www.tammyworcester.com

http://handouts.tammyworcester.com

On instructional uses of cell phones – yes they can be bad, and most schools ban them – but they can be used for good, too!

Most kids say when they come to school they are “taking a step back in time” when it comes to technology

1-800-Goog-411 – Free 411 service from Google

Text questions, any questions, to Google at 466453

Google maps – choose the “send” option to send maps and addresses to your phone

http://www.google.com/mobile/ - has lots of tools that can be used with cell phones

Posting to blogs by cell phone – via email – set up through blog settings – can create project-specific blogs and students “send” (aka email) assignments – show up as blog posts – caution: students have to sign posts somehow, either with id # or name, so teacher knows where they came from – nice way to post pictures on blogs

Cell phone to Flickr – can email pictures to flickr, too, just like to the blogs – be sure to include tags – http://www.db798.com/pictobrowser/index.html can then be used in combination with tags to create slideshows and embed in blogs (But Flickr is often blocked, not sure how this will work in that case)

Podcasting by cell phone – really easy using http://drop.io/ – “drop” audio files from your phone – click phone link and gives you a number to call to record your message – can embed the audio

http://www.geograffiti.com/ – leave voice marks – marks it on a map – call in and talk about where you are at that time – nice for geography or family vacations – Caution: there is no filtering so kids can say anything

http://www.polleverywhere.com/ – Student response tool using cell phones – nice example of instructional use of cell phones

Additional links at end of presentation – check the presentation link – one really cool one on ring tones that can’t be heard based on your age – http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/

]]> http://tekkieteacher.edublogs.org/2009/06/29/necc09-day-2-%e2%80%93-cell-phones-in-and-out-of-the-classroom/feed/ 0 http://tekkieteacher.edublogs.org/2009/06/29/necc09-day-2-10-best-web-20-tools/ http://tekkieteacher.edublogs.org/2009/06/29/necc09-day-2-10-best-web-20-tools/#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:00:27 +0000 tekkieteacher http://tekkieteacher.edublogs.org/?p=351 (OK, I’m going to try and “live” blog this. First attempt at this, so bear with me and forgive my typos.)

Presented by Steve Dembo (@teach42, http://www.teach42.com/)

http://prezi.com/117545 – link to presentation

What is Web 2.0 – Entirely web based, interactive, plays well with others (mix and match content from one to another)

Bloglines - aggregator – http://www.bloglines.com – keep track of all your favorite blogs, news, searches and more – check out other subscribers – see who they subscribe to – use as “human filter”

(OK – this is about when my WiFi connection died — so much for “live” blogging)

Delicious – social bookmarking site – may not have the most features – simple – does what it does really well – http://delicious.com – searching delicious – only get sites human beings have looked at and decided if it is worth saving – another human filter – can then check out what others have bookmarked – ones with common interests – using tags – “steal” their bookmarks – wealth of info they’ve already aggregated together – can then subscribe to them – using RSS – and can see each post they add – add into Bloglines – subscribe to that person’s bookmarks – can also “bundle” links – to aid in research – under teacher or class names – Hylton’s Delicious is at http://delicious.com/hyltonhs

Sharetabs – share your links as tabs – http://sharetabs.com - very neat – don’t have to have all the urls, just the one, Sharetab, URL – nice preview version – thumbnails – even works in IE 6.0 – will still show tabs – nice, especially since our district is still using IE 6.0!

Drop.io – http://drop.io – can upload files and give others access to them – upload it, share it, fax it in, etc. – you can even call in whatever you want to “drop” off – FREE – can even do a whole podcast for free from a mobile service – http://drop.io/teach42/media - can share audio files via iTunes, too – parents ask “How was your day, today?” – they can LISTEN to how it was using this – podcasting using cellphones – this makes it easier – 100 megabytes for free – lots of features with this tool! – provides embed code

JayCut Online – full video editor in your browser – like older JumpCut that is now gone (sad) – looks pretty intuitive – has everything that MovieMaker offers – http://jaycut.com – unlimited size! – multiple users can use it – pull from same “bucket” of media and then they rename it on a save – gives them a nice starting point to the build their own media – provides embed code

Edmodo – like Twitter – but designed to be used with students – http://edmodo.com – microblogging with your students – is behind a password – private – option to “send to” specific groups – nice for classes – version 3.0 is on the verge of being released – allows you to embed media files, too – what Twitter would have looked like if it had been planned for a school environment – more enterprise features coming – may have an iPhone app for it – Tweet zemote (?) on Twitter for questions on this

Poll Everywhere – http://www.polleverywhere.com/ – classroom response system for every teacher for ever classroom that parents pay for – done via text messaging – USING CELLPHONES! – nice example of instructional use of cell phones – 30 votes per poll for free – good for classes of 30 – each poll gets 30 votes – can download results to excel – then clear them and be ready for next class – can also download as ppt – results show “live” in ppt - standard text messaging rates DO apply J – do have a for cost school version – can also use computer/laptop stations to do this for kids without cell phones

Xtranormal – http://xtranormal.com – used to create animations – text to movie – good for ESOL and World Languages – can even change the voice to match the language – nice for digital storytelling, too – can change camera angles (getting lots of ohhhhs and ahhhs with this!) – can change animations, too – very nice tool – “action” equals rendering – can take a little time – keep that in mind for classroom management – extraordinary tool – changes the paradigm – and does provide embed code

Livestream – TV studio in your browser – http://www.livestream.com – can even use your cell phone as a camera

Prezi — http://prezi.com – different type of presentation tool – what ppt would look like if there were no borders or slides.

http://delicious.com/hyltonhs/study_tools

There are links for educational games, practice tests, and test-taking strategies. Take a gander, and if any seem appropriate, please share with your students.

http://www.shmoop.com/teachers/

The mission of the site is “To make learning and writing more fun and relevant for students in the digital age”. While the focus is on literature and poetry, there are also nice resources for social studies, too. Check it out and let me know what you think!