Twimpact: Twitter's impact on my week

By Noah Geisel

I still hear people asking, often in a disgusted tone of voice, “Why would you use Twitter?” They say it’s just for people to see what celebrities are saying. They say it’s just a way for people attracted to the Me Generation ethos to transmit their self-centered Facebook musings to a wider audience. They say what they believe and I respect that, for them, it is the truth about Twitter. For me, Twitter is another story altogether.

The last 7 days have served as a shining example of how Twitter significantly impacts my teaching, learning and professional development. A sampling my week’s Twimpact:

• I attended an inspiring TED Talks salon event that I found out about via Twitter. Had I managed to learn about it through other means, it would have been after the tickets were sold out.


• I read dozens of articles and blog posts that were shared by the people I follow, 22 of which were helpful enough that I bookmarked them for future use. I copied the links and shared via email 3 of these articles with certain teachers and administrators in my building.


• I read 12 tweets that I thought could be valuable to others and were worth Re-tweeting (sharing) to my followers.


• I learned about 2 apps that I downloaded to my iPad and believe will be very helpful.


• I learned a new trick for the Promethean Board that I never would have known was possible.


• I reconnected with a teacher friend and brilliant education mind with whom I had not spoken in 18 months. It led to a phone call and awesome conversation that I already know will impact a lesson for my students later this week.


• I had conversations with 16 other educators, many of whom I’ve never met in person.


• I had two former students reach out to share with me what is going on in their lives.


• I found out about a webcast hosted by an MTV VJ in Mexico, from which I discovered two new bands whose music I could share with my students.


• I connected with the lead singer of one of said bands who has agreed to Skype with one of my classes about life in Lima, Peru.


• I connected with a Venezulean baseball reporter who has also committed to a Skype conversation in which he will provide a season preview of the Colorado Rockies and take my students’ questions about the team in Spanish.


• And, so as not to leave out the celebrities, I favorited 8 tweets by Spanish-speaking artists that used the same vocabulary that my students were studying so as to provide them with examples of Real World, in-context use of our target learning.

I get it that Twitter is not for everybody. In my teaching and learning however, it makes a huge difference. What is the #Twimpact for you?

Learning by Examining One's Being

by Shelly Blake-Plock

Having lunch. Behind me sit a table of med students. They are studying for exams. And they are studying in some of the most interesting ways.

In trying to better understand how the passages in his head connect, one student laid down on the table and poured water down his nose. After nearly drowning, he discussed the experience with his friends.

Later the group took turns pulling on the beard of one of the males in the group trying to figure out why and exactly how it hurt when you pulled on a beard.

Right now, they are examining and trying to explain various splotches, marks, and bruises on their own bodies.

While I don't condone trying to drown yourself in the interest of understanding nasal anatomy, I do think what's going on here is interesting from a teaching and learning perspective. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Saying No

"No, I will not tell you the definition of 'austere'."

"No, I will not tell you where Laos is."

"No, I will not translate that for you."

"Do it yourself."



Been thinking about this recent TED talk by Sugata Mitra ever since catching it over at Will Richardson's blog. And over the last week or so, I've really been putting into action many of the ideas inherent in the talk. Most important I think -- and this is on top of a ton of important realizations in the presentation -- is the idea that if we want students to engage with learning, we won't tell them the answers.

Now, I work in a 1:1 environment. Which means that every single student in this school has a machine sitting in front of them that gives them access to the collected knowledge of recorded human history. So why would I treat them as if they do not wield such immense power?

And as an experiment, the way I've chosen to get them to realize the potential of what happens when they combine the power of their brains with the power of that access is to just say "no".

"No, I'm not going to define that for you."

"No, I'm not going to spell that for you."

"No, I'm not going to find that for you."

"No, I'm not going to repeat myself five times slowly for you."

You want to succeed in learning? Then learn to activate your own capacity to learn. Figure it out. Use that thing sitting on your lap and the connection to the world that it represents. And stop leaning on me; because soon enough I won't be here. And it will just be you and the world.

I asked a student yesterday if that made sense to her. And her response was simple, elegant, and telling. She said:

"Yes."

Let's Help Dan

American Educator publishes new piece by Dan Willingham (in pdf. form), piece promptly gets criticized on Net (on a blog).

There's something in that, methinks.

I've got no problem with a cognitive scientist talking about the brain all he wants. I think there's a lot to learn about learning in the work of Willingham and other academics. I actually like Willingham and have chatted with him occasionally about issues in education. And I think we should be thankful to have someone in the cognitive sciences with an interest in what we do as educators.

But, I think that just as we need the help of cognitive scientists to help us better understand the brain, they also need us to help them understand the context and reality of the classroom. And this has to be a conversation, not a series of diatribes. Otherwise, we create something analogous to a music journalist telling a musician how to play better and the musician turning around and saying the journalist doesn't know how to write. And that's useless.

So with the intention of creating discussion, I do embark...

One of the first things Willingham says is that "new technologies do not represent a silver bullet", and on that front he's absolutely correct. And I don't think any proponent of ed tech would argue with him. And I don't think any teacher with any amount of experience whatsoever in dealing with kids would think that there's a silver bullet for anything.

Where Dan starts to lose me, however, is in completing that thought by saying that "Just using a new gadget does not guarantee student learning". It's not that I disagree with that statement in and of itself, but rather I disagree with what the statement assumes: that technology is about gadgets.

We have to be really careful to explain what we mean by "tech" and what we mean by "gadget". An iPad is a gadget, but it allows for the operation of technology. A laptop is a piece of hardware, it's a gadget; but it allows access to the greater operation signified as the technology of the Web.

I'd say there are passive devices and active devices. Passive devices give you content; they simulate in digital form what we've come to expect of the physical world. I'd put a Kindle in this category; the screen on a Kindle attempts to simulate the page of a paper book. Active devices, on the other hand, are open and promote sharing -- by design. Active devices allow you to get onto the Web and do stuff, make stuff, create stuff, share stuff, and -- most importantly -- learn by doing. Active devices have the capacity to allow the user to manipulate the content of the Web from the point of view of creator and editor, author and reviewer -- all while breaking down the traditional hierarchies and top-down corporate models of content production.

So in the same way that there is a difference between a gadget and technology itself, there are also differences among types of gadgets.

I'm not sure from this article, however, exactly what it is that Willingham is defining as a "gadget" and what he defines as "tech". He seems to equate Web 2.0 tools and computer hardware in some odd way. For example, in a list of possible downsides to several devices, he suggests that Twitter isn't very useful because it is "limited" to 140 characters (granted in an entire article on tech and learning, that's all the attention he gives to Twitter). But, as anyone who has spent any time with Twitter soon realizes, the technology is not "limited" to 140 characters. Nor is Twitter really a "device".

Allow me to conceptualize here.

Twitter is a searchable network format for sharing and searching info and links in real-time. I think Willingham may be thinking about Twitter as a "gadget", whereas it really represents a "form" of communication, not a "device" for communicating. In a way, "tweeting" as a communication technology has transcended the device of "Twitter" -- and it did that long ago (in relation to how long it has existed). That distinction -- between tech and device -- is understood only once one becomes fluid in the application of the technology to a variety of working problems: from direct communication to sharing links to following conversations via 3rd party apps to using Twitter specifically for pedagogical purposes like hashtagging classes or searching in real time to gauge mass response on a current issue.

Tweeting, therefore, does not represent the act of using a new gadget, but rather represents a mode of communication unique to the current cultural paradigm. By analogy, the telephone was a gadget; but the act of telephoning was a form of communication technology in action.

Willingham writes a very compelling section of this paper on interactive whiteboards; and he says that the mere presence of an interactive whiteboard does not mean that students will learn better. And he is 100% correct. But he and the other researchers could have asked any experienced teacher and they would have given you the same answer. Because the whiteboard is a tool/device/gadget. And no gadget will produce any significant result on its own accord. Rather, the whiteboard has to be used in an effective way by the teachers and students. If the whiteboard is used in a passive way, you'll get passive learning (if any). If the whiteboard is used in an active way, you are more likely to get active learning.

Willingham makes a strange case concerning overhead projectors in comparing them to chalkboards -- or more specifically, what is written on a chalkboard. Citing a study of Japanese math teachers who prefer chalkboards, he says that the reason why is because the notes written stay up on the board and can be referred to later. But the comparison of overhead projectors to chalkboards denies the reality of what a projector actually does. A projector projects. That's it. A chalkboard, on the other hand, captures handwriting. The more apt comparison would be between a chalkboard and whatever program or app one is using. So, if a teacher is concerned about 'saving info' on the board, just use a program or app where the info is saved, open multiple tabs, use a backchannel, and by all means in any 1:1 situation: let your students access the information and notes you are creating in real-time; the blackboard, by contrast -- I can't believe I'm actually blogging this -- can be erased. And that info is lost forever. And it is so much more difficult to share.

In a way it seems to me that any teacher who would prefer the blackboard -- for the reasons stated -- just hasn't taken the time to figure out how to use the technology. For the record, it's actually easier than programming the time on a VCR.

Now, those are examples where I think Willingham's arguments don't really jive with the reality of an experienced tech-savvy teacher/learner. There's a lot in Willingham's work that really does work. His criticisms of multi-tasking ring true for the most part, and his observations that brain research can and should apply to teaching are not things I'd argue with. But I think Dan needs a bit of an immersion lesson in ed tech.

And so, I suggest we thank Dan for the good stuff he's been doing and offer to help him understand where many of us are coming from. After all, Dan writes about Twitter (sparsely), but -- and I say this as a person who has spent his fair share of time sharing and learning through tweets -- I don't think Dan really gets it; because I never see him there. I never see Dan in #edchat. I never see Dan getting into Twitter conversations (and that's actually one of the great things about the format: you can watch other people's conversations develop in public). I never see Dan sharing links. And when I look at the bibliography of his article, I see lots of peer review journals cited, but I don't see any sign that Dan has done any of the dirty work -- I use that term endearingly -- of ripping into the real live 24/7 conversation that's happening in the Ed Tech community every single day.

He's not there.

So how could he possibly understand? He's busy referencing articles by a lot of other folks who aren't there. And don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of academia and I think there is an enormous contribution to be made to intellectual life by the writing and reading of peer review journals. But Willingham's article makes recommendations to teachers about technology -- and Willingham himself isn't even adept at the technologies that he's writing about.

Some of my favorite twitterers are academics -- from Alec Couros to Jay Rosen to Ira Socol -- who've come to use the format as a perfect place to share ideas and engage in debate with the public.

But Dan's not there.

So let's help Dan. Let's get him into our PLN. Let's help him understand what this is about -- not by reading a book about it, but by actually doing it. And I'm serious about this. I may have disagreements with Willingham on many issues (his thoughts on learning styles come to mind), but I respect that he's taking part in a dialog about teaching. I just wish he'd take part in that discussion in a more open and perhaps less sheltered way.

Question of the Day: What Did You Learn This Year?

Today is our last day of final exams at school and today is the last in our series of 'Questions of the Day' here on TeachPaperless. I really appreciate the comments and ideas everyone has shared over the past few days on issues ranging from summer projects, to administrative term limits, to final exams, to revolution.

So let's end this series with a question that every teacher should have a stake in answering:

What did you learn this year?

That's it. A simple question with complex implications. I look forward to hearing about what you learned and I look forward to a summer full of opportunities to connect and extend our learning in ways we now can hardly imagine.

Hey Teachers: This is How I Learn.

My students and I had a conversation today about learning. They'd like to share their thoughts with you. [I've put some of the most interesting comments in bold].

"Teachers would help me learn better if they applied what we were learning to events outside of school. Also, if they stuck with us in the lessons step by step to make sure we understood them, that would help me learn better. It would be useful if teachers in lectures would also relate subjects in lectures to things students do at home or for hobbies."

"Teachers would help me learn better if they judged better the time it takes to complete assignments; with in a reasonable amount of time. They would help me learn better if they gave more class work grades then homework grades. They would help me learn better if they made note taking more interesting and entertaining then boring PowerPoints. Also group projects are always more desirable than projects in which you must work independently. Lectures, especially boring ones can be a problem in the classroom. Lectures in themselves aren't the problem usually it is the teacher giving them. Teachers need to find ways to appear entertaining, or interesting to their students if they wish to grasp their full attention."

"If teachers were more interactive in lessons, then more kids would pay attention. I find my self playing games on the computer because I don't want to listen to a boring lecture. But if the teacher made the lesson plan fun and interactive, then most likely all of the kids would pay attention. People don't pay attention in class because of one reason: boredom. So if the teachers could find ways to make lesson plans interactive, the issue of boredom would go down."

"Teachers would help me learn better if they interacted with the students more. A lot of teachers just like to do lectures and it ends up boring the class. If the teacher made the lesson more interactive, then the students would be able to grasp the concept of the lesson better. Lectures only make things boring and you don't grasp what's going on in that class. You just take notes and have to study them. But with an interactive lesson plan, you are able to grasp things right away and won't have to study as much because you really understood the lesson the day that you learned it."

"Teachers would help me learn better if they taught with hands on projects. I learn through projects because you can see exactly what you're learning about. For example, in this class we've created the Roman armor. We had to read about the different parts and then figure out all of their details in order to make them. In biology, we build parts of the body, for example cells. It's interactive and keeps the brain active. I tend to find myself losing focus if just reading a text book."

"Teachers would help me learn better if they taught in class instead of giving homework, used more videos to teach certain aspects of the lesson, had more group work, and used computers to help organize notes, help keep neat notes, help not lose notes."

"I find it easier to learn from interacting with the class than sitting in a class room and studying a certain subject. If the class is just sitting and doing busy work, then it is more likely that some people, including me, will get distracted and go on different websites."

"Computers = Awesome"

"Computers are the future. They provide a portal to a whole other world, and infinite possibilities. A computer can be used to look up a famous person who you have never heard, or to look up statistics, or even just to use a calculator to crunch 289*3466, doubt you can do that in your head. With a computer everything including organizing becomes easier. Organizing especially is personally one of my biggest downfalls, before I came here and got my school laptop, I was one of the most unorganized people you would ever meet, now with a laptop, it is a lot easier to organize my notes."

"Teachers would help me learn better if they would do something more interactive in class. They would also help if they would bring something entertaining to keep my attention. Teachers need to not talk at the students, but to the students.  Teachers also shouldn't just force students to take notes as the entire class. Teachers need to actually teach the subject material, not just give random pointless assignments in class to keep students busy. Teacher shouldn't have things show up on the test that they didn't teach. Teachers shouldn't teach superfluous things that won't show up on tests, as they detract from learning the important material. Teachers would help student better if they would stop for a second to make sure each individual understands the material. Teachers should repeat important topics. Also, hands on is good, as hands on is fun and interactive. Teachers also need to be approachable for extra help."

"I use tech a lot more in this class than in most of my other classes. I think that it is wayyyyyy more efficient in this class, it is very helpful."

"I use the computer more in this class than any other class. but it's very helpful. I'm able to look things up instantly and helps me understand more."

"I use my computer everyday in this class, probably twice as much in this class than in any other class. In some classes I hardly ever use it."

"I find the computer to be more of a helpful resource in this class than in any other class."

"Teachers would help me learn better if they were more hands on with their learning. It is very hard for me to learn when a teacher just rattles of information off a power point that I can access later. If I can access it at home and study at home then why do I need to pay attention in class? I don't, and so when teachers don't give me anything to work with besides a power point on my laptop and on a projector I will often get bored in class and not pay attention or fall asleep. Things like worksheets, activities, and class readings are what hold students attention. And without their attention you can't teach them a thing. For a teacher to hold my attention they need to present me with something I haven't seen before or at least in a way that holds my interest."

"I try to use my computer every opportunity I get in all of my other classes. I find it incredibly useful and helpful for me to take quicker and more organized notes and also to research things that a teacher has said that I don't understand."

"Compared to other classes, I use computers the most here. It seems like most other teachers don’t really trust teenagers with having laptops during class. I think they can overcome this barrier by talking to students as their friends instead of talking down to them."

"Computers definitely help with this Latin class because there is a wider range of material to learn from and you can use programs that parse verbs which helps you to understand how those verbs will be translated. Also, it allows for students to collaborate without being distracted."

"Latin revolves around the laptops. I think it's impossible to go through the course without one. We need it for Caesar's Gallic Wars and to take notes. You wouldn't be able to do the course without it. All of our assignments are done through a blog which is really convenient because you can get onto the internet anywhere. With paper, you may have to remember to have several things with you."

And of course one student decided to play Devil's Advocate (but I think he's got a great point that we need to address issues of distraction and focus from the very beginning of tech integration):

"Teachers would help me learn better if they... removed computers from the classroom. Computers are too much of a distraction, and it is difficult to focus when there is a plethora of other activities that can be done on the computer, from games to messaging services to websites."

I like to listen to my students. They know themselves pretty well. And they help me know them and they help me know how to teach them and they help me understand how to learn better together with them. 

And in the end, that's what it's all about.