Tech Talk 2012

Using Social Media IS Good Teaching!

How do online collaborative tools help sharpen our students' critical thinking skills and build a community of learners?  Social media tools such as blogs, Twitter, Diigo, Tumblr, Vimeo, and Prezi have been designed to give users an experience that actually mirrors how we learn best.  In this session, leaders from CPS and Columbia College will offer concrete ideas for embedding digital media tools in academic lessons to maximize student engagement and learning.  Get hands-on experience using several tools and walk away with free and easy ways to boost your current lessons and even improve your own personal media use.  Come collaborate with us!

From Samantha Penney

Goals for Today:

• Deepen and sharpen awareness of how social media parallels best practices for teaching, learning, and thinking
• Define our vision of a high quality blog post and discuss how to share that with our students 
• Share concrete steps for setting up structures for using social media in our classrooms

Network Building

Spectrum (...and then some!)

Imagine a line across the room, from one wall to the other.  One wall represents one extreme, the other represents the opposite (and you can define that however you choose).  When the leader defines the extremes, participants place themselves along the imaginary line between the walls according to where they place themselves along the spectrum between the extremes.

Today's Spectrum:
"I love social media and use it all the time in my life and my work."/ "What's a blog?"

Divide the line at the median, and partner up with someone at the opposite end of the spectrum. (This is the "and then some" part.)

Through a brief discussion, find a definition of social media that both of you find useful.

Critical Response #1

Check out the video posted HERE.  Use the comments section below to respond to it.

Critical Blogging

In order to use social media to the top of its capacity, we must first understand what makes it a uniquely useful tool, beyond what we could do in our classrooms without it.  Therein lie the most interesting ways of building critical thinking and other 21st Century skills.

• Connectivity (hyperlinks, sharing buttons, embedding)
• Collaboration (comments, co-authoring)
• Creativity (design elements, creative writing, inclusion of original media)
• Curation and Personalization (depth of exploration as a reader, transmedia, multi-modality)
• Problem Solving (Hey, tech happens, right?)

Blogs are full of these opportunities, but in order to take full advantage, we must first envision what high quality blogging looks like.  Then we must clarify our expectations with our students, hold their work to consistently high standards, and provide scaffolding and feedback to help them reach those standards.

Check out this example of high quality teacher-led work; Mrs. Yollis' blog was the winner of EduBlog's Best Class Blog Award for 2011.

Check out this example of high quality student-led work; Youth Voices provides structures and guidance for youth bloggers to participate in an active online community.

Below is a rubric you can use in setting expectations and providing feedback for your students.  Feel free to download the Google doc version HERE, and alter it to fit your specific needs or level of rigor.  There are also many other examples all across the internet.

How would your first critical response post have scored?

Critical Response #2

In your own blog post on the homepage (rather than in the comments section from Critical Response #1), work with your partner to compose a post that fits our definition of a high quality blog post.  Click HERE for a tutorial on posting to Blogspot, adding links and images, and embedding video.  Click HERE for a review of Critical Response.

Compare your two posts.  What do you notice?

So, Why Social Media?  

Because...

Using Social Media IS Good Teaching! on Prezi

Setting Structures for Success

Set Intentions for Teaching and Learning

*Determine your Big Idea

*Set learning goals for students

*Link to Common Core

*Match goals to tools (digital and analog)

Build a Safe Community of Learners

*Choose appropriate tool/ community

*Communicate with parents

*Set expectations for online behavior

*Invite audience to read/ contribute

Develop Vision for High Quality Work

*Determine what skills to focus on (link to common core)

*Read other blogs, notice high and low quality

*Engage class in critical response about blogs

*Create rubric

Support Students' Progress

*Build opportunities for regular use and practice

*Use comments to provide feedback regularly

*Allow students to reflect on and revise work (even after publication)

*Develop mini-lessons to support specific skills, then follow up with practice

Take it to the Next Level

*Link to real-world question or problem

*Market blog to larger audience

*Flip your classroom

*Give top bloggers more autonomy

*Link to other social media to share work across platforms

For more information on using social media in the classroom (plus more general education technology tidbits as well), check out our Diigo group!