Jun 25, 2016
That feeling when
your nannying approach is very child centered but your charge goes to a teacher centered preschool 3 days a week.
seen from Germany
seen from Yemen
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seen from Australia
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seen from United States
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seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Türkiye
That feeling when
your nannying approach is very child centered but your charge goes to a teacher centered preschool 3 days a week.
Do you know how to cite a tweet? With more and more good, factual, trustworthy information coming out of Twitter, it is important to know how to give credit where credit is due. If you plan on using Twitter in your classroom, expect students to want to actually use the information they're gathering. Wait, students will want to cite information? From Twitter, I'm guessing so! Here's the gist (for MLA, at least):
Athar, Sohaib (ReallyVirtual). “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).” 1 May 2011, 3:58 p.m. Tweet.
Sohaib Athar is the tweeter's actual name, ReallyVirtual is the handle. Have fun citing!
What's that, you say? Please, for the love of all that is holy, no more info-graphics! I'm sorry, can't hear you. You really shouldn't mumble...
I love the motto! Check out that vertical text on the right-hand side.
It's not about the tools. It's about the skills.
That's deep, yo. But really, this list of skills is great to have on hand to combat those cohorts or higher-ups who think that the inclusion of Twitter is a waste of time. A few of my favorites: network literacy, digital citizenship, summarizing skills, reading skills. How about that last one, am I right? Throw that one in the face of somebody who isn't on board with your little Twitter project and watch them squirm! Anything that I can do to boost my students' reading skills is a huge plus, and I get to add things like critical thinking, connecting skills, and information literacy on top. While this is a great tool, it is lacking some crucial information... HOW? I would hope, however, that if you'd be using this info-graphic to get more people on board with Twitter, it wouldn't be the only piece of information you had found.
So, this one is a bit far-fetched, but let me explain. As a future music educator, I know that I will be all over the school. I will, in some instances, have upwards of 500 students to keep tabs on, and yet I will still be the one called in to work sound for events, provide muscle for moving heavy (some not so heavy) equipment around the school. Another aspect of being a music educator is that you see students for the entire time they are at the school. You become more than a teacher - you transition into a mentor role occasionally. Students stop by looking for you, and sometimes, you just simply can't be found. Enter, the Office Door Twitter Feed! Now, I personally wouldn't want a monitor attached to my door, but having a quick and easy way to update your location and or an ETA could be helpful. Having a separate twitter account for such a need would help cut down on some of the less useful mentions likely to find their way onto your feed if you were to hand out your handle to students. Although it would need some serious tweaking, the idea is by no means a bad one!
If you're anything like me, the title of this post has you cocking your head and going huh? Well, if not, good for you, I guess. Anyway, the "creepy treehouse problem" is the stigma surrounding forcing your students to become involved in social media where you will be playing a large role. Perception is a big thing, especially when one or two mispoken words from a student can land you in a lawsuit. Jason Jones, the author of this post from http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/, provides four guidelines to follow when utilizing social media (read: Twitter) in the classroom
Be transparent. Explain why it’s required, what students will be graded on, etc. Explain the tool’s ownership and logistics. If you’ve set up a class Twitter account, consider sharing it with at least some students.
Encourage self-organization. There’s no need for you to create that Facebook group! Let them do it. (In my experience, Facebook groups I’ve created haven’t gotten much participation, but ones students have created about my classes have often gone well.)
Deputize worthwhile ad-hoc groups. This encourages the perception–which hopefully is accurate!–that the class’s social media usage is bottom-up, and not top-down.
Be nimble. Notice how students are interacting with your course material, and put resources where they feel most comfortable.
Marc Laland created a humorous but informative video on using Twitter as a professional educator. He provides 5 people to follow right of the bat (four not including himself, but hey, #teamfollowback doesn't have to be a bad thing), including @tomwhitby, @innovativeedue, @sirkenrobinson, @edutopia, and @malaland. He makes a great case for the professional use of Twitter as an educator, but he doesn't seem to have that hopeful of an outlook on Twitter use in teaching. I wonder if his point of view has changed now that technology use in the classroom is becoming more and more expected and encouraged?
Another post with a link that has a few ideas on Twitter-use. What I like about this one is that it outlines how Twitter can replace some of the more mundane things you already do.
Twitter can also replace many tools you already use such as mailing lists for announcements, and social media in general can completely change the way that students submit and receive their assignments, using tools such as Flickr, YouTube and a blogging platform, like WordPress or Tumblr.
The Twitter scavenger hunt that Nancy Messieh, the author, talks about later in the article is an awesome idea! How have I not heard about this before. Basically, the teacher would send students clues via Twitter that would lead them from one user to the next. If you've already been busy using Twitter as PD to connect to educators all over the globe, why not reach out and actually USE those resources you've been collecting? Mrs. Messieh gives the example of using your connections and Google Maps to create an engaging way to teach young students about geography, but really, I see that as just the beginning.
http://twitpic.com/
http://twtpoll.com/
http://www.grouptweet.com/
http://followerwonk.com/
4 companion services to Twitter are presented in this video. Twtpoll and GroupTweet were my favorites out of the list. The ability to use Twtpoll even as a non-registered Twitter user is pretty handy, especially since you can use email. GroupTweet sounds like one of THE most useful Twitter companion service I've found, as it compiles everything without the need to use a hashtag. However, I feel there would be some downsides to using GroupTweet. Even though it provides the via @blahblahblah students won't be able to as easily see the personality behind each person. However, from a teacher's perspective, it seems extremely useful!
FollowerWonk seems similar to The Archiver (mentioned in a previous post).