The Garden of Tweetin'

I was asked to "intro twitter" for my cousin and her friend. I've been meaning to write a twitter blog post for a while now, so I thought I would gather some favorite resources and share a few thoughts.

Here is a helpful intro for educators from Langwitches Blog: So, What About This Twitter Thing?

So, What About This Twitter Thing

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Beyond the most basic intro, to really "do twitter" you have to just go ahead and do it. Twitter is a garden of sorts. To plant a garden, at some point, you have to get in there and get your hands dirty. There's no "right way/wrong way"...there is just your way which you can only figure out by figuring it out. You can read guidebooks, ask an expert, learn from your mistakes... eventually you come to realize that, with attention and care, you have gardened your way to a decent little patch that makes YOU happy.

But that doesn't mean that MY garden- with it's marigolds and tomatoes, usually in need of weeding- would be the right garden for YOU. For example, if you were planting a vegetable garden, you would be likely to choose vegetables that would be useful and valuable to you and your family. It's the same with your twitter garden. The power of twitter lies in the opportunity to build a useful and valuable network, of like-minded (or different-minded) interesting people. My twitter network consists mainly of educators. Many educators on twitter use the term PLN- personal learning network and use twitter for their own lifelong learning.

I'll happily share with you how I manage twitter today (which might change tomorrow or next week). I currently like Tweetdeck for these reasons:

-I like to be able to view multiple columns showing different streams. It's easy to add and change them, too.

-I like the "edit then retweet" capability which the web RT doesn't offer.

-I tweet from multiple accounts, and that is very easy to do in Tweetdeck where I can be logged-in as more than one tweeter. (I have also tripped myself up this way by tweeting from the wrong account. Oops!)

Just in case you were wondering, what I don't like about Tweetdeck is the newer "deck.ly" feature which lets you go over 140 characters. It just doesn't sit right with me- the whole genre of twitter is 140 characters or less. I have disabled it on my Tweetdeck. Go to "settings" and uncheck "Use Deck.ly for sending long updates."

A few more thoughts:

•Filtering the mad, mad world of too-much-information is a high art. Again, everyone does it differently BUT (since you asked my opinion)- don't habitually re-tweet articles you haven't read or at least skimmed. Being a good filter, and only sharing what you think is truly worthwhile and relevant builds your credibility.

•Follow celebrities if it makes you happy and adds something to your twitter stream, but that's not really the "twitter thing." Twitter is about having lots of different interesting people to talk to and listen to. Choose who you follow thoughtfully, just as you would decide what to plant in your garden. For more on this idea, read this great post, "Curating People" by self-proclaimed "mayor of the internet" ijohnpederson.

Because I know you really want to know, these are the celebrities I follow (at least right now)-

Dr. Wayne Dyer

Sir Ken Robinson

The Dalai Lama

Dan Millman (author of The Way of the Peaceful Warrior)

None of them follow me back. They also don't tweet much and, most likely, someone else tweets for them anyway.

•Be yourself. If it's interesting to you, share it. Follow real people who interest you, and add something to the conversation. Give and take.

One last analogy :) -- Think of twitter as a giant cocktail party. Who do you choose to talk to? The spammer who is just there to sell something or get you to join an MLM scheme? The self-promoter who talks incessantly about herself? The person who has nothing original to say and only repeats what he has just heard someone else say? Or the interesting person who listens and adds something intelligent to the mix? Be that person.

Great minds must think alike. Just after I wrote this, Silvia Tolisano shared with me a new presentation she created on personal learning networks, also using the idea of the garden as a point of reference.

Building a Personal Learning Network

View more presentations from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

It's all just talk until you DO It

Theory. Or practice?

It is one of those sticking points I bump up against over and over again in education circles. The talkers are often not the teachers; the teachers who are working hard every day in classrooms with students often don't have time to theorize, write, tweet all night, present at or even attend many conferences.

I am personally aware of many exceptions to this, and, frankly, I have no idea how they do it.

But I don't want to argue, blame or criticize nor do I want to praise or name names. Everyone has a role to play, and anyone who cares enough about education to devote themselves to it at any level, in any way, has my appreciation and respect.

Something really stood out, though, to me tonight during the weekly edchat on twitter. The topic for discussion was about assessment, and many tweeters were glorifying eportfolios as a form of assessment. I jumped into the chat, as I am working this year on piloting eportfolios with students. Yes, I said working and with students. I tweeted-

(and then re-tweeted it again since no one responded).

I did get a few "try so and so, I think they are doing portfolios..." and one tweeter who responded that he is planning to try them next year. And I did get one person to join the new digital portfolios group I created at the Curriculum 21 ning.

This eportfolios experiment is proving to be one of the most challenging things I have undertaken with K-8 students. Most of the high-quality samples I have found are from adults and college/grad school students (education and graphic design).

I'm certainly not advocating that we don't talk about anything unless we've tried it. Everything has to begin in the ideas-talking-thinking stage...

It is just making me wonder how much of the "teachers should be doing this" talk is based in real-teacher, real-classroom, real-school reality.

image credit

Building Your Brand Online

Simple K-12
Iheartedtech.com

do you see yourself as a mini-biz? Scott Mcleod....how do you market yourself in a way that reaches people outside of the space you are operating in? brand/marketing helps reach more people.
have to find a personal voice
there is worth in having a brand as a teacher-Scott Mcleod

hiring committee- we looked for people's online presence
- important for employment

Carol Broos- sees a lot in college, wants to see more in K-12
wherever you participate online you are creating a brand, a lot of people haven't consciously worked on creating their brand yet.

How to transition to a new personal brand? move content to ebooks and link to it

keeping "selves" separate ie: having a separate facebook page for personal contacts, a professional brand that is only professional
schools have a fear of social media, need to teach kids how to use it , create brands, represent selves. (Yup, so true)
time commitment, get out of it what you put into it.

What is your goal?
different goals for different people.
many agree that you don't need to necessarily have a goal

Twitter--
How to get districts, schools, classrooms to use twitter?
See EdTechLeader's twitter resources for teachers.

how to increase presence with the blog, using all the pieces to build your brand (twitter, blog, etc). Go to every social networking platform and secure your brand. Even if you don't think you want to use it, secure it. Also think about securing social media sites for your school, even if you're not using them yet.

namechk.com - to check for availability of your name across sites

A Twitter Fable

Actually, it's a true tale, not a fable. You can decide for yourself the moral of the story. 

I am fairly liberal with my follow-backs on twitter. If the person is any type of educator or seems (based on their tweets and other stats) fairly interesting, not trying to sell me something(a big one) nor on a quest to follow thousands nor playing some sort of follow-and-seek game, I usually follow back. 

Anyhow, I got followed a while back by a guy whose name I'm not going to use in this story. I'm not sure why I decided not to reciprocate the follow, but I didn't. I couldn't tell much about him from his profile or picture. Definitely had a sense of humor, not following many people at all. Wondered why he followed me. Maybe a fluke?

I noticed, though, that he was quick to @me in response to any of my computer question tweets. Recognizing his worth in my network, I quickly corrected my earlier non-follow-back. I still had no idea what value I brought to him, nor why he chose to follow me. It was pretty obvious that he wasn't a teacher, and, aside from being a family-man with a sense of humor who was quick to help me with computer-related questions, I didn't know much about him. 

Recently, I tweeted asking for help with a server problem. He dm'ed (direct messaged) me and told me he could help me but easier to ichat than to dm back and forth in twitter

As we started chatting he made the disclaimer that although he worked for Apple, he wasn't helping me as an employee of Apple. 

Fine by me!

Not only was I able, after our brief chat, to fix the specific issue, but I gained a better overall understanding of the server. I have been in-over-my-head with the server for years. Reading through the big, fat training manuals has not helped me understand one thing. 

Later, out of curiosity, I googled him. He is a senior engineer for Apple. 

I still have no idea why he follows me! 

image from gesteves.

Where to share?

I have a lot of student work that I'd like to share. 

Of course, I want to share it with parents. 

I'd also like to share with interested people in the education community. I know that for me, one of the best ways the Internet has completely made teaching easier and more enjoyable is by giving me access to what other teachers and students are doing. When I see student work that I like, I am quick to think of ways to adapt it to my students and my school. 

While I want to share, I also really want and need to be efficient. Share smarter not harder.

I'm here to tell you that I have tried several strategies already including blogs, nings, wikis, a password-protected site called edline for which our school pays a yearly subscription fee...

I'm starting to feel like an online litterbug of sorts, putting my things all over and not keeping them neat and organized. That is one issue for me, being organized and having things make sense in terms of navigation and layout, as well as being visually appealing. The other issue I face is that no matter where I share their children's work, very few parents take the time to go look at it. I think that this is because technology is not yet fully integrated at our school; it is seen as an "extra." That is a topic for another post, though.

I decided to ask my PLN on twitter what they do.

Here is what they said:

It looks like everyone is finding different things that work for them. 

Here are some examples I like. 

Langwitches    I like how organized this site is. Everything in one place and easy on the eyes. Silvia has multiple blogs and places she shares, but they are all linked here to the main site. You could probably spend days reading this amazing blog and following links, and get yourself a thorough education in technology integration at the elementary level. 

Cliotech's wiki This wiki impresses me with the way it is organized. It also seems to be a really complete site with so much in one place.

A table of contents Here's an idea. Put all your stuff all over the place, but then catalogue it with links in a "Where's all your stuff?" place. 

Vicky's wiki Another excellent example. She really uses the wiki and linked blog to communicate to students and parents as well as to show what they're doing. It makes sense and is all in one place and easy to navigate. This is the idea I was trying to emulate when I started my school wiki this year.

All of these examples represent an amazing amount of work!

I have this blog, which I really want to keep as a professional space. Obviously it is public and any parents can easily find it, but its purpose is not to communicate to parents. I also started a blog (which I will not link to because I haven't kept up with it)to share lesson plans and projects with students/parents, as well as a wiki in progress(with the same intended audience- students and parents). I also post work on edline and share samples on various nings. I suppose it is part of my desire to focus that I want to have all of my work in one place or at least all linked to one place. Or maybe I should just let go and post things all over the web and let google take care of it for me.

Where do you share?

Social Dynamics and Learning: Online and Off

The post Disconnecting, by Jennifer Jones (@injenuity) got me thinking....

Actually, social dynamics, both in and out of the classroom, is not a new topic of thought for me. I am almost constantly assessing and reassessing the social dynamics in the classroom and how I can best direct them. 

One thing I have learned is that people are extremely sensitive. Those who seem tough and uncaring are often the most sensitive of all. We all have our ways of protecting, pretending, rationalizing away the things that offend us. Some take on the role of the bully so as not to be bullied.  But I believe that just about everyone is deeply sensitive to the people around them and that feelings are easily bruised.

When I was a classroom teacher I spent the first month of school on team-building activities. Integrating with language arts (and even, at times, math) I consciously worked to build a community based on the TRIBES norms:

•Mutual Respect

•Attentive Listening

•No Put Downs/Give Appreciations

•The Right to Pass

Simple, and yet they cover virtually any problem that might arise. If we all followed them, the world would definitely be on the road to being a happier place, no? One thing I addressed with my classes very early on was how, in order to be able to grow and learn, we must be able to risk, and, thus, in order for any of us to learn, our classroom MUST be a safe place, a community where we can safely take risks.

Now I teach in the computer lab and I don't have the opportunity to build classroom community. The classes at my school are small, and there is only one class at each grade level so the dynamics can be quite intense.  

It is not only what we teach but how we manage the classroom that impacts the social dynamics. If I got down to it, this could be an extra-long post, citing example after example of times I think I've gotten it right and times I know I've missed the boat. 

Some examples of management decisions that affect dynamics in the lab:

• Do I let students choose their seats? do I let them choose their partners?

I don't have any hard and fast "rules" for how I do things. But during my many years in the classroom, I have picked up a few strategies that work:

For partners -- I have "partner cards" that I keep in my desk drawer. On each card is written one half of a pair. For example: one card says "peanut butter." If you get the peanut butter card, naturally you will look for the person with the jelly card, and that is your partner for the day. The fun of the activity, the randomness and mystery of who your partner will be, gets the partnerships off to a great start. However, I don't leave it to chance. Before I even pass out the cards, we all practice our biggest smiles. I remind them that we never show disappointment when we discover our partner because it might hurt someone's feelings. Kids NEED the reminder. I do believe that most times they don't want to hurt another's feelings - they just aren't thinking about the other person. 

 

Another Example:

In my afterschool blogging class this year, I left things very unstructured. I always gave an assignment, but left it up to the students to decide if they wanted to do that or something else related to their blog. One day's assignment was to leave comments, and some did, on a few blogs. Only one student left a comment on every blog in the group. And, of course, I commented on every blog, at least a few times during the class. Several students got comments from real life friends not in the class, parents and student bloggers from other places. I thought all was well.

But on the last day of class, with only a few minutes left, one girl came to me and said, with disappointment on her face, "I only got a comment from ______ (the student who had commented on every blog)." Thinking quickly I wrote all the students names on pieces of paper. I told them they had one final assignment - to pick a name and write a comment on that person's blog. Randomly, the disappointed girl's name was chosen by the one person who had already commented on all the blogs. It happens. But what surprised me was how excited all of the kids were about getting a new comment from someone in the class. It turned out to be a great ending activity for the class. Something about the randomness and the mystery of who picked who's name...

I know how good it feels to get comments on my blog, too. 

There is something about being recognized. Receiving a comment shows that someone has read your words or at least looked at your blog, your creation. There is a human need for attention, to be valued or validated, by others. 

The ISTE nets for students recognizes "communication and collaboration" as vital 21st century skills. We need to put our students into situations that push them out of their comfort zones, that give them opportunities to work with different people. We need to help them navigate the murky waters of interacting with others in polite and productive ways. This is difficult. 

My Thoughts about Twitter-

In the recent past, there was a spate of blog posts about twitter followers and the blogosphere being an elite cocktail party. I read those posts with great interest, although at the time I did not join in the discussion. What I recognized, through many of the posts and comments I read,  was this sensitivity, a need for recognition and validation. I know that I have given a lot of thought to the whole follow/following on twitter. If a real person (as opposed to a spam type follower) follows me, is it impolite not to follow back? I know there are no hard and fast answers to this, and everyone has to do whatever works best for them. Whatever guidelines we follow, we all know, rationally, that we can't become sensitive about twitter. But, nevertheless, people do. 

How can we teach our students the finer points of online interaction if we, teachers, are uncertain of them? How can we create classrooms where it is safe to take risks if, as adults, we do not model the values of respecting and appreciating people for who they are, of reaching out to include everyone? 

Communication and Collaboration. Why are these so fraught with possibilities for misunderstanding and hurt feelings? What are your best strategies for teaching and classroom management that foster inclusivity in a real way? Are you thinking about yourself or about the other person when you interact on blogs or twitter or wherever you interact online?