Creating Professional Edu-Lurkers - Using Twitter Search to Introduce Twitter

Over the past two weeks I've been a part of several conversations with educators about using social media to expand learning networks. These were wonderful conversations that all lead to helping one another learn more about inspiring students. Sure enough nearly each of those conversations lead to the following question, "Why aren't more teachers using Twitter?" It was usually solicited with a look of bewilderment. As if everyone in the world was Tweeting and these "nonTweeters" were some type of unlearned individuals. "We tweet. Therefore, we are."
In my experience with introducing Twitter to the "nonTweeters" is that it can be a very scary place. What with all those @ symbols and funny looking links. And oh don't forget those number signs. Those hashags! What are they? What do they mean! There's just so many of them. #confused So, trying to convince an apprehensive "nonTweeter" to just create a Twitter account was wrong on my part. Then someone showed me Twitter Search. 
Oh Twitter Search, you magical thing! The best way to describe Twitter Search is to say, it's like a Google Search for Twitter. Go ahead. Try it. Search for some edu-wondernous like "digital citizenship" or "common  core".  I'll continue after the break. Click the image to get started. 

Pretty awesome isn't it. This is NOW how I introduce Twitter to the "nonTweeters". Sorry, I mean fellow educators. No account necessary. No registration. No username. No password. No commitment. Yet! Remember, baby steps. I pretty much encourage #lurking. But for an educational good cause.

How I Teach Edu-Lurking 101

Step 1

I ask them to search for edu topics using Twitter Search. Type it in the search box and hit enter! Don't let them get too broad in their search though. If I know what content area my participants teach, I will try to prepare a list of some topics to search for ahead of time. You will always have that one math teacher who searches, "5th grade adding improper fractions with and without common denominators games based on common core standards". This is usually where the 140 character limit conversation comes in.

Step 2

I tell them to find a tweet with a #, an @ and a link because we're going to "unpack" the tweet. Get it! "unpack" the tweet. Ha! That's a joke for all my "unpacking the standards" folks. Uh-hem. Ok. Moving on. 

Next, I ask them, "What do you want to know about your chosen tweet?" Common questions:

• Does this person know I'm looking at their tweet?
• Why are the messages so short?
• What's the "#" symbol?
• Can I click the "#" symbol?
• Why is there an "@" symbol?
• Why are there three "@" symbols?
• What's an RT?
• Why are there so many pictures of eggs as profile pictures?
• Can there be public and private conversations?

I like to let them explore. They are more likely to click links and hashtags if they know they don't have an account linked. This is where "ah-ha" moments happen. Participants begin to find resources and ideas that they can use in their classroom immediately! 

Step 3

I tell them to search for people and organizations. This is the perfect opportunity to have discussion on digital citizenship and professionalism and what it can mean to have a Twitter account. We talk about the positives and the challenges of having an account. Again, I try to give them a list of edu-Tweeters and organizations to search for. 

Step 4 

I was able to meet @cybraryman this
year at METC13. 

Usually, there are one or two that are excited and are ready to set up accounts immediately. They want to know who else they should follow and how can they find more people. So for those that are ready, I provide them the Twitter Holy Grail. Jerry Blumengarten's (@cybraryman) Twitter pages.

Educational Twitter Hashtags - by Jerry Blumengarten

Educational Twitter Chats - by Jerry Blumengarten 

If you're having some of the same conversations that I had about introducing educators to Twitter, I highly recommend starting them with Twitter Search.  It's easy. It only takes 3 seconds to get them looking at Twitter, finding useful tweets and you're not forcing them to remember another username and password that they may never use. Good luck!

See What I See

A reflective post? This never happens. 

I just wrapped up a 30 minute presentation on an upcoming Bond Measure that the community will be voting for on April 2. The purpose of my presentation was to give principals information on how we plan to use the potential funds to enhance technology in our district. 
My takeaway was at the beginning. Before my "official" presentation even started.
Prior the presentation I played the video below. 

We've all seen it. It's a great video. Inspirational. Motivational. Funny. Cute. But as I watched it, I looked at it in a new way (It wasn't an epiphany or anything, just a cool thought). My thought was, I want our students to create something inspirational like this. I want our students to express themselves with media. I'm sure many of you had the same thought. Or not. You've done enough student videos to make your head spin. My head isn't even turning. 
So after the video, I made a couple of enthusiastic comments.
"How awesome would it be if our students made a similar video!" 
"Don't you think our students would love to have their voice heard?"
"This guy must be so proud to see his work shine!" 
Blank stares. My enthusiasm was met with blank stares. Ok, maybe one or two nods of agreement. Those were by the principals who love when I come to help their teachers. And I am very appreciative of this. But I wanted new leaders to share my excitement. 
Student videos. I know this is not a new idea. But I do know that this is something that we do not do in our district. 
Why do school leaders not see what I see? Maybe it was too early in the morning. Maybe the coffee was bad. Maybe it's February and the pressure of state testing is on. Maybe I'm not selling my ideas the right way. Maybe I'm not selling my ideas the right way. Maybe I need to work on my salesmanship. 

To be continued...

Feedly - It's like Flipboard for your desktop. Sort of.

What I love about my iPad is that I can pick it up, open my Flipboard app and begin reading from all of the news websites (uh, hum my social media outlets) and ed tech blogs that I have hand picked. The best part is that these websites are arranged as if they were in a magazine or newspaper. Complete with a headlines and images. So, it makes choosing the articles to read a little easier. I'm a visual guy.

I love Flipboard for my iPad. However, I spend 85% of my day behind my desktop and there isn't a desktop version for Flipboard. So I went searching for my own and found Feedly. Feedly works very similar to the way Flipboard does. Once you sync your Google account Feedly takes your existing Google Reader feed and displays it on your desktop in a magazine or newspaper type layout for easy navigation. I use my Google Reader quite a bit, but I'm lazy and I don't like scrolling through an entire post to get to the next article. And just displaying the title isn't good for me. Remember, visual guy here.

Feedly has several options for you to choose how your content is displayed. You can display your content in a magazine style, with titles only, as a mosaic of images, as cards or as the entire article. Your content will be pulled straight from your Google Reader feed so you don't have to start manually migrating all of your websites to Feedly. Don't worry if you don't have a Google Reader feed.  You can start building content directly within Feedly. One downside, is that Feedly doesn't display your social media streams (Twitter, Facebook, Google+) within the layout you choose. It creates a separate sidebar that displays your social media stream. Similar to a widget in your blog. 

Oh Social Media, How I Have Tamed You. For Now.

What I love about social media is that it can provide you several avenues of communication and collaboration in the professional world. If, you choose to use them. Whether it's Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Blogger, LinkedIn, etc. There seems to be infinite ways to "stay in the loop" or contribute to "the loop". However, it's those same infinite ways that can be a nightmare!

I'm sure many of you with multiple social media accounts have gone through one the following scenarios. You send out a tweet, with a great resource or idea, to your followers. However, you feel like those who have "liked" your Facebook Page would love to hear about this idea as well. And don't forget about you LinkedIn connections. So you find yourself...

A. Copying and pasting the various links to the resources into your many social media accounts and then making all the necessary edits.
OR
B. Growing tired of maintaining all your accounts so you really only keep one account up to date.

I find myself doing the latter.

Then I found www.ifttt.com or If This Then That. It allows you to distribute content from one social media account (ifttt calls them channels) to others. No more copying and pasting from your Blogger to your FB Page, Twitter, Posterous, Tumblr, ect. It shows up on both! And it's so simple.
Here's the way the website works. You create these "If this... then that...." statements (ifttt calls them tasks) using your social media accounts. By creating content on one account you trigger the other account to post the same content. Take a look at a task I'm using below. If I create a post on my Blogger, then it creates a tweet on my Twitter feed with the post title and a link back to my to blog!

Sure, you can go on your Blogger, Wordpress or Facebook and hit "share" and send it out via Twitter, but www.ifttt.com eliminates that extra step. How about setting up a task like this...

So from now on all the Instagram photos you take, go straight to your Dropbox. 

I suggest you give this service a try and see if it works for you. Unfortunately, you can't create an If this... then that... statement that takes care of all of your social media needs. You'll need to create tasks that only includes two channels. For example, I can't say, If I post to Twitter, then post to my Tumblr, Blogger, FB page, LinkedIn, and Evernote. Which is a good thing. Because each service is a little different and requires a little tweaking in the way it's content is distributed. You can't post a 300 character status update from FB to your Twitter. So you'll find what work for you.  

Snapguide - Create Step By Step "How To" Guides

Would you like to quickly show the world how to prepare gazpacho that would make Samuel L. Jackson proud? Or demonstrate how to change out the wiper blades on your Honda. Snapguide is the way to go.

While searching for free iPad apps for an upcoming presentation, I came across this wonderful little gem. It's called Snapguide. Snapguide is a free iPhone app that allows you to create a step by step "How To" guide about anything right from your iDevice! Your guide can then be published to the web and viewed on many web enabled devices!



Here's how it works. 

1. With your iDevice, take a few photos or capture some video that demonstrates each step in your "how to guide"

2. Add text and/or audio to your steps to provide more detail.

3. Publish to the web. 

4. Share with your friends on Facebook or Twitter.

It's that simple. I made one in about 20 minutes. Take a look!

How to Use the Find My iPhone App

How can students, teachers and even tech support use this little gem in the classroom?
1. Students create their own visual tutorials about a particular concept or idea
2. Students submit a guide demonstrating the mastery of a skill
3. Students create a visual guide on the steps taken in the scientific process
4 . Student publish interactive digital stories
5. Teachers post homework guides on their websites or blogs demonstrating how to solve step by step sample problems
6. Teachers develop an interactive scavenger hunt by posting visual clues with directions on how to accomplish a task
7. Tech support posts guides for teachers explaining how to troubleshoot or perform a task

iPad Initiative - Who downloads your free apps?

Currently, our district is enrolled in the Apple's Volume Purchase Plan. However, we are still waiting to receive our first set of volume purchase vouchers. So until then we are downloading free apps to the iPads.
I thought I'd post a Q & A between myself and I to show you how we are managing this task. Don't worry. I didn't ask these out loud. Nor did I respond to myself out loud. But I guess that should be the least of our worries. 


Myself: Good morning. How are you?
I: Great. Enjoying my first cup of coffee.


Myself: Well, lets get started. 


Q: What are you using to sync your devices?
A: A Bretford Sync Cart with a dedicated Dell laptop. We are using 30 devices (iPad 2)


Q: Who purchases and syncs the free apps? 
A: Me (District Instructional Technology Coach). I will eventually delegate this down to the campus ITS.


Q: How do the teachers let you know what apps they want?
A: We're using a Google spreadsheet with color coding. Teachers have editing permissions and may add apps that they would like to have synced to the devices. I then go in and sync what I can. I use a color coding system to let teachers know it has been done. It's simple and makes sense. Take a look ours. Nothing fancy. iPad App Spreadsheet


Q: How often do you sync the devices? 
A: I try to do it as often as I can. At least once every two weeks. Well that is my goal until it gets too overwhelming. I have to go to the campus to do this and it can take a couple of hours. I've only completed this twice. We haven't had the devices long. 


Q: What if a teacher needs an app ASAP?
A: They can do it themselves if they'd like. They know how to sync them using the Sync Cart but it can take a lot of time. The cart does not sync them all at one time or very quickly. The other option is for the teacher is to touch each device, log in and sync them. It's up to the teacher and how much time they have. 


Q: Are you going to use the same process for the new cart you are expecting with 30 additional iPads?
A: Yes. I'll just use a different spreadsheet for different teachers. And then the delegating will begin!


Me: I'd like to thank you for your time and I hope we can talk again soon. 
I: You welcome. Have a great day!

iPad Initiative - Writing Workshop Research

Last Thursday, Ms. Murphy's 5th grade class utilized their iPads to begin conducting research for their writing workshop that would focus on careers. Students participated in an open class discussion and generated a lengthy list of potential career choices to research. The students then used the iPad app Qwiki to help with their research. With Qwiki, students could search a topic and Qwiki would combine relevant images, videos, graphics and narration into one presentation that students could begin exploring. From there, students would then decide if this was the right career choice for them to write about. If not, they could move on to another option. I loved how easy it was for a student to begin researching another career without having to get up and grab a different book or other resource. Everything was at their fingertips!

From the images below, you can see that our next app may be a mind-mapping or brainstorming app! If you know of any good ones, please feel free to share. I've had some Twitter followers give me several recommendations. Thank you to @nanc765 and @MissDSciTeacher for your recommendations. Here is a blog post by Greg Swanson from his blog Apps In Education titled 10 Mind Mapping Tools 4 the iPad.

Ms. Murphy teaches an all girls 5th grade class at Lucas Crossing Elementary in the Normandy School District. 

iPad Initiative - Restrictions and Responsible Use Policy

Another update on our iPad Initiative. I'm trying to play a little catch up with this post. The next step we took before we handed our students their iPads was to create a Responsible Use Policy. We reviewed various iPad RUPs before creating ours to help give us an idea of what we needed to include. The iPad RUP that we created is called, "iWill". Very creative, huh? Earlier in the year the students reviewed and signed a District Acceptable Use Policy but we felt that the iPads needed a little extra attention. It's not perfect, but then again what is. What we wanted to do was create some dialog between the teachers and students on the purpose of their iPads. I've included a sample of what we included in our "iWill" at the bottom of this post. Please let us know if you have any suggestions on how we could make it better.

In addition to the "iWill" RUP and the classroom discussion, we enabled various restrictions on the iPad. I've included a screen shot from one of the devices. I'm sure many of you will say, "Wow. That's a lot of restrictions!" Remember, this is new to us and we would like to avoid some of the potential mistakes that may happen. These devices are also shared. Therefore, one teacher may not be ready to manage a classroom set with all the bells and whistles. I'd like to share our thoughts behind the restrictions and get any of your feedback. 

FaceTime - We may look to open it up for certain projects. This is more of a student safety concern. 

Ping - Managing a social network for music is not a priority right now. 

Deleting Apps - Why would we want kids to do this?

Location - It's enabled. Just locked.

Email - We plan to open this up very soon with an email address. As of now, we just have not figured out how we will manage it. Will we have one email for all 30 devices or one for each. 

Allowed Content - We set these according to the age of our students. 
In-App Purchases - There is not a credit card on file with the Apple ID's that we are using but we would still like to avoid any accidental charges. 

View more documents from Manuel Herrera.


iWill Responsible Use Policy by Normandy School District is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

METC 2012 Presentation

For those of you who were unable to attend my METC presentation, No More Paper, No More Books.... I wanted to write up a short post on a few of the tools that I shared. 

The focus of the presentation was to share with teachers several free web-based tools that can help turn student netbooks, laptops, desktops, tablets and smartphone into learner response devices.

You can view my "virtual handout" here: mymetc2012.wikispaces.com

The first tool is Mentimeter. Mentimeter is a free web-based tool that provides the teacher a quick and simple way to interact with their students and receive feedback. Teachers can do this by having students respond to multiple choice questions via their mobile device. All the participants need is a link to the question. Results are displayed in real-time. No login required. 

 Poll Everywhere is a another free-web based polling service that allows a teacher to gather live responses from an audience via their mobile device or desktop computer. Students access the question via a direct link to the poll and can respond to a single multiple choice question created by the teacher. There are two features that set this tool apart from Mentimeter.

1. When you create an account, all of your polls are saved and can be used again.

2. Teachers have the option to ask an open ended question that the students can respond to in a free text format.

 Socrative is my favorite of the three listed here. Socrative is also a web-based tool that allows the teachers to collect response from their students. However, there are several great features that set this tool apart from the others.

1. An entire multiple choice tets can be created and saved within the application or upload using their .xls template. 

2. Questions can be graded and results can be sent back to the teacher via email or downloaded as an .xls file. 

3.  It's also a free iPad, iPhone, and iPod app. There is an app available for the teacher and an app for the student. 

4. Very simple to use.

Currently, Socrative is in beta and is free. However, with the easy to use and needed features, this will not be free for long. 

Mentimeter

If you are looking for a simple web-based tool that can make your lessons or presentations more interactive, then Mentimeter is a good solution for you. Mentimeter is a tool that allows you create a simple one question poll that your audience members can respond to via their mobile device. As long as their device can access the web, they are ready to respond! Just provide your audience the Poll URL or Vote ID and send them on their way. Give it a try for yourself.

Go to m.mentimeter.com and type in 71756
Or go to http://vot.rs/71756

Now watch the results below populate instantly!

Mentimeter is free and there is no log in or registration required. Your poll is saved forever and you can go back an edit it at any time as long as you keep the administrator URL that is provided once you create your poll. Results can also be embedded into your blog or wiki or shared via Twitter or email.