1:1 iPod Touches in the Spanish Classroom

@SenorG is doing great stuff with iPod Touches in his Spanish classroom! Here's a recent television report on what a social-tech-integrated learning experience can look like.

(And notice the use of TodaysMeet!)

The Voice of a Young Teacher Coming to Understand Social Technology

Here are comments from another of the students in my weekly ed school course on paperless classrooms and social tech integration. You can follow his Tweets and help him to build his PLN at: @teacherben.

I'm particularly struck by his idea that whether or not you might be able to incorporate these tools into whatever current classroom situation you might be in, one of the important things to recognize is that eventually your situation is going to catch up... so you might as well get your brain around the new network now, lest tomorrow you wind up on the business end of your own kicking foot:

I always have the same three thoughts every class session: (1) Some of these social media sites are really cool and some creep me out (the "creep me out" thought is occurring less and less as I get more and more comfortable putting my digital self out there); (2) I wish I could use this in my classroom, but I don't have the resources/ certain useful sites are blocked; and (3) I'm glad I'm becoming more aware of this digital world. My sister is an archivist who some time ago, got into social media professionally (as a person who deals with information technology). Because I'm now more linked in to digital social media, we were able to have a conversation (about storing information on "the cloud") that we would never have been able to have before. Beyond the personal gratification of being more aware of the web 2.0, it has turned out to be a really useful way to build my PLN. The other day, I Tweeted (crap, did I use the right term?) a question about how to upload files on to the cloud, and got a response in minutes- so helpful.

The class has also been helpful from a more theoretical perspective. If digital social media is the wave of the future in education, I'm glad I'm becoming aware of it now so I don't drown in it later. Even if I don't stay in education, it's nice to know what education might be like for my kids (assuming that happens some day). Beyond that, I was really hit by the two videos we watched in class in which two guys spoke at conferences about the social and political affects of social media. I guess Twitter and blogging and all that isn't just "kids stuff," although that's how I used to view it. Now if only my students could use it...

We are in a transition period.

And this transition period is not the pinnacle of the social technology era. It's rather the very moment when the map of that era is being laid out for the first time for the generals in the field to examine.

The decisions we make now and the strategies we develop are going to have long-term consequences.

And so, in the context of teacher education, I urge all of my ed school colleagues and ed school students to campaign for the clear inclusion of 'social tech in ed' coursework to become a standard of teacher preparation and -- and this is the big one -- for the use of and modeling of social technology in the classroom to become standard practice in all ed school classrooms regardless of discipline.

Young Teachers Speak Out on Social Tech in Education

Just finished teaching a fall semester course on Paperless Classrooms and Social Tech in Education. And I can't help but say that I was completely moved by the experience of watching young teachers go from social tech newbs to PLN-building professionals.

I'd like you to hear what they've had to say; so over the next couple weeks, with their permission I'll be re-posting some of their thoughts and observations about being a young teacher lucky (or unlucky) enough to have been thrust into the digital revolution.

First up is a piece by @JefeGORavens, who incidentally has become a regular contributor to #EdChat:

This is a collection of quotes that I have heard myself, that I do now say, and that I look forward to saying in the future.


Where I was:

"Twitter? What the.....? Hell no I ain't freakin' tweeting and twitting or whatever. Do I look like Ashton Kutchner?"
"Diigo? What the freak is a Diigo? That sounds like some Star Trek vehicle!"
"I now have a blog. Great. I feel like a 12 year old girl with boy problems. Maybe I should start writing in my diary again."
"When is this guy going to understand, I am a simple and basic guy. I can't be tweeting until dawn, diigoing up a storm, and then weeblyin it out all weekend. I need some air!"


Where I am now:

"Seriously dude, I really feel like this stuff is the future. We need to start doing this with our students."
"I know man, I thought twitter was for celebrity stalkers too, but now, I realize that my twitter account is the best PD I have ever gotten."
"#EDCHAT is amazing. In the span of 2 hours I get ideas for the classrooms, best practices, worst practices, ideas for bettering the school, links to websites, and support. In 2 hours of PD, I normally get tired, bored, and frustrated."
"What the.....? You're not on twitter? How do you expect to run for office, when your PLN doesn't even exist!?!"


Where I will probably be in the future:

"Okay estudiantes. Log onto my blog to find the conversation I posted. I want you to find the 5 mistakes in the conversation, and then create a new blog post in your own blog that lists all 5 mistakes."
"Principal Powell, I would love to give a demonstration at tomorrow's PD on how to use twitter and blogs and pixton effectively!"

I look forward to sharing the voices of more young teachers both in favor of and critical of social media in education.

Fountain of Youth: Reflections on Teaching Uses of Social Tech to Young Teachers

Spent the evening leading my weekly Social Tech in Ed class.

And they are starting to get it.

We've shifted gears from demonstrations of how to use the tech and sessions building PLNs to the hard and vital work of actually integrating SM into daily classroom teaching and learning.

And I am so impressed with how far these young teachers have come in five weeks.

Some of you will remember the "I am scared of Twitter" teacher I mentioned several weeks back. Well, now she's taking part in Tweeted ed discussions and seamlessly using Twitter to complement our f2f classroom discussions. A young teacher who slammed Second Life as useless a while back just stopped by after class to talk about ways he wants to use it to simulate museum education in his classroom. Today, the teachers took the role of students in a social tech integrated AP English classroom; and to a person, even the most self-described 'math'-minded (as well as those just shy to speak) blogged beautiful reflections on the structure and meaning of T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land'.

This is the power of social tech in action. And this is why I am so committed to teaching it's application to teachers.

Because we need our teachers to understand that it's not about 'using tech', but rather is about fully engaging in the reality of the 21st century. And we need them to understand that -- if anything -- social tech is a fountain of youth when it comes to learning and ideas.

Let's encourage teachers to drink from this fountain and re-enliven their teaching and learning.

I certainly don't mind handing out the cups.

Tomorrow's Friday Chat: Grassroots Mentoring of Social Tech in Schools

Tomorrow, we'll be having a Friday Chat session at 10:15AM EST on Today's Meet.

The topic: Grassroots Mentoring of Social Tech in Schools.

We'll talk about mentoring colleagues in an inviting and nonthreatening way on all of the ways they can integrate social tech into both their daily classroom practice as well as their ongoing personal professional development.

Because social tech isn't about following rules and jumping through hoops; it's about empowerment.

What to Do When Students Abuse Social Technology

A reader writes:

I have been using blogging for the last year and a half and had a huge recent set back. Two posts were added to a student assignment, using cursing, insulting my students, the school, and I.

All student identities are anonymous so no one can track them, but parents are unwilling to give students emails, and therefore cannot get IDs. I also monitor all comments, and therefore caught it pretty quickly. This has never happened in my year and a half of blogging assignments

Any advice for this? It's so disheartening to take so many small steps forward and then one giant leap back.

Go public.

And I'm talking big time.

Don't sit on this. Don't treat it as an isolated disciplinary event. And don't get despondent.

Go public.

Hold a meeting for the school community; maybe try to work this out with your PTA. Make sure there are tons of parents there.

And show them the offending comments.

And explain to them that these sorts of comments are not a product of technology.

Rather, these comments are an example of why we need to teach kids how to use social tech. I've said it before: Don't like using YouTube because of all the vulgarity and hate in the comments? Then teach kids how to use social tech responsibly and help raise a generation that will not tolerate abusive language on YouTube.

The parents need to understand that social technology is not going away. And they need to understand that it is in their own best interest that their kids understand both how to use it and how to be responsible digital citizens.

This sort of thing, more than anything else, should help bolster your argument for why we need to be integrating social tech into our classrooms on a daily basis. Because it's about changing culture. Take charge of this teachable moment.

Tales of a Third Grade Blogger (or, The Year Social Tech Broke)

My twin boys have been blogging throughout the summer.

They've got lists of favorite books, reviews of favorite video games, and a variety of stories and poems about bunnies, battlefields, and everything in between that an eight year old boy might dream about.

And now, after a talk with their teachers, they've got an audience.

Turns out their teachers (same ones I wrote this letter to) are crazy about the idea of their students blogging. And so, they've given my boys permission to do their weekly home/school connections via their blogs.

Not just that, but they want the boys to teach blogging to the rest of their classmates.

Raising a literal bevy of third grade bloggers.

My wife was the one who talked with the teachers during parent night and relayed this information to me; I meanwhile was Mr. Babysitter handling the after-school kid crowd. I can't express how happy I am and how proud I am both of my kids and their teachers. I feel like my little corner of the world just tripped into the 21st century.

This afternoon, my principal wrote a blog post about the changing nature of education and the worthiness of social media in the classroom. Earlier in the day, Bob -- who you should be following (and helping) -- showed me the latest article on Facebook and social tech ubiquity. And now this. All in one day.

Makes me feel like 2009 is the Year Social Tech Broke.

A Young Teacher Reflects on Twitter in the Classroom

Been teaching a weekly course on Social Tech in Education, as many of you know.

Well, this evening I took a look at the blog of one of my students, a young teacher in Baltimore. Please, please, please read what he wrote yesterday about students' response to Twitter in the classroom and please comment on his blog.

I think it's a very powerful read.

And I think this is a great example of what students and teachers can do together when not hindered by the ridiculousness that is so much of our educational system.

Social Tech in Education Class

Just led a group of young teachers through a class dissecting Twitter.

Tonight was week two in my weekly class on Social Media in Education. I encourage you all to check out our class wiki (sort of a fluid syllabus). I'm open to ideas and am actively seeking advice on making this course better.

Having a blast, BTW.

From the PLN: Teachers Speaking out on Social Media

A number of readers wrote back concerning our recent discussion of PLNs and social tech for professional development.

Reader Shaken writes:

I'm a new teacher (just into my second year) and have found the three months using a PLN of more value than my entire time at Uni. To have the knowledge, expertise, experience, ideas and thoughts of innovative educators at my fingertips is incredible. I am learning so quickly and have now found myself teaching my colleagues.

Reader Mel writes:

I'm currently trying to change my PLN behaviour.

For years I've been a lurker. I've read edublogs, been on Ning and been following my twitter feed. Now I'm attempting to be apart of the voice out there and I think what you're saying here is a big part of that but in reverse.

I've been following others but not giving of myself and is that fair either, no. I have something to contribute to help the network work better. Also, by doing so the network is making more of an impact on me.

Another reader commented on the changing nature of teaching itself in light of social media. Here's a particularly prescient selection from a well considered argument.

Reader Seth writes:

But there's another level to all of this that is worth thinking about: educating teachers to educate their students in public exposes the foibles of the students (directly) and of the teacher (at least indirectly, and sometimes directly) to public scrutiny. It's scary business. It requires some very real confidence in yourself as a person and as a teacher to be able to not know something in public -- or to correct a mistake in public.

For many teachers faced with social media, I think this is part of the very real threat that they feel: they are turning their classrooms open to (potentially judgmental) strangers -- and ceding centerstage, and ceasing to be the expert, but instead being a learner with their students.

It's big stuff, and technology is a symptom, and not the disease. In almost every case where we talk about technological issues, what we're getting at are fundamental questions of pedagogy and philosophy. The technology just exposes some of these more-buried issues.

Wiki Syllabus

Spent the day working on a new wiki syllabus for the grad class I'm teaching this semester on the topic of social tech in education.

Yes, that's right: Wiki Syllabus.

Because, over the course of the semester, I want and will encourage my students to update, remix, and redesign my syllabus. I want them to own it. I want it to reflect their needs.

I'll be meeting with them again on Thursday and will be presenting the new wiki to them. After I do, I'll make it available online for all of you to see as well. Both for you to see some of the resources I've gathered as well as to see what it is that young teachers just entering the field really want.

Syllabus as ever-changing adventure. That's the paperless way.

Educating Young Teachers in the Use of Social Tech in Education

Spent last evening with a group of young teachers in Baltimore.

This was the first of our ten sessions on social technology in education, and a few things struck me as noteworthy.

First of all was the professionalism of the group. It's not that I don't regularly encounter teachers who take their profession seriously, rather it's so long been a standard quip that young teachers are so inherently unprofessional that it was a nice fork-in-the-eye of hearsay to see that our young teachers -- at least the folks in my group -- are more than equipped with a good set of professional skills.

Second was that by-and-large, these young teachers are unaware of everything we've been talking about on this blog. That is, with the exception of two or three 'social' Twitterers, the only social technologies represented among the group were MySpace and Facebook. And almost everyone who admitted to using MySpace claimed that they had long since given the service up.

In a way, there seemed to be a bit of embarrassment surrounding the use of social networking. Many admitted that they'd not want their students peeking into their own FB profiles.

Ten weeks should change that attitude.

One of the goals of this course is to help the teachers build their PLNs, so it was exciting to see so many of them sign up for their first Twitter accounts. In fact, we got off to what I consider a good start beginning with a review of the shift in educational technology from the old hardware days to the Cloud and social media followed by a look into the work of folks like McLeod, Fisch, and Richardson.

Then it was on to the nitty gritty of building a digital profile: students created their own Weebly pages to be used as the hub of their social network (I've found this is a relatively easy way to organize if you are using several Web 2.0 services). Folks left the class with a web page, a Twitter account, Diigo, and instructions for starting a blog.

Certainly a different sort of thing than when I was in Ed School.

Next week, we'll take a look at Google Apps for education and Google Profiles as well as ways to activate one's PLN. And on that latter note, I have to give a big hearty shout-out to my own PLN across the Twitterverse: responding in a massive voice in my request for things young teachers should know about Twitter, you all gave the medium the chance to perfectly illustrate the message.

Thank you and I hope you all continue to be a part of this building process for these young teachers over the course of the next ten weeks.

What's in a Tool?

Tonight's the first night of a ten week course I'm teaching on social tech and education at Johns Hopkins.

Here's a question directed to the folks out there using social tech in the classroom on a regular if not daily basis: if you were teaching the course, what are a few Web tools you'd insist that every new teacher learn about in grad school?

And the classic part two: Why? What is it about these tools that makes understanding them so essential to teaching in the digital age?

Comment away, I'm looking forward to reading your ideas, sharing them, and debating them with my students.

Grading in a Social Tech Integrated Classroom

Have put a lot of thought into how I am going to grade students this year, and I've decided on the following.

First of all, I'm not giving any tests or quizzes.

At least none of the traditional variety.

Instead, based on a 100 point scale per quarter: 50 points will be given for daily blogging and social bookmarking, 10 points will be giving for a series of Pixton-based vocab/terminology checks, and 40 points will be earned for completing two projects of the student's design and interest.

Abuse of Twitter and our social media community ends up in minus-5 points and a referral to the dean.

And that's it.

I'm especially excited about the blogging because that was so successful last year; I am equally excited about the social bookmarking, as I think it will encourage students to explore more widely. For these two tasks, the student will earn 50 points (.5 point per blog post up to 25 points; .5 point per bookmarks up to 25 points). They must maintain a daily schedule and I'll be regularly checking to see that they are taking the task seriously and not just giving me fluff. Part of the way I plan to do this is by having them annotate their bookmarks in Diigo. That'll also give us the latitude to share and mark up each other's findings which promises to be fun.

To give a little guidance to the blog posts, each day of the week will be themed, each day corresponding to a question; so Monday is 'Who', Tues 'What', Weds 'When', Thurs 'Where', and Fri 'Why'. This will be applied to history, grammar, literature, music... whatever we happen to be talking about that week in class.

As for Pixton, I found last year that this was hands-down the most effective tool for helping students remember vocab. Basically they create, share, and remix their own Web 2.0-based comics; each comic demonstrates the vocab or terminology in narrative form.

The two quarterly projects are going to be specific and based on student interest. I'm going to let this grow organically and will get back to you all on where it leads.

I'm going to take the approach that we are all starting at the bottom of the mountain and that our blogs, bookmarks, comics, and projects are the tools we use to get to the top of the mountain. I've just finally come to the point in my teaching where I don't like the sort of attitude and classroom environment that traditional testing and grading wind up producing. So I'm trying to create an assessment experience that better reflects the social tech thrust of my teaching.

I'm very excited for our prospects this year. It'll be my first year teaching World History and I'm really looking forward to teaching three Freshman classes -- integrating social tech into their academic experience and expectations from the very start of their high school careers.

Follow 'Social Tech and Education Conference' at #steconf

Originally considered live blogging the Social Tech and Ed conference, but am having better conversations via Twitter.

If you are reading this live, follow #steconf and get in on the discussion.

Social Technology and Education Conference

Headed up to Massachusetts for the Social Technology and Education Conference.

Will be live blogging from the conference via CiL as well as presenting on 'Twitter in the Classroom' and sitting in on a panel about 'Best Practices in Social Technology'.

Stay tuned for updates live from Harvard Square.

Social Technology in Education Lesson Plan Wiki

Seeking teachers to submit content to the new Social Technology in Education Lesson Plan Wiki!

There are so many fresh approaches being taken to the integration of social and participatory media in education, I thought it would be a useful thing to have a practitioner-created resource full of lesson plans demonstrating the best practices in social tech enhanced teaching.

Feel free to submit content and ideas. It's a wiki... you can't mess it up. Experiment, mash it up, get some thoughts out there, and let's put together a nice free and collaborative resource.