Twitter Quitter? I think not.

In the last few weeks I’ve logged on to my twitter account every day…all I really wanted to do was quit…every single time. Then one morning, National Grammar Day to be exact, I woke up and had some kind of tweepiphany.  I don’t know how I went from hating the idea of twitter to liking (sorry I can not yet say loving) it a lot, but I did. I can see how it could be a fun little tool in the classroom if you wanted to have everyone do something very short and very specific, like write one poetic line to later assemble as a poem, or chime in on a short question…or encourage your students to follow people for academic reasons and not just for fun. 

I don’t think I will actually do any of the above mentioned classroom activities, but I did have fun following Margaret Atwood who made me fall in love with poetry all over again, and Grammar Girl, who made me laugh at her clever little grammar jokes. As far as the usefulness of Twitter, I think I will look for more authors who are also educators like Jim Burke author of Reading Reminders, and Writing Reminders. I think twitter will help me feel connected to people I respect in the teaching world.

The type of information I gained at this point did feel random and fragmented, for example some of the people I follow might give a grammar tip, but others might be talking about a private joke or some other random detail such as “just walked into Menards.” Not that it isn’t useful to know that someone is in a Menards looking for a new toilet, but I just don’t care.  I definitely think that it is important to choose who to follow based on specific criteria. I think I’d like to keep my Twitter account just to follow authors, teachers and professionals. If I want to follow friends, I’ll create a separate account. That way I don’t have to feel bombarded by odd facts when all I’m looking for is a little brain food. In the end, I like the tool now that I’ve decided on a direction to go with it.

PLN

I think I first heard the term PLN in September when I was introduced to Plurk.  I heard educator and motivational speaker Kevin Honeycutt discuss his experience with networks of learners. He claimed that he wasn’t the smartest person on the planet, but by developing a network of smart people, he had 24-7 access to information he would otherwise be unaware of…that is the short version of his story anyway.  His explanation of a learning network didn’t really come apparent to me until I began exploring PLNs through this course.  Through this course I got the feel for the fact that we can function as a collective brain. I have my own ideas and way of looking at the world. Which, for me, means that I will participate in web searches using the same old key words and phrases as always. That means I will come up with similar results. But someone who thinks even slightly different than I do will come up with different results. Together we make a great team. Each of us is able to give something to the other person in our PLN and gain new  a new resource in return.  Delicious is one of those perfect examples of this taking place in real life.

Now, I can’t say that I fully fell in love with Delicious, but I certainly do see the potential for it for classroom use. If students in the same class all ban together and share their bookmarks with others, they can read a plethora of web pages that they may not have found otherwise (or would have taken hours to do so). Delicious also allows people to organize and tag things for easy access, which makes finding information quickly an easy feat.

The other thing I loved was the RSS feed. I thoroughly enjoyed the Google Reader. When  we began our blogs as a class, I was pretty scared that I was going to have to try and find each classmate every time I wanted to read a blog post, but (thank goodness) the RSS feed made it so that all recent posts of my fellow classmates were right there. The idea that any blog I subscribe to will automatically appear in my Google Reader, made me feel like I could manage this class (and any information) with ease.

The other tools I thought were interesting were Second life and Facebook. Previously I thought of these tools for social networking, but I can see the potential for both to be used as Learning Networks.  If I was really interested in the environment of Second Life, I could use the tool to set up my own virtual classroom. Students would have a more interactive learning environment than the D2L and other course management systems (CMSs).  Perhaps one could develop both socially and academically in a place like Second life, where Moodle and D2L provide more of a formal atmosphere.

Also, the idea of using Facebook as a learning network is attractive. Many of us already use it as a social network, so the familiar format would make creating a learning environment extremely simple. I also like how Facebook allows you to write messages longer than 140 characters. People could even reflect on activities and share resources there if they liked and respond to each other publicly or privately, which is very nice.

Outside of this class my personal learning network will include Diigo, Google Tools, Blogger, and, surprisingly, twitter. I spent a lot of time disliking twitter, but after I found a few people to follow that I actually enjoyed following, I decided it was a neat little tool. One I won’t be using to let the world in on what I’m doing at Menards, but one I will use to see what Margaret Atwood and Grammar Girl are up to. I might even consider using it to quiz kids on vocabulary, or remind kids of upcoming vocab tests. Just yesterday one of my students actually found me on Twitter without me telling him I was even on it. This it just goes to show that kids are using these technology and they are on the lookout for their teachers on those technologies.

Since our school already has Gmail as its main e-mail, I think that I would use Google docs to build a net work with desired co-workers. I have already discussed putting all of my handouts and worksheets for each of my classes on Google docs with one of the special education teachers. Just by making my resources available, it would make her life easier because she could get extra copies of my worksheets from me without me having to look for them, and e-mail them or print them off. Also, the kids could hand them in to me via Google Docs.

Convincing Administrators: Easier Said Than Done

Luckily, the school in which I teach is very much in support of cutting edge technology and programing. Our library media specialist is always on the lookout for grants to participate in or programs to learn about. I have mentioned before that I am in such a grant program. The program’s number one goal is to educate teachers to keep up to date with current trends in technology.

I don’t know what the most exemplary Web 2.0 tool is to support student learning, but I certainly have my favorite. I thoroughly enjoy blogs. In English class writing is a skill that is held in the utmost importance.  Students are also required to read and analyze texts. If students had the privilege and responsibility to write their own blogs about the things they are reading, they would take it seriously. 

I am lucky enough to have a computer lab in my classroom. I often have students use computers to create works. They like that a great deal, but when they have an audience for their creations, the atmosphere changes. Some students are shy about their work, and really benefit from the constructive criticism and the ideas of their classmates. Others are proud of their work and offer amazing help to others. In the end the students trust what their classmates tell them and their work is better for it. If my students could use blogs, their work would have a legitimate audience and I know they would be very careful to put the best work out there that they are capable of producing.

I wouldn’t have to ask my school for much to get this going. As I said earlier, I have a computer lab, and that lab of course is hooked up to the internet. I would have to ask my school to reword their internet policy which, as of now, prohibits blogging, and ask our technology coordinator to unblock at least one of the blogging sites.

To convince the administration that blogging can be a valuable educational activity, I would explain that audience makes a big difference in how people write. I would also try to find some examples of teachers from other schools that have used blogging successfully and explain the benefits of the activity include the fact that students collaborate in a way that isn’t possibly by any other means.

Pretty good, but I don't know about Del.icio.us.

I was very hopeful that I would like the delicious account. In fact I was excited to get the links of my colleagues and others.  In the end, I can definitely see that this could have some very nice uses for students doing research or teachers interested in specific subjects, but in the end, I really can’t say I’m going to keep up with this account.

There really weren’t that many commonalities between the types of websites I am interested in and the ones that my colleagues bookmarked. I did like some of websites under the technology tag, but in the end I could probably find other sites like those of my friends on my own.

I am not a very consistent soul. I have to say that my computer is just as disorganized as my office desk. I tried to be consistent with my tags, but mine do vary a little. I also noticed, I didn’t go crazy with tags. I only used a few for each link, two or three seemed like more than enough to me. I would say that the tags of others did have some influence over me, but not a great deal. I did also try to use the same tags across the different tools I used, but I don’t think I met my goal of being consistent with that either.

In terms of teaching tagging to students, I think I would try to run a discussion. Since I, myself, don’t feel 100% comfortable with tagging webpages, I’d begin by going to a web page they all are familiar with. Then would explain how Delicious works and ask them to collectively brainstorm a list of tags they think would be good. Then in a large group discussion, I would ask them to explain their choices and evaluate what makes a good tag, what wouldn’t make sense to them. Once we had a discussion, we would make a list of “rules” to follow when thinking of tags. I would, of course, guide them through this process.

When it comes to tagging, I’ve used the word technology the most. As it turns out I have a ton of tags that I’ve only used once. It seems that tagging is not one of my gifts. I bet my ultra organized friends had a field day with this, but I…did not do so well.

I added useful tags, but I did not actually write any annotations or descriptions of my web pages. The reason I didn’t write any annotations is because I really have been lucky in the past finding the pages I want by using my favorite search engine. Since Delicious was new to me, I didn’t really see the capabilities of the site. At the time, I didn’t figure I would actually use it long term. If I do keep my account long term, I think it would be useful to add some annotations. And the more websites that I find, the more useful those annotations will become. For example, if I have many websites with the tags web 2.0 tools, then it will be advantageous for me to write a description more specific to the exact content of the page so I won’t have to open every link, I can just skim the information I wrote and choose the page I was looking for with out having to open each page individually. It also might help anyone that has access to my bookmarks because they may be better able to weed out sites they are interested in, or choose ones that they are interested in.

I could use delicious to connect with other teachers who teach similar units. I always like to use resources that have been approved by my friends and colleagues. If someone has marked a certain page, I know they probably liked it, and are using it or considering using it.

In terms of the tag similarities, I didn’t find a terribly high amount of overlap in tags, but I did find that Geri’s bookmarked sites were similar in nature to ones I’d like…probably because we know each other and we teach the same subjects.

I think I might use the network feature if I was doing research with a group of people and I wanted to share access with some of my group mates. I would put everyone in my group in my network and ask them to bookmark sites they thought had valuable information. Then we could discuss the readings and figure out how to proceed.

For example, My husband’s two college roommates and their wives have been asking us to go to Vegas with them for two years. My husband and I have never been, but two of the four friends have. While we are deciding what hotels to choose, and what activities we would like to participate in, we could bookmark helpful sites. We could all visit the sites and then compare prices and accommodations.

                                                          

There are certainly a number of creative ways to use the site and if I could convince my friends to use the site along with me, I would enjoy the aspects of the program that would allow us to collaborate. The idea of planning an entire vacation without having to ever meet and hash out details is so great. I’m thinking that we’d probably use it in conjunction with Google Docs to create lists and narrate some of our ideas. I would enjoy seeing what kinds of pages my friends would pick in comparison to me and with busy lives we’d be successful in getting organized. And a little bit of organization goes a long way in the busy lives of friends who are also teachers, mom’s, dad’s, and coaches.