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Digital LiteracyEducational Trends

Hashtag Heroism: Rise Against the Wind

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Are you ready to save the world, one hashtag at a time? Why not engage in hashtag heroism? This is an attempt to save the world with hashtags that show unity and respect. It is life-affirming to engage in hashtag heroism, and I invite you to share your positive story. Tag your efforts on the behalf of others using these hashtags:

#hashtagheroism #tcea

Be unafraid to show how you, or perhaps others who have have helped you, have risen against the wind…the winds of adversity, oppression, and personal obstacles. Of course, how is this relevant in the classroom? Empowering children to speak up and to find their voices can be one of the most important actions adults model for younger learners.

What is a hashtag?
A hashtag…make[s] it less demanding for users to discover messages on a particular topic or substance.

Struggle

My first introduction to hashtag heroism came during the 2017 TCEA Convention & Exposition. I found myself fascinated by the evening news. Since I happened to be playing with Typorama (a quote-making iOS app), I felt compelled to make a few images. I shared them via Instagram and then Twitter. Were these acts of hashtag heroism? It depends on your perspective. While hashtag heroism never replaces action, it does offer a way to galvanize others to action. In this blog entry, we’ll explore hashtag heroism and how technology can amplify student voices.

hashtag heroism

Frederick Douglass’ words, which I heard for the first time at an AVID Conference from Mary Catherine Swanson, have stuck with me down the long years.

Power Concedes Nothing

One event that exemplifies the power of a hashtag is the use of the #ShePersisted hashtag, which was meant to show the indomitable spirit of women in the face of oppression. It’s about standing up and helping others. Hashtag heroism is often about turning a negative experience into an opportunity to connect, to join hands, and to move forward. In the past, the time lag between a problem that needed solving and the communication efforts required to address it was long. Now, that time gap has been closed and the lag shortened.

#ShePersisted – Add Your Own to this Google Photos Album

As you might imagine, women who persist in the face of adversity and oppression of all sorts rise against the wind. Consider Malala’s story (read her children’s book) as one example. The hashtag #metoo highlights the struggle against sexual harassment and oppression. Whether you agree with hashtag heroism efforts like #metoo or not, it’s clear that these efforts have the potential to go global.

Today, our children have access to powerful communication tools. These empower them, as transmediated learners, to take action in the ways that are as effective as those of adults. Our children are introduced to these social media approaches at home, in school, and on their own. As educators, it is our responsibility to introduce them to social media uses that are responsible and appropriate and that focus on learning. Young learners are becoming hashtag heroes with the help of teachers. “If one girl can change the world, imagine what 130 million could do?,” asks Malala. It is a question each of us would do well to ask our own children and our own students.

#OneSmall Thing

Another example of #hashtagheroism is  the #OneSmallThing hashtag that encourages users to share one small step they are taking toward a larger goal. “We invite teachers to tackle small change in a big way,” say Melissa White and Lacey Snyder (Teacher2Teacher). Big impacts can come from making small changes, one at a time. These can add up to big changes, these teachers assert. This is a great example of #hashtagheroism.

#OneSmallThing’s free toolkit (@Teacher2Teacher) offers some suggestions to get started, such as:

  1. Give yourself some time to think. Consider an area of practice you’ve been wanting to improve.
  2. Zoom in. Ask yourself “What’s a single, concrete step I can take toward this goal?” Use this framing: I will [your #OneSmallThing] to [your larger goal].
  3. Check out the #OneSmallThing inspiration library. Their inspiration library features other teachers’ #OneSmallThing ideas. You can pick one from the library to serve as inspiration while you write your own.
  4. Enter your own #OneSmallThing into their generator in 100 characters or less.
  5. Share your #OneSmallThing!

Their efforts have spurred more #hashtagheroism:

Call to Action

How will you empower your students to become hashtag heroes, to “make small changes in a big way?” Allow me to invite you to pick a local problem and make an effort to shine some sunlight on it. Rely on social media to focus the spotlight of human interest that will engage your learners, no matter their age. Will you rise up and show others how you do it?

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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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Twitter wall
Educational TrendsOnline Tools and AppsProfessional Learning

Four Great Twitter Walls to Use

by Dr. Bruce Ellis
written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

Do you have an event coming up and would like to encourage tweeting during the event? Then you may want to consider using a Twitter wall. A Twitter wall displays a specified hashtag, list, or user account and updates every few seconds. Many events that make use of a Twitter wall will use a projector to have it displayed in a prominent place so their attendees can see the action…and hopefully participate by sharing their learning via Twitter.

Though Twitter walls can be pricey, here are four that I found that are either free or offer a free version that is well done.

The Wallrus

This has to be the easiest Twitter wall to set up. You have multiple themes available, can upload your logo, and identify one Twitter keyword, username, or Instagram keyword on the free version. There are four layouts (text, text and images, images, and instructions) which you can use in any combination or use all four (my preference) set on timers.

Activity Walls

Though not quite as extensive as The Wallrus, Activity Walls does do a nice job of showing the most recent tweets. Just identify your hashtag, set the colors (which can be a little quirky, depending on what browser you are using), and your wall is instantly created. Using Chrome, I can quickly jump to full screen for a nice projected view; using Internet Explorer, I can customize the accent, background, and text colors.

 Tweet Monsters

Tweet Monsters is simple and focused. The free account is for personal use; you’ll need to contact them for pricing on corporate and other uses. Begin by identifying your hashtag. Customize text and background colors as well as the font, transition type, and transition speed. If needed, you can use the custom word filter to identify words to be filtered out and to either not show the tweet or substitute the bad word with an *. The downside of Tweet Monsters is that you only see one tweet at a time.

Twitter Fall

This Twitter wall has the most options available without a cost. You can add lists, searches, tweets by geolocation, exclude specific hashtags or words, and color code your timeline, mentions, and direct messages if needed. You do have a variety of setting to change regarding the speed, fall size, language, font size, and whether or not to show retweets. When finished tweaking your wall, you will want to click on the Presentation Mode link for easier viewing for your attendees. Though not the most professional looking wall, it does give the most flexibility. And, when I’m in a Twitter chat, I use this wall to follow the exchange and participate.

Twitter Wall Tips

When using a Twitter wall, be sure to consider these tips to make sure that it works the way you intend and that you get the most out of it with your attendees.

  • Investigate and choose your hashtag carefully. Be sure that the hashtag you are using isn’t conflicting with other users’ use of the hashtag, which may be completely different (and inappropriate) than your intentions.
  • Share your hashtag with your users well in advance and start “priming the pump” with tweets about your event.
  • Ask your attendees to tweet out their learning, great ideas, quotes, etc. using the hashtag during the event. Encourage non-tweeters to move from lurking to retweeting.
  • Tweet with images and photos to increase the engagement and the likelihood it will be shared with others.

Now that you have a few Twitter walls to choose from and some tips to get you started, we’d love to see what you do with them. Share the link to your Twitter wall in the comments below.

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social media
Digital Literacy

Helping Gen Z Use Social Media for Learning

by Lori Gracey
written by Lori Gracey

Alice Keeler (@AliceKeeler) made a statement about social media recently on Twitter that really got me thinking. She said:

“100% of our students will interact with social media in their life. How do our assignments reflect that?”

After years of thinking and teaching on how to warn students about the dangers of social media, I suddenly realized that I was doing a disservice to them. Social media is an important part of their lives, and just covering the “don’ts” isn’t really helping them. Instead, we need to embrace the use of social media in the classroom where we can model the best ways for it to be used and allow our students the freedom to incorporate it into their own learning.

Incorporating Social Media into Your Classroom

Of course, just blindly asking students to get on their favorite social media platform and start using it is probably asking for problems. Here are some ideas that will allow them to learn the best practices of social media while still mastering the required content and staying safe online.

Practice Before Going Online – Even young students can enjoy and learn from posting to social media. But start them offline first. Create a “Twitter wall” (or other similar social media) on a blank wall. Then, using Post-It Notes, have students take turns Tweeting out about what they learned that day and “posting” on the wall. It’s especially effective if the wall is outside the classroom where other students can read the Tweets. Allow students to reply to the Tweets that are posted.

You can extend this idea by having students pretend to be a literary character from a book they are currently reading, a famous scientist, or a historical figure. As this other person, the students will fake Tweet out in character. You can use Twister or this template to create these fake Tweets or continue using Post-It Notes. Of course, this same activity can be used for any social media platform that the students are using.

Review the Pitfalls – It is necessary that we go over the possible dangers of using social media badly with our students. Topics to be discussed include:

  • Cyberbullying (what it is, how to protect yourself from it, how to report it)
  • Privacy (how and why to keep personal information safe)
  • Scams (how to spot fraudulent content on social networks and the potential consequences of falling for these schemes)
  • Information Permanence (have students Google themselves to see what is already out there about them)

There are lots of good digital literacy curriculum resources available to use in covering these concepts. Here are just a few:

social mediaPractice More in a Safe Environment – Before throwing the students to the social media wolves, allow them to practice online in safety. For example, you can set up Edmodo as a “Facebook type” discussion board for literature classes. Or use another avenue that allows students to chat and comment on stories and current events that connect with their assignments. Have them use a back channel like Todays Meet so that they learn what is appropriate to post and what isn’t. Try Twiducate, a free microblogging site similar to Twitter, but aimed at elementary and secondary school students. Get students blogging and commenting on each other’s blog writings.

Share Together – Create class accounts for popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Assign a “reporter of the day” each day or week to keep the public informed about the learning happening in the class via posts.  Or ask each student to create a Twitter account (last names discouraged) that they will use for academic purposes. Then assign quick homework activities via the account and ask them to respond. Get them involved with other student Tweets by having a Twitter chat around a common book they are reading or a topic they are studying.

View Social Media as Just Another Tool in Your Tool Bag – As you design learning activities for students, remember to include some that involve social media. Have them create concept maps about a topic using Pinterest. Film short videos using apps like Vine or Dubsmash to address new concepts or historical events. Post a poll about possible choice activities using Twitter. Use social media sites to follow trending stories, uncover new research, or watch news unfold in real time. Create an account on GoodReads and have students review literature that they are reading.

Students will not learn to be social media savvy on their own. It is up to us to help them develop skills that will keep them safe while they are connecting and sharing.

 

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showcase
AndroidiOS Tips and TricksLeadershipProfessional Learning

Showcase Your School’s Success

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“Tell It! Tag It! Share It!” exhorted the #TxEdTuesday Twitter chat organizers. The goal? To capture and share what great things are happening in Texas K-12 public schools. Share it with whom? Legislators at the Texas Capitol Building in Austin, Texas, of course! Your motivation, however, may be a little more simple. Your desire may be simply to celebrate the awesome teaching and learning happening in your classroom, your school, and/or your district. In this blog entry, let’s explore three ways to achieve the mission of #TxEdTuesday with free tools you have on your mobile phone.

Note: This is another in an ongoing series on productivity tools for leaders and do-ers. Check back often to see more!

A Framework for Showcasing Success in Schools

Let’s take a look at the framework suggested by #TxEdTuesday and adapt it for our use in our own school or organization.

TELL IT
See: Tell the great things happening in your schools. Use pictures and videos.
Adapt: Use pictures, video, and audio you capture via interviews, snapshots, and vidcasts with students and teachers.
TAG IT
See: Tag your TX reps and senators. Use #TxEdTuesday
Adapt: Use the school hashtag when tweeting/Facebooking, and share that hashtag on all print publications, including t-shirts and baseball caps. Share the school hashtag at PTA meetings. Help people see the hashtag and understand they don’t need a Twitter account in order to follow it.
SHARE IT
See: Re-tweet and share stories from other great public schools.
Adapt: Encourage all campus staff, news organizations (in tandem with your district public relations team) to re-share tweets with the hashtag. Use Tweetdeck to quickly schedule tweets throughout the day featuring great content!

We can easily adapt this model for use in our schools. Even better, students, parents, and teachers can adapt the model. Let’s explore how.

#1 – Tell It!

Remember show-and-tell in school? I do. I was always a bit nervous about what to share with others in front of the class. The pressure of the audience kept my presentations short and to the point. Brevity in virtual show-and-tell efforts remains a welcome guideline to keep in mind. Here are some tips:

  • Use your mobile phone’s camera app to capture pictures and video clips. You probably use this already for personal stuff; take advantage of the native camera app for school success, too. If you want more sophisticated tools, read this blog entry featuring iOS and Android apps with photo tips.
  • Use Shadow Puppet EDU (iOS) or StoryMaker 2 (Android) to arrange your photos and videos. These apps allows you to add audio narration and background music, if you want. Keep it peppy and upbeat.
  • Set up a free blog like Dr. Tim Tyson did for Mabry Middle School that allows you to create an archive of all the great stories you’re sharing.
  • Create infographics using free, web-based tools featuring your school. Or ask students to create them!

Want to get more sophisticated? Consider one of these digital storytelling apps!

#2 – Tag It!

Go global with your sharing, and your school community will get the message. Aim just for your community, and you will certainly go unheard and unseen. And that would be a shame given the great things students and staff are about. Nothing is so exciting as seeing an international or national retweet of something your students are doing. In addition to inviting others to share using the campus hashtag, here are some quick tips:

      • Keep your hashtag short and to the point. Use Twitter Search to make sure your hashtag hasn’t been used by others.
      • Keep tweets brief: “Check out my students’ writing! #mycampusname” with a picture of student writing.
      • Check out the Participate.com chat hashtags and add one or two that will illustrate points. If your students are engaged in #coding or #STEM, then be sure to add the pound symbol (#) in front of those words.

#3 – Share It!

“I have other things to do every day. I just don’t have time to hunt down and showcase what students and staff are doing!” Be careful you don’t fall into the “I don’t have time!” trap and despair. Seeking and showcasing spectacular student work isn’t just your mission. Every staff member, student, and parent is responsible. Invite them to join you. Model appropriate hashtag usage. Consider these tips:

        • Take pictures throughout the day or week, then arrange them into a slideshow with music (easy to do with ShadowPuppet EDU on iOS). This will be shared as a video.
        • When including videos, post them to your school’s YouTube channel (use YouTube Capture app on iOS to make that easy), a Seesaw class blog, or Shadow Puppet EDU site if possible.
        • Only have time once a week? Take pictures from the previous week, then use Tweetdeck to schedule them in advance, one or two per day. This can eliminate the pressure of always being “on” with social media.

Showcase Your School

In his book, Digital Leadership, Eric Scheninger shares the story of Dr. Spike Cook. Dr. Cook moved from printed newsletters sent home several times a week to a regularly-updated online blog. Blog entries featured images, video, text, and more. These blog entries make it easy to share content and create a digital archive organized in reverse chronological order. You need only update the blog once a week, but capturing and showcasing amazing learning at your school, well, that’s a rewarding venture for leaders and do-ers!

Need help showcasing your school’s work? Ask a TCEA Director of Professional Development to help you get started! Reach out to Dr. Bruce Ellis (@drbruceellis or via email to bellis@tcea.org) or fill out a logistics form.

Find Out More

Want to learn other ways to save time and be more productive at work? Attend the Productivity Tools for Administrators on Thursday, June 15, 2017 in Austin. The one-day learning experience is guaranteed to provide you a wealth of hands-on activities to ensure you walk away with the tips and techniques you need to do more in less time. Register here.

 

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LeadershipOnline Tools and AppsProfessional Learning

Align Your Social Media

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“Don’t wait for the stars to align, reach up and rearrange them the way you want,” says Pharrell Williams. “Create your own constellation.” Want to rearrange your learning experiences with social media? Bridge the gap between face-to-face community efforts and online? Then read on to discover tips on how to shape the social media flow. Grab a friend, your mobile device, and let’s go!

Manual Approach to Social Media

If you’re like most people, you probably have been cajoled into creating a social media account. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, YouTube, and LinkedIn are the most common ones that people start with. But how do you create a community around what you share? Here are some suggestions to get you started:

Tip #1: Mix-and-Match Your Social Media

Combine audio and video tools. Instagram and Facebook make it easy to post links to other social media tools, such as Twitter. That means you can start a Facebook Live session, record audio using Voxer (or use the YouTube Capture app on your phone) and share the link out via Twitter. This is great because it allows you to “liven up” Twitter with audio and video. Imagine recording a student explaining his/her solution to a problem or thinking process. Here are some Voxercasts that I shared via Twitter. If participating in a Twitterchat, try responding to a question with audio or video. It will leave participants “mind-blown.” And, if you’re feeling adventurous, use Voxer and/or Flipgrid.com to kick off audio or video reflections respectively.

Tip #2: Decide on a Content Curation Tool

Content curation involves finding great stuff, stowing it somewhere for safe keeping, and then sharing the relevant information with other interested parties. How the sharing happens is usually through social media. Here are a few tools that I use for content curation. They make sharing with others via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook easy.

  • Get Pocket.com: This remains my favorite content tool. Anything I find on my mobile device or on my computer, I promptly save to Pocket. Since it is everywhere and works well with other tools, it makes saving content easy. Getting content out is also straightforward. More on that later.
  • Diigo.com for Educators: An oldy but goody, social bookmarking with Diigo is a cinch on computers, not so much on mobile. Still, the benefit of Diigo is that you can turn every item you save to it into a tagged item. Tags in Diigo come with RSS feeds (learn more about RSS), which make it easy to share to Twitter and other places. Using the free for Educators account comes with additional benefits.
  • Flipboard.com: A fantastic curation tool since anything you “flip” into a digital magazine (ezine for short) becomes an easy-to-share resource with others. People can subscribe and leave comments. Imagine creating a flipboard ezine for your class on a particular topic or having students collaborate and contribute to a shared ezine. Flipboard makes it possible, and viewing is a pure pleasure.
  • Storify.com: This is a helpful tool since it makes capturing tweets and sharing content easy, although to access some of its more esoteric features will require payment. Storify is often used to archive Twitterchats, even though there are more comprehensive tools. Storify makes finding and sharing content for a classroom of learners simple.
  • Paper.li: Want to create a newsletter that curates itself? Paper.li makes that possible and can auto-publish itself via Twitter with new content daily. It can be hands-off or you can spend time updating it. Like Storify, full feature access costs money.

Tip #3: Master Those Twitter Chats

social mediaEvery day, there are thousands of educators like you connecting and learning from each other. This network of professional learners, open to anyone and everyone willing to learn, is known as a “professional learning network” or PLN for short. You can find a wealth of hashtags, such as #tceachat, that boast robust conversations on days or nights. Here are several tools you can use to make navigating and participating in Twitter chats easier:

  • Tweetdeck: Tweetdeck allows you to set up multiple columns, as opposed to Twitter’s single column of content. You can follow multiple hashtags simultaneously, as well as see what you are tweeting and what others are tweeting at you. What’s more, as you get more proficient and want to manage your own Twitter chat, you can schedule your own tweets days in advance at anytime. Great for tweeting during a presentation and wowing your audience.
  • Participate Learning: This is a must-have tool to take advantage of since it provides a concise schedule of hashtags for Twitter chats and when they are taking place. What’s more, you can search hashtags for relevant conversations, as well as add your own chat. This makes it easier to find other’s chats, as well as sharing your content.
  • Twubs.com: Straightforward interface aside, Twubs is intended to help you get to know who is participating in a Twitter chat. A unique feature includes your ability to get an embed code so you can place the results of a hashtag search on your web page.

Tip #4: Create Image Flyers to Hook Twitter Chat Participants

social mediaDecided to facilitate a Twitter chat for your school or district? Create a landscape flyer with Adobe Spark, Pixlr, Powerpoint, or Google Slides that includes pertinent information, as well as a link to more content. In addition to creating a way to advertise your Twitter chat to the world, you will also want to solve the archive problem. For small Twitter chats, you can use Storify or simply copy-and-paste into a GoogleDoc or IFTTT recipe to feed tweets into a Google Sheet. However, for larger chats (>1000 tweets), consider using a more robust solution like TAGS.

Tip #5: Automate Your Social Media Sharing

“Share once and done!” Avoid having to share information via multiple outlets. Some school districts embarking on social media domination move to post the same piece of information on each social media outlet, but that can be a big waste of time. Use one or both of these tools to automate your social media sharing. Create a blog post and then see it shared automatically to Twitter and Facebook, post images to Instagram and email them to others, and more.

  • IFTTT.com: If This Then That allows you to create mini-apps, or recipes, that execute when a trigger action occurs. For example, if I add a tag “2tweet” to a web article I save on one of my content curation tools, Pocket or Diigo, that item appears as a tweet within thirty minutes. If I add a tag “tceamie,” the item is posted to a Slack group for technology directors and coordinators.
  • Microsoft Flow: A newcomer to the scene, Flow works like IFTTT, yet it works hand-in-hand with Office 365 tools. Visit their website to see some sample “flows.”
    social media

Tip #6: Create a Virtual Sharing Space

At a certain point, you will want to archive all the great things that are being said or happening. One way to do that is to save all chats to a virtual space, such as a OneNote Online notebook (see example, Google Plus Community (see example), or Facebook group. You can, of course, also use popular blogging platforms like Blogger and/or Wordpress.
Use tools like Remind.com to share daily updates via mobile phones. This helps keep your community connected to you, enabling easy, non-intrusive sharing. My favorite example is Dr. Scott Mcleod’s Dangerously Irrelevant daily reminders that arrive via SMS text message every day.

Conclusion

Don’t be afraid to grasp the stars and rearrange them! Social media tools like those discussed in this blog entry make shaping the flow of social media a joy, not a chore.

 

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offline learning
Educational TrendsGood Teaching

Five Ways to Take Classroom Tech Offline

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger

This guest post was contributed by Jessica Thiefels, the editor of Whooo’s Reading and an education blogger who’s been featured in publications such as PBS.org, EdTech Digest, and Daily Genius.

Taking classroom tech offline can have the same benefits as making classroom activities online. It increases engagement, makes lessons more memorable, and ultimately gets students excited about learning. There’s still value in powering devices down and putting pen to paper, talking as a class, and learning offline.

Luckily, there are plenty of ways to combine both online and offline activities, often referred to as blended learning, to create a more effective culture of learning and technology in your classroom. Use these ideas to support teach-based learning and reinforce the lesson offline.

Introduce Students to Social Media Offline

Social media can be a great tool for learning, and there are some awesome ideas out there about how students can use Facebook and Twitter to engage in educational activities. However, not all students are ready for this jump. Parents of younger students may not even be comfortable with their kids using these websites.

Avoid this issue altogether, while still bringing social media into the classroom, by taking the social media part offline. For example, a simple Google search for “Facebook profile templates” will give you a variety to choose from. Find the best one, and print off copies for your students, who will then create the profile of an author, celebrity, or someone else you’re learning about in class, like Abraham Lincoln. They each research their person online and then put what they’ve learned into the “Facebook profile,” including, interests, information, friends, and more. Students will especially love taking historic figures and bringing them into the real world in this fun activity.

Put Coding in the Hands of Students

A valuable skill for students to have, even at a young age, is coding: the process of building video games, apps, websites—basically anything that lives online or on an electronic device. While this learning is done almost entirely online, there are ways to take it offline, helping students truly grasp the tenants of coding.

One fun idea is to have students “write” lines of code on their desk. You tell students, “Build the code for a three paragraph blog post with two images.” Then they use the cards that you’ll make, or the class can make together (see below), to show you what that would look like online.

All you need is paper, cut into small rectangles, a black pen or marker, and scissors. Write coding symbols on the papers, laminate (if possible), and cut them into 2 in. x 1 in. rectangles so that each symbol is now a small card. Do this by yourself, or use it as an activity to help students memorize their coding terminology. If you want to avoid all of the cutting and laminating, give students mini-white boards to use, which will accomplish a similar goal.

Create and Hang Internet Safety Posters

Whether your students are browsing the Internet in class or not, they’re likely talking with one another online, researching, and using other digital tools that could put them at risk for cyber bullying, computer viruses, and more. Support their tech use with important Internet safety rules in the form of posters.

Create these posters as a class and write your list of rules with the help of student suggestions. When the rule list has been created, have students craft a few posters to be placed around the room as friendly reminders. Be sure to put one near the computers or device station if you have one. If you’re in a 1:1 classroom, create mini-posters that students tape to their desks. This makes it easy for them to have access to the rules at all times, without getting up and walking around. Use these fun posters as inspiration for yours.

Bring Games into the Real-World with Non-Fiction Reading

Games are a smart way of engaging students while learning new material. However, games put students in “online mode” where they tend to be more worried about getting points, beating their teammates, and leveling up than what they’re actually learning about. Make the lesson relevant to their lives here on earth, not in cyberspace, with related magazine articles, which serve as great non-fiction texts.

As a teacher, you can get a variety of subscriptions for your classroom for free, including various trade magazines, Computer Graphics World, and more. USA Test Prep offers an exhaustive list. Purchase a few subscriptions and keep them in the classroom to be accessed easily by your young learners. Or talk with your campus librarian to see if you can have a few older magazine issues to have on hand.

When planning your gamified lesson, read through the magazines to find a relevant article, or let students dig through the pile it find it for themselves. They’ll remember the article, and it’s very likely, they’ll remember the lesson that went along with it too.

Invent a Blended, Educational Scavenger Hunt 

This is a fun way for students to go from online to offline in a way that’s both engaging and fun. Create all of your clues online, making them as intricate or simple as you want. One fun way to do this would be to create a Google Doc with links to clues. The links could point to videos, articles, images, puzzles, etc. Students have to interpret what the link means and find the clue in the resource, and then head into the classroom, or even school hallways, to find the secret items.

Create your list as a checklist, so students can check each item off as they find it. Break them into teams to gamify the already exciting lesson activity and encourage a little friendly competition. This idea can be used with most young to middle age groups.

Learning online is a fun way to keep students engaged and excited about learning, but that doesn’t mean there’s no value for offline learning as well. Find ways to support learning on devices with offline materials that will make lessons relevant, help students better grasp concepts and much more. What offline lessons work best for your students?

 

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Professional Learning

Twitter-ize Your Learning Network

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“How many of you have a Twitter account?” I asked a recent workshop audience. Only a few hands went up. That made me sad. I find Twitter a powerful tool for daily professional development. Twitter-ize your learning with this question in mind, “What are you learning now?”

Get Started with Twitter

Watch this short 15 minute video that walks you through the steps in creating your own free Twitter account. Yes, it’s just that easy!

Use Twitter Lists

A Twitter list is a subset of the people you follow on Twitter. Set up different lists for organizations you may be a part of. When you view Twitter lists, you ONLY see what those people are tweeting. This can help you focus. Here’s a video that demonstrates.

Take Advantage of Hashtags

Hashtags are words embedded in a tweet that allow others to track what you are tweeting about. If I want to quickly find out what others are saying about education in general, I can do so by doing a Twitter search on the hashtag #edchat or by taking advantage of one of the free services that searches for me, such as Twubs.

Manage Your Twitter account?

While you can use the Twitter website, as well as one of the various mobile apps for Twitter, consider taking a look at Tweetdeck or Hootsuite.  These free tools let you manage multiple twitter accounts and schedule tweets in advance. For example, using Twitter, your tweets are shared as they happen. With Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, though, you can schedule your Tweets in advance. Use it to schedule tweets to celebrate an event, make announcements during a presentation, or coincide with a specific event. And using a tool such as one of these will also make it easier for you to participate and keep up with Twitter chats on topics you’re interested in.

Consider Twitter’s Dashboard, a relatively new service that works as an iOS app and is accessible via your web browser (no Android version as of this writing).

How do I track what I like via Twitter?

As you are working your way through Twitter, there are several ways to keep track of what you are seeing. Here are a few ways to keep track of your Twitter favorites for use later on:

  • Favorite/”Heart” It – The quickest and easiest way is to tap on the star (on mobile apps, press and hold on a tweet you want to favorite, then press on the star. Other options include retweeting). You can then access your Twitter favorites by replacing “mguhlin” in this link with your own Twitter handle. You can later embed your favorites in a web page, blog, or wiki for digital curation of resources and ideas.
  • Send It to Pocket (ReadItLater) – Pocket allows you to share the full text of an article, image, etc. to other sites like Onenote via IFTTT.com.
  • Retweet It – When you retweet, quote the tweet and add your username (e.g. @mguhlin) to ensure you can find it later. Just check your notifications area.
  • Hashtag It – When you retweet something, add a hashtag to it. Drop the # symbol when searching on a hashtag.

Twitter-ize your learning network to discover more about what interests you, as well as share with others what drives your learning! The rewards are infinite.

 

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Microsoft

Save Websites to Your OneNote Notebook Quickly

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Wouldn’t it be powerful if you, as a teacher or educator, could bookmark content on the web and then have it automatically archived for student viewing in a Microsoft OneNote notebook? When I did that earlier today, the process worked like magic. And all you need is your free Microsoft OneNote account, a free Diigo for Educators account, and a free If This Then That (IFTTT.com) account.

Note: Do you have a OneNote Notebook for students set up? For the purposes of this blog entry, let’s call it “World History – First Period” without quotes. Inside that Notebook, create a Section called “Resources,” which is where your new web page links will be saved when you bookmark them using Diigo.

Step 1 – Create accounts, if you don’t already have them.

  1. Create your free Diigo for Education Account.
  2. Create your free IFTTT.com account.
  3. OneNote, available at no-cost, requires a Microsoft account. If you don’t have one already, you can always set one up for free.

Step 2 – Install the Diigo Bookmark Tool

Depending on what browser you want to use (or all of them), you can install a Diigo add-on tool that will enable you to quickly save bookmarks on your computer. If you are on mobile, then install the Diigo Browser app to facilitate quick browsing and saving.

Once you have Diigo installed, try bookmarking web pages and adding a one-word descriptor or tag as shown in the image above. Diigo will try to help you by suggesting additional tags that others have used.

Step 3 – Set Up your IFTTT.com Recipe

Creating a recipe is pretty easy in IFTTT, but if you have never done it, you may want to watch this how-to video first or read this MakeUseOf.com tutorial.

Below is the IFTTT recipe I created that places any new public bookmarks tagged “tceamie,” which represents TCEA Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE), in Diigo into my OneNote notebook for MIE one-day training participants.

In the boxes above, you would fill in the appropriate information about your OneNote. What’s neat about this is that you don’t have to use Diigo. You can pull content from Twitter, Instagram and a dozen other social media services.

Isn’t that a cool approach? Bookmark your resources with Diigo and auto-save them into OneNote where they can be shared with students and/or teachers. If you get stuck, don’t be afraid to make contact via TCEA.org.

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