IT Summit 2013 - Presentation by the Thom Tech Catalyst Team

Today, I had the honour of presenting with some of my former colleagues from Thom Collegiate at the IT Summit 2013 in Saskatoon.

We spoke about how we learn, connect, collaborate and inspire each other as a professional learning community. We shared our experiences and numerous resources and tools about how we connect and inspire our students to achieve their very best.

Sharing as a Professional in a Social World

Participating in a professional discussion with other teachers is important to have others understand what you do as a teacher and what you think as a professional. From sharing news, to resources, to ideas, connecting online can make all the difference in your growth and success as an educator.

Here are the slides I presented to the RPSTA Assembly on February 3rd about how to use Twitter and other social media to participate in the online discussion about education.

Using Twitter to Connect and Learn as a Professional

Lately I haven't had a lot of time to write a lot of formal blog posts about what I'm doing in my classroom or to share new ideas and resources with others. I've simply been too busy to sit here and write a post and ensure that it is well written before I post it. (The perfectionist in me sure slows down actually posting all the stuff I have in my drafts folder!)

As I read new and interesting content online, I tend to use Twitter on a more regular basis to share new and interesting articles and media that I find online. I know I have written about this before on my blog, but there seems to be a new uptake in using Twitter by my colleagues lately and I hope it continues to be a growing trend. It is one of the easiest ways to connect and grow as a professional online and isn't complicated to learn. Plus, there are lots of us on Twitter already and we are always happy to help you out if you have questions or need help getting started!

There are numerous articles online already written about how to use Twitter to connect and learn online. I'm continuing to explore this tool as a way to incorporate Twitter into my classroom to further engage my students. But before I suggest you use it with your students, start using it yourself. If you are a teacher trying to embark on Twitter for the first time, or you haven't used it much in awhile, I encourage you to start by reading this post about Twitter chats for educators on Edumatic: The Top 50 Education Twitter Chats (And How to Use Them). Other good reads are The 7 Habbits of Highly Effective Teachers Who Use Technology and 100 of the Best Twitter Tools for Teachers by Category

I also found this article interesting on Edumatic: The Teacher's Quick Guide to Educational Twitter Hashtags, most likely because of my new obsession with infographics as it contained a good one.

Source: Edumatic

And don't forget to follow me @MmeSanders (and I will do my best to follow you back) so we can share and learn from each other. It is one of the best places or online tools that has let me grow and connect as a professional and has impacted my practice immensely.

Do students care about the provincial budget? They do if you let them "tweet" about it!

Grade 6/7 students participated in a live "tweet-up" event
while watching the Saskatchewan Minister of Finance
deliver the 2012-13 budget speech.

Figuring out how to engage middle year students in politics and making them understand that government decisions apply to them is a challenge. One of my goals in my classroom is to make students feel connected to what they have to learn and to encourage them to make a difference in the world around them. The provincial budget is an abstract idea to most students and I decided to challenge myself to make them better understand the event.

Some of the budget themed
snacks enjoyed by students
during the event.

I organized two classes of students in Grades 6 and 7 into student response groups, each responsible for a certain part of the budget, i.e. health, education, agriculture, etc. I then created a generic twitter account for each group and their job was to listen to the Finance Minister's speech and the Finance Critics' response and tweet about their assigned area of the budget and anything else they found interesting. Reporters had also offered themselves up to answer questions via Twitter so they were allowed to tweet them to ask questions of clarification on their topic. Students worked as teams to compose relevant tweets and also participated in the online budget discussion about the provincial budget that took place under #skbudget. The assignment follow-up is listed on my website here: SK Budget 2012-13 A Live Tweet Event

It was fascinating to observe students, who are not normally engaged in class discussions, participate actively in this activity. Most groups started by tweeting the facts that they were hearing, but later, they started tweeting their opinions about what they were hearing in the budget. The received questions about what they were saying and had to justify their "tweets" to people and support their opinions when challenged by others.

We received some attention online from others who were excited to see students get engaged on the topic. Some of the tweets included:

Saskatchewan School Board Association

Sheila Coles, CBC Radio

Murray Mandryk, Regina Leader Post

Using social media made an otherwise boring event engaging and relevant to the students. If I had simply made them watch the budget speech and then discuss it in groups or as a class, we would have been able to have a conversation about it, but it would have been limited to the knowledge and understanding in the classroom. The opportunity to ask others questions and engage in conversations with other people was a huge incentive for students to participate. There were definitely risks involved. We discussed the importance of being responsible digital citizens who were representing our school online. They had to ensure their tweets were appropriate, correct and would not embarrass our school or myself for allowing them the opportunity to participate in a live event. In the end, I had no inappropriate tweets show up. The students understood their responsibility and rose to the challenge.

Given the success of the activity, I would not hesitate to participate again in a live social media type event. The students' understanding of the budget and the conversations that took place were rich and impressive for their age. At the end of the day, I was rewarded by receiving tweets from students about their experience. Here are a couple of examples:

Creating your own PLN - How can I become a better teacher?

I have spent a lot of time lately taking to fellow teachers about the power of creating your own Personal Learning Network (PLN) and the benefits of having an online PLN through Twitter. Thanks to Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers, I have three embeded items to share with you to help you find other teachers to network with online. I hope you will consider adding me to your PLN when you get started @bobiashj. What are you waiting for?? No time like the present to get started. Don't forget to download Tweetdeck to help manage your tweets. To help you find conversations you might like to follow and contribute to, don't forget to add columns with hashtags (the word with a # sign in front). Here's a list to help you find some topics of interest (List of hashtags from HP Teacher Exchange).

A PLN is a great way to share resources, ask for help or celebrate accompishments. Here are a few things to help you geet started. Thanks Richard Byrne!

Twitter Explained

Here are two good short videos that explain what Twitter is and why you may want to consider joining. Most of my colleagues don't understand why I spend time on this network. I find it to be some of the best PD I could ever have. The network I have built up these past few years is invaluable and I have become a much better educator because of the dialogue and the sharing I have experienced on Twitter.

A new way to get your news

I've been noticing on Twitter that people are posting "their daily news" using a site called paper.li. I decided to try it out and discovered a new way to read the news coming through in my Twitter feed. You can also set up your own "paper" based on a search for a topic or to follow a group. This "paper" can also be set up to read your Facebook feed as well. I know that it won't replace my Tweetdeck, but I thought it was an interesting way to read what is going on today in your network.

Here is what my personal "paper" looks like based on my Twitter account:

Twitter for Educators

There is a lot of chatter and sharing on Twitter right now about how to use this social media in education. I have noticed a number of lists of ways to use it in the classroom being shared on Twitter so I thought that I would share a few of them here with my readers. Some links and ideas are better than others but you may find some of these ideas useful:

• Twittercure - Kathy Schrock's Presentation at ISTE 2010 on Twitter
• The Ultimate Twitter Guidebook For Teachers - a blog post found on EduDemic
• 50 ways to use Twitter in the classroom - a link sent to me by Samantha Miller
• Twitter for Learning - 55 Great eLearning Articles - by Tony Karrer at eLearning Technology

What is Twitter? - Animated Explanations

Friday Funny - Seniors Twittering

I thought that this segment on the Jay Leno Show last night was funny. I thought that it would also be a good video clip to show when giving a workshop on Social Media. I told some of my co-workers about it at lunch and I promised to post the link. Thanks to one of my friends on Twitter (ChavesH), I was able to get the clip. Here it is! You can follow this link if the embeded version doesn't work: Jay Leno