Twitter Growing Pains?

Just finished a Twitter presentation for elementary and high school principals. The range if experience and comfort levels with Twitter really varied. Some had zero experience while others had a moderate comfort level. Some people had multiple accounts for school and home and others had an account but had never really done anything with it.

I've been at all these different levels. Five years ago I started my Twitter account. At first I had no idea where to start. When I did get going I became totally overwhelmed by the number of tweets that were flying around. Quickly I lost interest and put Twitter aside.

This is exactly where many of the principals seemed to be during this presentation. So the focus of my presentation became:

1. How to filter your tweets using hashtags.
2. How to make a list or follow a list.
3. Finding a niche and following like minded educators.

The moment that educators see the value of joining a Professional Learning Network (PLN) Twitter begins to make sense. The exchange of ideas, the answering of questions and the sense of community are all some of the things that make me keep using Twitter as my key online professional development.

I'd like to thank all those amazing educators out there that have have taken the time to answer questions when I pose them. As a result I always answer questions that other pose on Twitter if I feel that I can help out. Sometimes I can't, but know of someone that can and I point them in that direction.

Take a chance and ask a question. Better yet answer a question if you come across one that you can help with. It won't be long before you have created your very own PLN with people you check up on on a regular basis and probably share resources with.

Cool Ways to Use Google as a School Administrator

Over the past few months I have been reading some really interesting posts and comments on Twitter about using Google Forms in schools.

The past school year I have been trying so reach out to the school community and find out their thoughts and opinions about different things. Teachers, parents and even students have not been able to escape the questions that I pose. I think that this is a fantastic way to communicate with parents and find out right away thoughts and opinions of our school community.

I have been asked by quite a few people how we have incorporated this into school life and our communication circle. Unfortunately, I sometimes forget one or two of the great things that we are doing and I thought I had better compile a list.

Here are some examples of how we have been using Google Forms and Docs here at St. Rita this past school year:

1. Creating class lists for the upcoming school year
2. School Technology Application Form
3. Help Mr. Slack Name his Fish - I also follow this up with a blog post called: Fish Naming Ceremony Turns into a Learning Experience
4. LTP Parent Survey
5. Winter Teacher Wish List
6. Mr. Slack's Student Survey
7. PLN Information Request

One of the things I am most interested in is communication and using this way to collect information gives me an awesome insight to what is going on and what people are thinking. I get immediate feedback and people get to have their thoughts, ideas and opinions heard. One thing that I have learned is that you have to make sure that you followup with these surveys or forms or they are worthless.

I am always interested to hear about different ways people are using google forms and docs.. If you have any ideas please make sure to let me know!

CLL Twitter for Beginners

I was asked by Rob Long to do a brief workshop on Twitter basics and how I use Twitter in my professional life.

Twitter is something that has so many uses to connect with other like minded people, share information and access information. The problem is that Twitter is not always the easiest thing to master.

Here is a chart that will help explain some of the basics..... (click here for a larger version)

Twitter for Educators

Twitter, the popular social media platform, is continually picking up momentum in its number of users; however, I find many educators who are not tapping into the power of Twitter. The mystery that surrounds Twitter, I believe, keeps many people from benefiting from the potential it holds. Consider this recent post on Facebook from a friend who revealed, “My mom thought that hashtags were code messages.” While the post made me chuckle, to those who don’t use Twitter, terms like tweets, retweets, and hashtags, can seem pretty foreign and intimidating.

For those just getting started, I’ll explain a few basic terms to help you easily and quickly navigate your way around Twitter. For those who already use Twitter, you may want to jump down to the next section, Benefits for Educators, or simply download the Twitter Cheat Sheet.

Twitter: The Basics

• Twitter: According to Wikipedia, Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages, called “tweets.”  A helpful way to think of Twitter is to picture a constantly flowing stream of water. Tweets are the stream. As a user, you dip your toes in and out of the ongoing stream of tweets. You can’t expect to take it all in, simply read a few tweets and then step out.

• Tweet: “Tweets” are text-based messages of up to 140 characters (letters, symbols, words, spaces, & punctuation).

• Choosing a Name: To begin, simply sign up for a free account. Try to select a username that is your name or close to it so that people can easily find you by searching. For example, Tim Slack (my name) was taken, @slackt was available so that became my username. People can still find me easily by searching for my name.

• Following: You’ll want to connect to other educators by following them which can be done in two ways. First, click the Follow button when you see it next to a user’s profile photo or you can click the Follow button next to any of your followers. Start by searching for people you know or educators that you have read or heard at conferences – just type in their name to see if they’re on Twitter. 

• Hashtags (#): A hashtag (#) is a word or phrase preceded by a “#.” By using hashtags, you can aggregate tweets around that topic. Hashtags help you focus on tweets around a specific topic. You can also add a hashtag to any tweet. Just follow the tweet with an appropriate hashtag and it will appear in the group. For example, here’s a recent tweet with 2 hashtags—Vocab instruction stale? Perk it up! Attend Top 10 Vocab Strategies – free Webinar Dec 12 4-5pm bit.ly/Vd9nGG #principals #elemteachers  By the way, best practice is to limit the number of hashtags following a tweet. Only use the hashtag if that group would be interested in or benefit from your post. How about using #ocsbcll for tweeting interesting blogs and tweets you think we would find interesting.

• Chat groups: Chat groups are frequently formed around a specific topic of interest and they meet regularly through Twitter. The group is defined by a specific hashtag. To join the group, you simply type in the hashtag and you can follow the posts and contribute to the conversation by posting a tweet followed by the hashtag. Two examples, #TitleTalk and #Satchat, are summarized below.
• #TitleTalk, a group who shares about how to best promote reading and specific books to students, meets once a month on Sunday nights. Colby Sharp (@colbysharp) and Donalyn Miller (@donalynbooks) moderate the online meetings around a topic such as favorite read alouds, graphic novels, teaching with short texts, or book lists, to name just a few. So when you log in at that time and type in the hashtag, you’ll experience an online conversation around the topic.
• #Satchat, another active group, is a weekly Twitter chat for current and emerging school leaders who meet around all things education. Brad Currie (@bcurrie5) and Scott Rocco (@scottrocco), two administrators, are the co-founders and moderators of the lively discussions held each Saturday morning at 7:30am EST. Grab your coffee and join them!
• Want to get started? You’ll find more groups specific to educational technology, literacy, content areas, school reform, and more. I’ve compiled a list of many chat groups on the Twitter Cheat Sheet which is downloadable from this post.
Benefits for Educators
• Connections: Twitter, at its heart, is a place to build connections with other educators – those next door and those across the country and world. Twitter can help you stay connected and up-to-date with news and resources shared by other school leaders.
• Collaborations: Start your own hashtag to collaborate with colleagues. Additionally, have students create their own hashtag for a group research project. Then group members can save their links to resources and share information through the common stream designated by their hashtag. They’ll be able to easily see others results and research by simply searching by their hashtag.
• Resources: Another benefit of Twitter is sharing and receiving resources. Take time to share your favorite resources by providing links to them and be prepared to receive a steady stream of resources from others. Do you need advice about a resource or technology tool that you’re getting ready to purchase? Just ask on Twitter and you’ll probably receive lots of feedback which can ultimately help you research and make decisions.



What to Do on Twitter: 50 Ideas

• Professional development: Professional development opportunities are yet another great reason to be active on Twitter. In a time when many schools have limited funds to support professional development, Twitter can serve as a great resource to learn about free webinars, cost-effective professional learning opportunities, and more. Finally, share in the conversation by tweeting about your educational activities, favorite conference, read aloud, tech tool, and more.

Some of the educators on Twitter that I suggest that you follow:

• @dougpete
• @shellterrell
• @shannoninottawa
• @PeterMDwitt
• @scottrrocco
• @justintarte
• @gcouros
• @web20classroom

Interesting blog posts:

100 Top Twitter Tools

25 Bio Tips for Teachers

140 Twitter Tips for A Better Social Media Experience

Creating Your Own PLN

Professional Learning Network (PLN for short)

It was not too long ago that I started connecting with other educators through twitter. After about two years I am not quite sure what my professional PD would look like without it. Thanks to my PLN I have been able to incorporate many new and innovative ideas that I believe help make our students experiences here more educational, relevant and powerful.

So how do you go about creating your own personal PLN? Follow these easy steps and you will be on your way in no time!

1. If you do not already, get a Twitter account 
2. Follow a few people that you know in your 'field'. For our purposes I am talking education
3. Lurk around and get comfortable
4. Follow some of the lists that people you follow have made
5. Ask questions! You may be surprised who will answer you
6. Get involved in a chat
7. Post or ReTweet (RT) articles or posts of interest to you
8. Start a blog
9. Share what you are doing in your classroom or school

I can honestly say that since I have started my own PLN I have become more focused, inspired and even a bit more of a risk taker in my professional life. I am learning about new and creative ideas to implement at our school. Some things I never would have though of and other things I had thought of but never tried out. It is here that I can gain from other experiences and try and make them work for us here.

If anything else, using Twitter, writing on a blog, are both great sources of PD for anyone. Plus, it is a great reflective practice for all of us!

Is there any must follow education blogs that you follow? How about educators on Twitter? Let me know I'd love to check them out.

The New Communication

The other day I was asked to take a look at Michael Fullan new paper called: 

Great to Excellent: Launching the Next Stage of Ontario's Education Agenda. 

After reading this paper I was asked to reflect and provide a description of how the school I am at is adapting to the changes in education. Specifically in regards to technology, social media and communication.

Fullan identifies the 6Cs that are necessary in education today:

1. Communication
2. Citizenship
3. Character
4. Collaboration and Teamwork
5. Creativity and Imagination
6. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Over the past number of years the way school leaders interact, lead and communicate with their school community has changed greatly. The way information is shared and distributed has evolved to keep up with what is happening in technology, learning and communication outside the walls of our schools.  Not only that, we have to address how students learn in the 21st Century and how teachers open up the curriculum for the students to best meet their learning needs.

One of the challenges we all face is: How do we get these new technologies and and methods of communication to meet the 21st Century needs of our students? Here at St. Rita we are working hard to meet these challenges. The way I have decided to go about implementing these changes at St. Rita is to first know, understand and use these technologies myself.

.

By focusing on areas such as the 6Cs myself, I am trying to lead from the middle and modelling and encouraging the use of new technologies and ways to communicate with a wider audience. The idea is that teachers will transfer these skills, concepts and ideas into their classrooms and teaching.

Some of the thing that we have done at St. Rita are:

Communication

• St. Rita Twitter account: Used for announcements, to showcase student work and to provide resources for parents. This account is also linked to a St. Rita Facebook page so all the tweeted links go to Facebook.
• St. Rita Staff Room: A place to share information and an effort to use meeting time more effectively by not dealing with small administrative items. This allows for more discussion for school improvement at meetings.
• Using screenr.com: St. Rita Flipped Parent Announcement - This was used at the beginning of the year to be an alternative to the traditional paper announcement.
• St. Rita website: constantly updated and the first thing that parents often see. Therefore, this communication tool is the face of the school.

Citizenship

• Eco-Squad Blog: Our Eco-Squad has worked to create their own blog and they have been working with a school K-5 in New Jersey.
• My own blog is a good way to contribute to the educational community what I am doing. We are now in an age where we are all getting ideas from blogs, Twitter and Facebook. There is also a responsibility to share what you are doing with your Professional Learning Network (PLN): The Education of an Elementary Principal

Character

• We are also looking at the importance of teaching students the value of creating a positive digital footprint.

Collaboration and Teamwork

• As a staff we use Google Drive for a variety of purposes. Including making class lists for the following year: Class List Template
• Surveying staff using: St. Rita Winter Wishlist  -  Wishlist Results
• We know have Junior students collaborating together on Google Drive with each other and with teachers to complete their work.

Creativity and Imagination

• Using Google Forms to survey the students and give teachers a gateway to different opportunities for learning opportunities: Help Mr. Slack Name His Fish and The Results
• Having students use different ways to demonstrate their learning and what we are doing at our school: Hope - YouTube Video

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

• Making use of my Professional Learning Network (PLN) on Twitter has been very valuable to be in solving problems and accessing new and innovative ideas.

Hopefully, some of these things that we are doing here at St. Rita are going to take root in our teachers classrooms and move into their teaching practice. I believe that leading from the inside out is the best way to implement the 6Cs in our schools and that leadership in our schools is a critical part of making this work.

School Wide Halloween Learning Activity

Every now and them I try something like this out. Sometimes I think it is not often enough and other times I worry that teachers have so much to do in their classrooms that they do not want my 10 minutes activities. However, from feedback that I get they like to have these activities to do with their students at different times of the year.

Here is the activity that I have just posted for the school to work on: School Wide Pumpkin Activity

Some of the reasons that I think that they are important to do are:

1. There are always curriculum connections that apply to each grade level.
2. They build community within the school.
3. It gets teachers talking about what they are going in their classrooms.
4. The kids get excited and love to tell me about their learning experience around the task.
5. It gets continues to get me involved in what learning is happening in the classrooms in the school.

If any other administrators do similar things I would love to hear about it and find out what your experiences are with these type of tasks. 

Reflecting on School Use of Technology

Getting more and more technology into the classrooms to help compliment student learning has been a goal of mine for quite some time. We are steadily acquiring the technology here at St. Rita Catholic School so we can offer a student experience that takes advantage to the reality that students learn in.

In our Learning Commons and classrooms students have access to:

• 30 iPads
• a cart of 25 netbooks
• 20 iPods
• 11/13 classrooms are outfitted with a SmartBoard as is our library
• each teacher had a laptop 

We are looking at BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) activities here in our Junior grades and there has even been some collaboration of Junior and Primary students using the iPods.

Here is the St. Rita BYOD Policy for the 2012-2013 school year.

It never fails to amaze me just how much our students know about these devices. Not tapping into this knowledge to help our students meet their learning goals would seem like a waste.

I think it is important that we pause and reflect where we are at this moment. We are very fortunate to have so many great things here at our school. Taking a look at where we are and where we can move next is going to be a very important stage for us. Before use any more school funds to purchase more technology we are going to take a close look at how we use technology here at St. Rita and how we can use it to meet our students needs and to increase student achievement.

Flipping the Monthly Staff Meeting

I have been hearing a lot about flipping classrooms over the past year or so and more recently I have come across schools that are flipping their staff/faculty meetings.

The more I thought about it the more it seemed to make more and more sense to me. Here is why:

• We are always looking for more time to get together to talk about the real issues in our school. These issues include assessment and evaluation, rich learning tasks and looking at student work as a team. It has been quite difficult to get teachers released to have the time to talk about these things. Flipping a staff meeting allows for teachers to read through all of the information items at their leisure so we can spend the time talking about the issues we want to. 
• Staff members do not want to sit and listen to be for an hour talking about things that could have just as easily been sent in a email.
• The flipped meeting will archive everything that is important that our staff members need to know about. If they forget something, need something or just want to reference something that was discussed, it is all in one place

So what I have decided to do it use a blog to 'flip' my meeting. In a perfect world I would have started this at the August Staff Meeting but for now the October one will have to do.

The first meeting is this afternoon and I am going to try it out. In the future I will be sending it out at least a few days in advance so everyone can take a look before the meeting takes place.

Any feedback would be most welcome. Especially from anyone who has already tried this in their schools!