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LeadershipProfessional Learning

Power Learning with Unconferences

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Ready to unleash the transformative learning potential of key team members? Schedule your own campus or district unconference event. Unconferences can facilitate sharing and growth and empower innovators to fuel engaging learning conversations. In this blog entry, we’ll explore practical organizational tips and insights.

What Is an Unconference?

Unconferences may be defined in this way:

An unconference is a conference organized, structured and led by the people attending it. Instead of passive listening, all attendees and organizers are encouraged to become participants, with discussion leaders providing moderation and structure for attendees. (Source)

A particular type of unconference is an edcamp. Let’s take a closer look at edcamps.

Resources

Kristen makes some great points, among them these:

“Everything we need to learn is in the people on this campus. We don’t need an outside consultant,” said the campus assistant principal. It was one of the few times I had heard an administrator affirm teacher experience. Teachers are repositories of wisdom and insight.  Every year, school districts deposit knowledge and skills into teachers. Unconferences tap into that expertise. What’s more, they  make collaborative learning possible. These sessions are NOT about idolizing experts, keynotes, or vendors. Organic events, unconferences put a lot of smart people together to talk.

A variety of resources cite research describing the learning strategy.

Watch these videos on Flipgrid of educators sharing why edcamps are valuable.

Get Started with Unconferences

Ready to give unconferences a try? Start by using the “four corners” approach (wonderful for small teams or groups) featuring the most often mentioned topics. You can do this at the faculty meeting level, campus, or district level.

Step 1 – Organize

In this step, you will want to create a website or Twitter hashtag to advertise the event. Here are some examples:

Step 2 – Collect topics you want to discuss

Step 3 – Seek Volunteer Moderators

Step 4 – Connect, Discuss, and Share

Share how folks can connect about the day using free tools. Here are a few examples (each link takes you to an example of that tool’s use for edcamps): TodaysMeet.com, Padlet, Flipgrid, Voxer, etc.

Into the Future

If you are seeking to move your team into the future, unconferences present a wonderful professional learning opportunity.

 

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teachers in a meeting
Leadership

Social Media for School Leaders

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Ever wish parents in your school could turn on their smartphone and see a moment-by-moment update of how their child is learning? Blending social media with websites, you can share powerful stories, stories that feature your school’s children. This blog entry provides five tips you can put into place for success.

Why Do It

This past weekend, a teacher cornered me at a social event. “I don’t get why we need social media in school. It’s a distraction,” she said. She missed the point of social media in the classroom, the principal’s office, and the board room.

“We’ve found Twitter to be a really effective mode for two-way communication–where it’s not just [the Department of Education] putting out a press release or statement, but … something that’s soliciting feedback from everyone–teachers, students, [and] parents,” says Daren Briscoe, deputy press secretary for the Department of Education.

Adding a Twitter poll can be a quick way to gain insight into what staff or parents are thinking.

Social Media in the Classroom

“Thanks for your tweets about last night’s parent meeting!” shared Joyce with her campus principal, while holding the hand of her kindergarten aged child in the hallway. Joyce, a parent on the go who lives on her smartphone, often calls into school to check on her child’s progress, as well as tries to keep track of what’s going on. Contrast Joyce’s experience with mobile phones with the once-a-day parent, Emily, who visits her son’s classroom web page to find out what homework assignments there are and catch up on what major concepts are being covered in class. “I really appreciate how, when I visit the web page, the right-hand column has pictures of my child working on projects in class!” The updates–which can include images and audio–feature students working in groups on projects at school and are fed in by Twitter updates.

Here are a few tips for creating successful social media learning experiences.

Tip #1 – Build a safe online learning space for your school.

Social media tools abound for building an easy-to-update virtual space that can transform how parents view your school. You want parents to see beyond the brick and mortar of the school to the spirit captured in images, multimedia, and children’s voices. Think of it as allowing your school spirit to shine through in ways you hadn’t imagined before. Build an online space using a variety of tools. These sites are easy to create and allow us to blend images, video, and sounds easily in one place. To protect student names and images, always make sure to have a posted checklist in each classroom of who can be photographed or audio/video-recorded.

Tip #2 – Set up your school Twitter account.

Many of us have heard of Twitter as a way to build professional learning networks that give us access to online professional development 24/7. What many fail to realize is that each Twitter update can be embedded in a blog entry or website. You can often copy-and-paste the link to the tweet or use Twubs.com to embed the tweet.

Tip #3 – Archive All Your Tweets

Worried that you might miss all the tweets relevant to your class, campus, or district hashtag? Use a simple solution like TAGS:

 

Tip #4 – Hashtag your school’s Tweets

If every one in your school knew the secret keyword to search for on the Internet, wouldn’t this make it a lot easier to find information about your school? Currently, educators have conversations about various professional learning resources, such as #edchat and #cpchat and many others. These hashtags enable you and the school community to interact via Twitter. If you search on a Twitter hashtag for your campus, any 140-character tweet that includes the hashtag will be viewable.

Tip #5 – Encourage Sharing Online

It’s tempting to want to control all the tweets and online sharing that can go on by parents. Focus on creating a culture of empowered learners–adults or students–sharing what they are learning as they are learning it. With shared hashtags, you can easily pull in content and share excerpts from that content in your virtual space.

 

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success stories
Educational TrendsLeadership

CISD Matters: District Success Stories Come to Life

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger

This month we’re featuring ways you can share success stories in your district. The November TechEdge is all about innovative ways you can communicate what your district or school is doing right. If you’re a TCEA member, keep an eye out for it in your mailboxes soon! In the mean time, enjoy this guest blog describing a powerful program to share video success stories in Cleburne ISD.   

CISD Matters is a district-wide, bi-monthly video presentation that showcases what students and teachers are doing in Cleburne ISD. It is in its third year of production. The Cleburne ISD Superintendent, Dr. Kyle Heath, was instrumental in starting this initiative at the district level. He wanted the community to see our district stories come to life in a video format.

Tips for Starting a Video Program

Many lessons have been learned while producing CISD Matters. If your district is interested in developing something like this, please consider the following. First, keep your production short. Shoot for 8 to 10 minutes tops. We try to limit the total number of stories to three or four at the most. It’s also important to capture what’s happening district wide. With this in mind, build a solid team that will select the best stories for your district. At Cleburne ISD, our team consists of Superintendent Dr. Kyle Heath, Director of Community Relations Lisa Magers, and me, Tracy Shea, the District Multimedia Specialist. We work together to choose the best stories for each broadcast.

Spreading the Message

Next, think about your distribution process. How will your students, parents, teachers, and community members see your videos? In CISD, we do this in several ways. The first is by posting videos on the front page of our district website. We want these positive messages to be one of the first things people see. If you post to a website, you want it to run on an online media player. A link will not get the same play. We use SchoolTube and embed the code into our website’s rich text. This embedding process creates the media player we use on the front page.

Email is another option. We want to cover all of the bases. Lisa Magers emails the video to the entire district. This method brings the story right to the employees and is just a click away.

The last distribution avenue we take is sharing the production through social media. If you use social media, please consider separating the stories into separate videos. As a standard, social media posts need to be short if they are going to gain traction. Again, this was a lesson learned. In fact, I feel social media is probably now one of our most used news outlets, so it is vital to include this communication medium as a distribution option. Finally, the big plus with social media is the sharing mechanism built within it. People can help share your story for you.

Producing Great Content

You also want to consider the production process. For this, I will speak from an AV production point of view. First, your total video needs to be concise. You only have your viewers’ attention for so long. Immediate engagement is key. Second, know that film and photos work together to tell stories. Event photos can easily be used to illustrate interviews. It takes different types of media to tell a story. Next, be prepared to support those you are interviewing. Often, they will need your direction. Sending the script to them before the shoot is a great way to decrease anxiety and help people feel comfortable. But ultimately, it comes down to how they feel when they are with you. Stories come alive when people feel relaxed.

As described above, a district-wide broadcast is an excellent way to reach stakeholders. Please know it takes time to get the product you want, but with each episode, improvements typically occur. If you would like more information about CISD Matters, please feel free to contact me.

For more communications resources, check out this blog on communication apps districts can’t live without or this one on communicating with photos.

This is a guest blog written by Tracy Perez Shea, the Secondary Instructional Technology and District Multimedia Specialist at Cleburne ISD. To learn more about Cleburne, visit their website here. You can also learn more about the CISD Matters program and check out the latest videos at their homepage here. 

 

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followership
Leadership

Followership: A Critical Skill to Be Learned

by Dr. Bruce Ellis
written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

Whether you are looking at college applications or reviewing popular blog posts, it seems that leadership is the top skill that everyone wants to develop or improve. Ironically, though, most of the actual work in the world gets done by those who aren’t in leadership roles but who are, instead, followers. All of us, at one time or another, must be followers. However, few people talk about what it takes to be a good follower. What DOES make a good follower? And can followership skills be taught? Below are a few characteristics I would like to suggest that are critical for those who excel in followership.

Know Your Leader

Everyone has quirks or things “that make us tick.” Knowing these about your leader can help you be more successful when interacting with him/her. For example, if your leader is not a morning person, then you probably don’t want to schedule a 7:30 a.m. appointment to talk about some critical issues that have arisen. If he/she spends Friday afternoon reflecting on the week and strategizing for the next week, you may want to respect that time and see if you can get an earlier appointment that day. Is he/she a detailed reader? If not, provide your information in a concise way…possibly using bullet points or some other structure that makes processing your information easier and more efficient.

Know Who You Serve

Many times, the leader is looking at the big picture and seeing things from a 30,000-foot view, communicating the vision and direction. You, on the other hand, are in the trenches working to make the vision a reality. To best do that, you need to know who you serve so that you can make the vision relevant and meaningful to them. The better you understand your audience, their needs, desires, frustrations, and passions, the better you can codify the vision in language and work that make sense to them.

Look for Problem Areas

Unlike some folks who live to point out problems and complain about everything, someone with good followership skills looks for the problems so they can be addressed and averted, thereby giving their audience the best experience possible. So, while identifying problems, they are also generating potential solutions which can be tested and integrated into the process or system. Many times, these successes go unnoticed by leaders.

Provide Feedback

Just as a good leader should provide feedback to employees on how they can improve practice, a good follower should also have an avenue to provide feedback to his leaders. For as skilled as the leader is and as much as he/she may know, there are still blind spots and areas of weakness or bias that he/she may not be aware of. Be specific when providing feedback (view in the trenches), but also share the impact it has on the vision (30,000-foot view).

So, if you find that your inner voice is saying that you are not a leader, rejoice! That means you have the awesome privilege of demonstrating your followership prowess and modeling it for those around you. Be careful, though. You may find that in being a great follower, you will soon have folks looking to you as their leader.

What other skills should those in roles of followership possess? Jump in the comments below and add to my list from which other readers can benefit. Or, if you have a great story of how you have excelled in followership at one time or another, let us know. You can post it in the comments below or email me at bellis@tcea.org; I’d love to hear your story.

 

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Future Ready
Leadership

Preparing for Your Student’s Future

by Jennifer Bergland
written by Jennifer Bergland

Have you taken the pledge? Every school district leader should take the Future Ready Pledge to work with all stakeholders to create learner-centered environments which:

  • Foster a culture of collaborative leadership
  • Provide rigorous academic content for all students to build life skills
  • Empower personalized, professional learning opportunities
  • Help schools and families transition to anytime, anywhere learning.
  • Rethink the use of space and time
  • Implement thoughtful data and privacy policies and protocols
  • Focus on long-term sustainability
  • Share and mentor for continuous improvement.

Future ReadyIf this sounds like the goal of your district and you haven’t taken the Future Ready Pledge, now is a great time to do so. Future Ready is an initiative of The Alliance of Excellent Education. Their goal is to assist district leaders to work collaboratively as they develop and implement personalized, research-based digital learning strategies that enable their students to achieve their full potential.

In addition to the Future Ready Pledge, they offer several ways to help jump start a district’s vision and planning efforts. The Future Ready Schools Institutes are free two-day professional development events that are designed to connect schools and districts who are implementing personalized learning in a digital environment. The goal is to provide regional networks to make it easy to share best practices and lessons learned. Check out the agenda for these free events and their locations.

If you don’t have the time or the resources to attend one of the Institutes (even though they are free!), their webinars are an excellent way to connect with experts and practitioners with good advice on issues pertinent to teaching in a digital classroom. Here are a couple to check out: Future Ready Librarians: What’s Not to Love, Amplify: Digital Teaching and Learning in the K-6 Classroom, and Blended Learning: Recommendations and Resources. Be sure and check out their upcoming webinars and chats.

Future Ready also partners with education conferences and conventions to identify sessions that are related to their frameworks. We did this at TCEA 2017 and will do so again at TCEA 2018. Tom Murray, from the Alliance for Excellent Education, will be presenting three sessions at TCEA 2018. Come learn ways you and your district can implement the concepts you learned at an FRS Institute. Or perhaps Tom’s sessions and others may inspire you to attend a future Institute.

Finally, you might want to check out the Future Ready Dashboard.  It is a free interactive planning tool that could be used by your district’s planning team as you implement blended learning. It will provide you with a Digital Learning Readiness Report with valuable information that ensures you keep your focus on student learning as you transition to a digital teaching and learning environment.

futureThis blog post is not meant to be exhaustive. The Future Ready initiative is not a one and done type of effort. They have proven over time that they are committed to their mission and are willing to adapt and grow. This is why TCEA is proud to be considered one of their partners. Hopefully I have whet your appetite to know more. Start by checking out their website.

 

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coaching
Announcements/Important DatesLeadershipProfessional Learning

Recharge at the Campus Technology Specialist Academy

by Dr. Bruce Ellis
written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

Like many educators, you, the campus technology specialist, probably find that more is expected of you each year. That’s one of the compelling reasons why teachers move out of the classroom to positions that support other teachers….only to find out that the grass may not be much greener on the other side. And if you hold a position on a campus or in a district where you coach teachers as they integrate technology, assist with basic troubleshooting, AND take on “other duties as assigned,” you may feel like you need to be recharged and refreshed before you burn out. That’s exactly what the Campus Technology Specialist Academy is designed to do: recharge and refresh you with new ideas, relevant solutions, and activities you can take back to your campuses.

Join us at the TCEA headquarters in Austin, Texas on November 16-17 for great learning and sharing that will inspire you and provide that needed support you’ve been looking for. You’ll have the opportunity to attend great concurrent sessions led by educators who are or have been in your shoes. Each hour, you’ll be able to connect with others like yourself who have a passion for helping teachers better integrate technology so that students can be engaged by outstanding lessons.

Registration is only $239 per person (which includes meals for both days and 12 hours of professional development credit). You can check out the specific content sessions in this year’s lineup by going here. There’s also an unconference time frame to ensure that your specific questions are addressed. The schedule for this academy includes:

DAY 1
7:30 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. – Check-in
8:00 a.m. – 8:30 a.m. – Welcome, Unconference Topic Selection, and Announcements
8:30 a.m. -10:00 a.m. – Concurrent Sessions
10:10 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. – Concurrent Sessions
11:10 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. – Concurrent Sessions
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. – Lunch (provided)
1:00 p.m. – 1:50 p.m. – Unconference Sessions
2:00 p.m. – 2:50 p.m. – Unconference Sessions
3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. – Closing Activity and Door Prizes for Day 1

DAY 1
8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. – Concurrent Sessions
10:10 a.m. – 10:40 a.m. – Birds of a Feather Sessions
10:50 a.m. – 11:40 a.m. – Concurrent Sessions
11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. – Lunch (provided)
12:45 p.m. – 1:35 p.m. – Concurrent Sessions
1:45 p.m. – 2:35 p.m. – Concurrent Sessions
2:40 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. – Next Steps, Survey, and Door Prizes for Day 2

Don’t let this year go by without making time to recharge and refresh…and why not do so with about 200 others for an enjoyable time that will help you make it through this year and then some! Register today and ensure that you can continue to provide the best support to your students and teachers.

 

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website accessibility
LeadershipTechnical Support

Website Accessibility for All

by Lori Gracey
written by Lori Gracey

If you are responsible for your district or campus website, then you are already familiar with the need for it to load quickly, to work on mobile devices, and to look good. But you may not be as familiar with the need to ensure that it is accessible to all individuals, including those with disabilities. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in five adults in the United States has a form of disability that impacts their use of a standard website; that’s more than 53 million people. And that’s why website accessibility is crucial.

How Disabilities Affect Website Design

According to the Virginia Department of Education, there are four categories of disabilities that affect website design:

  • Visual disabilities – blind, low-vision, vision impaired, elderly, including the following specific conditions: myopia, color blindness, glaucoma, and ocular albinism
  • Auditory disabilities – hearing impairments, including presbycusis, acoustic trauma, auditory processing disorder, and otosclerosis
  • Motor disabilities – physical disabilities limiting access to device-dependent web content, including repetitive stress injury, cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s, and muscular dystrophy
  • Cognitive disabilities – intellectual/development disabilities, including Down’s syndrome, autism, global developmental delay, and dyslexia

That’s an overwhelming list for a webmaster, to be honest. Here’s a better way to think about the problems that can prevent your website being accessible to everyone. If any of these are true of the site you maintain, then you need to make corrections.

  • Missing alternative text describing images for blind and low-vision users
  • Content inaccessible for users unable to navigate with a mouse
  • Inaccessible color combinations for textual information
  • Uncaptioned or inaccurately captioned videos
  • Inaccessible documents

Website Accessibility Resources

Once you’ve identified the areas on the website that need work, there are lots of resources to help you. Below are some of the better ones.

The most comprehensive web accessibility resources are from W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) WAI. It’s a large website with numerous links and tools. Here are some specific pages that should be helpful for getting started.

This site, again from the Virginia Department of Education, includes specific tools to address each of the common problems with accessibility.

This article from Terrill Thompson, “Good Examples of Accessible Websites,” provides basic evaluations of specific sites. It includes some very common sense and simple solutions as well.

Some of the tools recommended to districts to assess their current compliance include the following:

  • HiSoftware Cynthia Says Portal is a web content accessibility validation solution. It is designed to identify errors in your content related to Section 508 standards and/or the WCAG guidelines.
  • FireEyes is a free tool for testing websites for 508 compliance.
  • Tenon’s free checker is another free tool to test your site’s accessibility.

If you offer downloadable documents in Word, Google Docs, or PDF format on your website, you also want to ensure that those documents are accessible by all. You can use this detailed resource “Creating Accessible Documents” or this one to help. Also, if you need to provide subtitles for videos on your website, you can use the free tool Subtitle Horse.

Whether you maintain the website yourself or you pay a company to do that for you, it’s important that the content and information you post there is able to be seen and used by all. Take steps today to check on your site’s accessibility.

This blog was updated with additional resources on November 14, 2017.

 

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Speakup
CTO/CIOLeadership

SpeakUp Survey Opens October 16

by Jennifer Bergland
written by Jennifer Bergland

If you knew that 55 percent of your district’s parents thought their children would thrive in a blended learning classroom, would it impact your strategic planning for your school or district? Would it help your planning if you knew the five essential elements your teachers felt they needed to effectively and efficiently integrate digital content, tools, and resources into their daily instruction? Would it surprise you if you found that 53 percent of your middle and high school students felt they needed the Internet at home to do their homework, but only 13 percent of your teachers were assigning homework that needed the Internet? All of this information and so much more can easily be obtained by your district’s participation in the SpeakUp Survey. And by the way, these statistics are from the surveys completed by Texans in 2016.

Project Tomorrow is a national education nonprofit group whose mission is to “ensure that today’s students are well SpeakUpprepared to be tomorrow’s innovators, leaders, and engaged citizens of the world.” The SpeakUp Research Project for Digital Learning is a national research project and a free service to schools and districts to gather survey data from students, teachers, librarians, campus and district administrators, parents, and community members. It is designed to help education leaders as they create and implement their vision of the next generation learning model. And it is completely free to school districts.

You are probably thinking this sounds like way too much work, that you simply don’t have time to distribute all of these surveys and make sure they are completed. The good news is that they have made this process super easy. They have everything you need.

SpeakUP Support Materials

Some of the items you can find on their website to help you organize and promote the survey are listed below.

  • Welcome Packet – gives you enough information to get started
  • Flyers – to help promote the survey
  • Information Material – to help answer all your questions (timeline, testimonials, introduction letters to give to principals, etc.)
  • Social Media – suggested messages for the different social media outlets
  • Sample Emails – help you get the word out
  • Instructions – for each group you are targeting
  • Lesson Plans – in case you want your teachers to build this activity into a learning experience
  • Press Release – to communicate to your community that you want their input

speakupYou have complete flexibility with the implementation of the survey. If this is your first time, you could start small by targeting one school or one grade level. You could decide to only survey students and staff this year and add parents and community members the following year. Just remember, the more data collected, the more information you will have for your strategic planning. This brings us to the best part. After the data is collected, Project Tomorrow analyzes it and provides you with your own data in an extremely easy format to read and manipulate. They even have a PowerPoint template that you can use to easily import your district’s data.

Important Details

  • Register your district so all further communications from Project Tomorrow will get to the right person.
  • Promote the survey using all of their free materials.
  • Determine the time frame to conduct the survey. Project Tomorrow opens the survey on October 16 and closes it on January 19.

Information is power. Knowing what key stakeholders value and their opinions on certain issues can assist school district administrators when implementing new programs and adjusting current ones. This is especially important when the district is transitioning from a print-based instructional model to one that relies on the use of digital materials and technologies. The SpeakUp Survey provides your district an excellent opportunity to help gather the data you need to monitor and adjust during this transition. Gaining this information has never been so easy! What are you waiting for? Register now! 

 

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board election
Announcements/Important DatesLeadership

Make a Bigger Difference

by Lori Gracey
written by Lori Gracey

As an education professional, you are used to making a difference every day. Whether it is in the classroom, the library, the front office, the network operations center, or at central office, your dedication to the cause of helping all students learn and grow guides everything you do. Now it is time for you to expand your reach.

TCEA is seeking innovative, energetic, and committed professionals to serve on its board of directors. The board of 27 individuals from across the state helps to lead the association and its 17,500 members. They meet quarterly to discuss improvements to be made so that TCEA can better serve all of its diverse stakeholders. They help to ensure that the TCEA Convention & Exposition is a phenomenal learning event each year, working in a variety of roles during the week. And they fulfill a variety of extremely critical jobs that only they can do. They do all of this because they are committed to the mission of advancing teaching and learning through the use of technology

Open Board Positions

If you want to make a difference on a bigger scale, beyond your classroom or even your district, please consider running for office in this year’s election. The following positions are open and will be elected to serve starting April 1, 2018:

  • Vice President (three-year term; must have served as a voting member of the Board of Directors for two full years prior to the election year and completed the three full years prior to taking office)
  • Convention Chair Elect (two-year term; must have served as a voting member of the Board of Directors for two full years prior to election year and completed the three full years prior to taking office)
  • Membership Chair (two-year term; must have served as a voting member of the Board of Directors for two full years prior to election year and completed the three full years prior to taking office)
  • Area 6 Director (three-year term)
  • Area 13 Director (three-year term)
  • Area 14 Director (three-year term)
  • Area 15 Director (three-year term)
  • Area 18 Director (three-year term)
  • Area 19 Director (three-year term)
  • Area 20 Director (three-year term)

Qualifications for Nomination

If you are a member of TCEA and a teacher, administrator, or other employee of an educational entity in the state of Texas, you are eligible to run for office. Educational entities, according to our Bylaws, include public and private schools, colleges and universities, and governmental agencies concerned with education. Area directors must reside in the area in which they are running for election.

Nominations will be open October 2 through November 3, 2017. The election will be held online November 6 through 17. The nomination form and additional information can be found here. Won’t you consider working with us to make a difference for millions of students and their teachers as a TCEA board member?

 

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connected educator
Good TeachingLeadershipProfessional Learning

We’re Better When We’re Connected

by Dr. Bruce Ellis
written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

Long gone are the days when an educator could shut the door to his classroom and work in isolation. In today’s rapidly-changing world, the only way to grow and become better at our craft is to learn with and from other educators. To help meet that need, October has been designated as Connected Educator Month.

Started by the Department of Education in partnership with many organizations, communities, and companies back in 2012, this month is a time to focus on developing connections with other educators and educational organizations and experts. In order to help facilitate building those connections, below are a few of the ones I enjoy learning from as they share on a wide variety of educational topics. Besides considering connecting with these leaders, give us a shout out to let us know who you are in the comments – your name, where folks can find you (Twitter handle, blog site, etc.), and what you are passionate about! Let’s use this month to expand our network of resources so that we can all better support students’ innovative and effective use of technology in education.

Steven W. Anderson (@web20classroom)

Steven shares relevant and frank information about education and technology integration. You will find he consistently offers a wealth of resources that you will want to check out. And, in a world where mediocrity can be the norm, you will be motivated by his daily reminder to “Be Awesome!”

Eric Curts (@ericcurts)

If you use any of Google’s tools in your classroom, you will definitely want to connect with Eric. He shares tons of resources and relevant ideas that you can make use of with your students and pass along to your peers. Besides enjoying his tweets, be sure to check out his blog Control Alt Achieve.

Jennifer Gonzalez (@cultofpedagogy)

Jennifer’s Twitter bio includes the statement “I help teachers crush it in the classroom,” an understatement for sure. She provides great ideas and resources for teachers including (but not limited to) educational technology. You can also enjoy her blog, podcasts, videos, and more.

Ginger Lewman (@GingerLewman)

Her Twitter bio includes, “As a teacher, I’m a resource, not THE source” which aptly describes who she is. You’ll benefit from connecting with Ginger as you’ll get great resources and ideas related to teaching gifted and talented students, Google tools, technology integration, and more.

Sheryl NussbaumBeach (@snbeach)

Sheryl shares insights and ideas that further great education. Expect to get fresh information, whether it’s related to project-based learning, maker education, or any one of many other ed tech topics. You may also enjoy reading her blog at Powerful Learning Practice.

Matt Richardson (@MattRichardson)

It is an understatement to call Matt a Raspberry Pi evangelist. As the executive director of the Raspberry Pi Foundation North America, Matt enjoys sharing his knowledge and connecting other Raspberry Pi users as they create innovative, interesting, and sometimes odd inventions that make coding and learning fun and meaningful. Be sure to also check out the free educational resources for teaching, learning, and making with Raspberry Pi.

John Wink (@JohnWink90)

If you are looking for someone who is a true advocate for teachers, then this is your man. Whether he is sharing a quote, idea, or opportunity, you’ll find John is one who helps keep the main thing the main thing. Superintendent, author, and leader, he provides a wealth of expertise to take advantage of. You may also enjoy his blog at LeadLearning with John Wink.

I hope you enjoy exploring some of the educational leaders that I follow. As mentioned earlier, I’d like to hear from you as to who you are and some of the giants whose shoulders you stand on. Post your info in the comments below and help make Connected Educator Month even better! And, for more ways to connect with other educators and tech enthusiasts, check out TCEA’s list of upcoming events!

 

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