Technology with Intention

Snapshot of Technology with Intention blog

It’s time to start adding my blog roll—the blogs that I read for my own professional development—to this blog. Rather than begin with the blog roll from my previous blog, today I’m adding a new blog, Technology with Intention. I discovered it when I started exploring the list of nominees for the Edublog Awards list for 2011. (They haven’t published their 2012 list yet.) I shared this list with the graduate students in a workshop that I’m teaching online so they could find some educational blogs that they might like to follow.

The blogger, Jac de Haan, is involved with a variety of activities in addition to writing the blog. He shares his resume using several visual tools designed for that purpose. (Note to myself: share some of his visual resume tools with my university students!)  His posts are interesting, current, and useful. One of his interests is using the iPad in the classroom, so if you’re looking for good iPad apps, you will find some recommendations in his blog. His blog has won the best new blog award for the 2011Edublog Awards and the Education World’s Top 25 Blogs for Educators in 2012,

Several of his recent posts (the iOS 6 update, creating a classroom blog, digital identity resources, and cyberbullies) are timely to some of my projects and those of my students. I will share his blog with my students (both undergraduate and graduate) and also use some of his posts for my own interests.

Relevant Links…

Technology with Intention… http://www.techwithintent.com/

Jac de Haan… http://jacdehaan.com/

2011 Edublog Awards… http://edublogawards.com/

Education World’s Top 25 Blogs for Educators in 2012… http://community.educationworld.com/content/education-world%E2%80%99s-top-25-blogs-educators

First Steps in the Twitter World

My students are learning to use Inspiration software. Sometimes they have questions about the software and sometimes their questions concern my expectations. Twitter is quick and easy to use for both our questions and the responses. We will evaluate the use of Twitter as a communication tool between teacher and students when we finish our Inspiration unit.

Roobee (Roba Al-Assi) / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I have used Twitter off and on for a couple years. It seemed that it could be helpful, but I wasn't impressed enough to stick with it. Until now. One of us--either Twitter or myself--has grown enough that it's looking like a more useful tool for education. More useful, in fact, than the limited purposes that my students and I are using it for in our current experiment.

I've been expanding the list of folks that I follow. I follow Obama and Romney since it's election season. I have recently added Edgar Allen Poe and George Washington. I want to add Carl Sandberg and Abraham Lincoln, but haven't decided yet which versions of those two to follow. Just think of the class lessons that could develop from following those four guys. (Hmm... I need to add one--or two--female historical figures.) I have followed Vicki Davis (@coolcatteacher) for quite a while (she's one of my heroes in instructional technology) and just recently added another instructional technology hero, Scott McLeod (@mcleod). I don't want my list to become overwhelming, but I have discovered that the professional development available from following folks on Twitter can be almost as excellent as what can be gained from following folks on their blogs. (I haven't posted my blogroll to this blog yet, but I will.) The professional development aspect of Twitter was a surprise!

I want a quick look at how other teachers are using Twitter, so I plan to explore Twitter4Teachers, a wiki created by Gina Hartman (@ghartman). She created the wiki to help educators connect with other educators on Twitter. I discovered the Twitter4Teachers wiki when I searched TeachersFirst for their collection of Twitter tools and techniques.

TeachersFirst also led me to The 2012 A-Z List Of Educational Twitter Hashtags. I had not used hashtags previous to the experiment this semester with my students. We have a hashtag that we use on all tweets that relate to our class. That keeps us organized and we don't lose any comments. I knew that we needed a hashtag, but I did not know how large the world of hashtags is! It's another way to connect with others--even folks you don't know yet--that have the same interests. For example, if I have time Tuesday evening I plan to join in a conversation on the #edchat hashtag. This site lists more than 300 hashtags. Let's see... If I check out one new hashtag per week, that will take me about 6 years to get through the list. Oh. My. Gosh. This same web site (The 2012 A-Z List Of Educational Twitter Hashtags) has an embedded Google Docs presentation of ways to use Twitter in the classroom. You can add it to your own Google Docs.

By the way, I am using TeachersFirst to find my way through the Twitter world because of my respect for the quality, practicality, and thoroughness of their research. If they are not one of your favorite web sites, I urge you to go to http://teachersfirst.com/ to check out what is available at their web site.

Links in this post:

Scott McLeod http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org (@mcleod)
Gina Hartman http://www.ginahartman.com/ (@ghartman)
Google Docs http://docs.google.com/
Inspiration http://www.inspiration.com/
TeachersFirst http://teachersfirst.com/
The 2012 A-Z List Of Educational Twitter Hashtags http://edudemic.com/2012/06/2012-twitter-hashtags/
Twitter http://twitter.com/
Twitter4Teachers http://twitter4teachers.pbworks.com/
Vicki Davis http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com (@coolcatteacher)

Twitter Tips

We're using Twitter in the Applied Technology class that I am teaching this semester. Twitter is a quick way for the students to let me know when they need some help with their assignments during the week. Hopefully, they will also discover that it's a good tool for professional development.

I've used Twitter previously, but I never spent much time with it. Obviously, that's not going to be true this semester! While I was at Edudemic.com this morning I noticed an interesting infographic of Twitter tips. I implemented a couple of the tips immediately and decided to use some of the other tips later.

Cheryl Lawson (http://cheryllawson.co/) has organized the tips well and her writing style is easy reading.

You can find ideas for your profile (why you should use a photo rather than an avator), how to find people to follow (use hashtags), and other good ideas (share photos, pay forward, ...).

Go to http://edudemic.com/2012/08/twitter-tips/ to view the infographic and learn some useful Twitter tips whether you're a newbie or more experienced with Twitter.