Connected Educators Benefit From and Inspire Others

Old School Room / Catherine Snodgrass / CC BY 2.0

A leftover photo of a student. A few papers. More than 30 desks nailed to the floor in neat rows. Empty shelves. This was the classroom I walked into the summer before my first year of teaching. The textbooks were the curriculum. No professional development was offered for new teachers. I met a few experienced teachers and a kind principal. They were my support for my first year of teaching. That was the extent of my being connected when I began teaching. Of course, this was before technology played a role in education.

Today new teachers have so many more options for connecting with other educators and finding support as they begin their teaching careers. My responsibilities and opportunities have changed throughout my career. And so have the ways that I connect with other educators.

Local, state, and national organizations and their conferences have provided many opportunities for me to meet others and learn from outstanding educators. I have had the chance to grow as I have shared my experiences with others. And technology tools such as blogs and Twitter have added more ways we can connect and grow today.

http://bit.ly/connectededucatormonth

How are you connected with other educators? Are you benefiting from being involved with a PLN (personal learning network)? Have you searched for #ce14 on Twitter to find what today's educators are sharing during Connected Educator Month? Have you shared how you are connected? My PLN is such a rich source of ideas and experiences from educators who strive to teach and learn and help both students and other educators. I am so very thankful for them. No teacher today--new or experienced--needs to teach without the extensive support of other educators who are passionate about their mission and willing to share!

3 Act Tasks in the Classroom

Wooden Chest / Brenda Clarke / CC BY 2.0

Do you know the formula for the volume of a rectangular prism? As a mathematics teacher I was not concerned with my students’ memorizing the formula because we could just figure it out when we needed it. But it has been a few years (OK… it’s been a long time!) since I taught volume in my classroom. So, I decided to check out a video that I found on Twitter. The video was created by Kyle Pearce, a mathematics teacher in Ontario.

Pearce uses Keynote presentation software with animations to illustrate why the volume of a rectangular prism is determined with the formula V = lwh. His use of animations is not fluff but instead it enhances the explanation. The result is a video that is professional in style, simple to follow, and—most importantly—effective in helping students to understand the concept.

I explored his site a bit and then followed a link to his video about the volume of a cylinder. It’s interesting and useful… just as the first video is.  While there I found a link to Dan Meyer’s Hot Coffee 3 Act Math Task. This task is interesting to me… and it would be interesting to students. Is it a word problem? Yes. But this task is real. And it will seem so to students.

It's Easy As... / Mike Kniec / CC BY 2.0

I definitely needed to learn more about 3 Act Math Tasks, so I visited Meyer’s website to look for a good explanation of 3 Act Math Tasks. I found his description of The Three Acts of a Mathematical Story. And Teaching with Three-Act Tasks… with links to all three acts. He also publishes his task bank of 3 Act Math Tasks on his site. Lots of good resources to learn about and to use while you start experimenting with creating your own 3 Act Math Tasks.

When I returned to Pearce’s site I discovered that he also shares a list of 3 Act Tasks that he has created.

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So what lessons can be learned from my explorations at these sites?

1. Rich teaching resources can be found through Twitter,
2. Many members of your PLN may freely share excellent ideas and resources,
3. Storytelling can be effectively used in classrooms,
4. Keynote (and other presentation software) can be used to create helpful videos for students, and--most importantly--
5. The lesson plans from Pearce and Mayer are designed for mathematics classrooms; however, these ideas are not limited to mathematics education. The 3 Act Math Tasks storytelling strategy could be effectively used in history, language arts, science, and many other classes.
6. And, of course, Twitter, your PLN, and presentation software can all be used well in other classes.

Have you tried creating a 3 Act History Task or a 3 Act Language Arts Task? Or something similar in your classroom?

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Resources from this post...

Kyle Pearce
@MathletePearce
https://twitter.com/MathletePearce
http://tapintoteenminds.com/
tapintoteenminds.com/2014/09/05/visualizing-the-volume-of-a-rectangular-prism-formula/
 
Dan Meyer
@ddmeyer
https://twitter.com/ddmeyer
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2011/the-three-acts-of-a-mathematical-story/

Using Twitter Favorites to Share Relevant and Current Ideas

I want to share with my teacher education students what other educators' opinions are of Professional Learning Networks (PLNs)... to give a flavor of the excitement and benefits that come from being part of a PLN.

Rather than create a third Storify story for the class I decided to look for another approach. I have learned--and shared in this blog--how easy it is to create a Storify story to provide current, relevant content. I have already created two Storify stories that I will use with my students in our Spring 2014 online course.

Twitter escultura de arena / Rosaura Ochoa / CC BY 2.0

So I watched Twitter on TweetDeck for a while. I created a column (timeline) that held tweets that contained PLN or #PLN. From those tweets I chose the ones that I thought would provide useful information to my students about PLNs. I favorited those. Then from my Favorites column I chose to share the tweets that included PLN (and, thus, #PLN) and I embedded those in the website for my course (as I have done below for this blog.) When you create the filter for the favorites that you want to use a widget is created for you that you can embed in your website. The process is easy.

I plan to use this data widget in my social media unit. However, I think I will find many uses for providing information for my students in this way. Is this a technique that you can use with your students?

 Favorite Tweets by @joschiff

Who Do You Follow?

Follow My Lead / Saxon Moseley / CC BY 2.0

Finding individuals to follow can be challenging for educators the first time they decide to find out if there is something to this idea of professional development and PLNs in social media. It gets easier. An educator that we follow through his/her blog or Twitter feed mentions someone else… we follow that person… who provides a link to an article whose author we decide to follow… and so it goes. But, sometimes, we want to experiment… to step outside the box. That’s where lists of interesting educators—and non-educators—are helpful. Here are some current lists that are worth checking. What lists do you recommend to others?

Lists of educators only…

100+ Influential Learning Professionals Worth Following
Jeff Dunn
Edudemic
http://www.edudemic.com/100-influential-learning-professionals-worth-following/

The Edublog Awards
http://edublogawards.com/

Rewarding excellence in international education: the 2013 EAIE Award winners
http://www.eaie.org/blog/rewarding-excellence-the-2013-eaie-award-winners/

2013 – Finalists & Winners… the EdTech Digest Awards Program 2013
http://edtechdigest.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/2013-finalists-winners/

SIIA Announces CODiE Award Winners for Education Technology Industry
http://www.siia.net/blog/index.php/2013/05/siia-announces-codie-award-winners-for-education-technology-industry-2/


Lists that include non-educators…

We Follow
http://wefollow.com/

The 106 Finance People You Have To Follow On Twitter
Linette Lopez, Julia La Roche, and Steven Perlberg
http://www.businessinsider.com/finance-people-to-follow-on-twitter-2013-10?op=1

Who Do Members of Congress Follow on Twitter?
Dan Amira
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/08/who-do-members-of-congress-follow-on-twitter.html

100 Must Follow On Twitter 2014
Vala Afshar
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vala-afshar/100-must-follow-on-twitte_b_4398144.html

Thirteenth Annual Weblog Awards: The 2013 Bloggies
http://2013.bloggi.es/

The 2013 Canadian Weblog Awards Winners
http://www.canadianweblogawards.com/canadian-weblog-awards/2013/12/7/the-2013-canadian-weblog-awards-winners.html

The WEBBY Awards 2013
http://winners.webbyawards.com/2013

It’s Time to Add to Our PLNs

Clock Work Man by Sean MacEntee  /  CC BY 2.0

My students – preservice teachers – learned how to create their own PLNs this semester. The students read education blogs and they wrote their own. They use a reader to make following blogs easier. They followed educators on Twitter… and they learn to tweet, to retweet, and to favorite. They shared as well as benefitted from what they read. Their favorite curation tools were Delicious and Pinterest. They created plans to curate and share what they learned as well as use it in their own soon-to-be classrooms. They also planned to publish their own experiences and ideas. They are excited about the opportunities that collaborating with others in our PLNs offers to today’s teachers.

One of the challenges when developing your PLN is to find blogs to follow. There are many excellent education blogs today, but each beginning teacher comes from a different place with individual experiences and needs. Choosing the first blogs to follow can sometimes be challenging. I, of course, make suggestions for a variety of disciplines. I also provides lists of award-winning and award-nominated blogs.

Vicki Davis (Cool Cat Teacher) has published an article about this year’s Edublog Award finalists and accompanied it with some of her usual wisdom and experience. In a message that I send to my students this week (exam week already!) I will recommend that they read her article and check out the blogs on the finalists list. You can read it at The Edublog Awards and the Legacy of Beth Holmes. I know that I plan to add to my PLN through the Edublog Award finalists list!

Haiku Deck is Available on the Web

What are an educator’s options for creating a presentation?

The first tools that come to my mind are PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi, and Haiku Deck. PowerPoint is available for Windows and Macs, although the versions are not exactly the same. Work-arounds are available to use PowerPoint on iPads (to varying degrees). Keynote is available for Macs and iPads. Keynote is not available for Windows, but workarounds allow some degree of compatibility. Prezi is available for Macs, Windows, and iPads. Haiku Deck is available for iPads and the web.


Are these our only presentation options?

A recent article on Edudemic mentions Haiku Deck, Projeqt, and Google Presentations. The Crazy Egg blog published 19 Free Presentation Tools to Wow Your Audience. Their list includes several tools with which I am familiar (SlideShare, Google Presentations, Prezi, Zoho Show, and Jux) in addition to others. These two articles list some of the tools most used in education for PowerPoint-type presentations. Presentation software from other vendors is available, too. Of course, we can also use videos, podcasts, and other types of presentations.


How do we create outstanding presentations?

Creating a presentation and creating an outstanding presentation are two different things. How do we make sure our presentations are effective? That they accomplish the goals we have in mind?

I remember hearing in my first undergraduate education course that education causes a change. I did not agree at that point in my life, but I do now. The first time I tried Twitter I saw no advantage to using it. I had not learned anything in that first effort. The second time was not much better. But, the third time... I learned... and I have since changed and am still changing how I work with my PLN. I was certainly a slow learner, but I did eventually learn. How do I know? I changed. :)

So, what do I consider an outstanding presentation? One that causes members of the audience (or class) to change. In other words, they learn. One of the best handouts I have seen on giving outstanding presentations is The Creative Pathfinder: #24 How to Give an Outstanding Presentation. The recommendations are not new, but they are shared effectively: minimal text, large photos, few key points, no bullets, and a call to action. I think this handout and the resources listed in it are excellent.


Which presentation tool lends itself to this approach for designing effective presentations?

Haiku Deck seems to be created for the approach described in The Creative Pathfinder. I was delighted when Richard Byrne shared recently in his Free Technology for Teachers blog that Haiku Deck is now available on the web. (Up to this point it was only available for iPads.) I immediately signed up for it and began playing. You can see my first (slightly revised) Haiku Deck presentation at the beginning of this blog.

Richard Byrne has also provided a tutorial for the software. I had planned to provide a tutorial on this post this week, but instead I’ll just suggest that you check out his on Free Technology for Teachers!

So, what’s my call to action? Try Haiku Deck’s web version. I think you’ll like it.

Curating in the Cloud

CURATION IS AN IMPORTANT COMPONENT OF LIFELONG LEARNING

Lifelong Learner / NazarethCollege / CC BY 2.0

Many of us use social media to help us live as lifelong learners. We create, communicate, and curate with blogs, Twitter, and our PLNs (Personal Learning Networks). The lessons I create for my students are far different from those I developed before social media was as available as it is today. In my early days as an educator I stated more than once that I was going to write my own textbook. And my mathematics students seconded that idea. Now I do that. Every time I create a unit or a lesson. I love the freedom to develop lessons that meet my students’ needs while I meet current standards in my discipline. Technology--hardware, software, the web--allow me to do that so much more easily than I could have done the first time I thought about writing a textbook.

I’ve been thinking a lot about curation this month as my students (pre-service teachers) are using blogs and Twitter as they begin to develop their own PLNs. For many years my curation process consisted of (1) bookmarking sites and (2) organizing documents in folders on my desktop computer at home. I began using social bookmarking as soon as I discovered it. I love the fact that I can access my bookmarks from any browser on any computer! The application I used for that began to have difficulties so I moved to Delicious. I have investigated Diigo from time to time, but for my purposes Delicious serves my needs. When I was the technology director for my school district I encouraged the teachers to access my bookmarks to help them find relevant sites for their teaching. Now my students have access to my bookmarks if they wish.

I did not need that anywhere/anytime flexibility for my documents and other files. I am at my most creative working at my computer at home. At school I am more likely to be involved with colleagues and students than with creating units on the computer. Until I began using a smartphone. Mobile technology is beginning to change my habits. I find myself at school or elsewhere wishing I could access documents or files that I have organized in my folders on my home computer. I store some content in the cloud. But not all. It’s time to think about curating in the cloud.

CURATION PLAYS MANY ROLES
 

Larry Bird, curator, Political History / Karon Flage / CC BY 2.0

I began to investigate the concept of curation. We have a curator of the museum for our local historical society. What does a museum curator do? Kim Kenney (http://www.bellaonline.com/about/Museums) in What is a Curator (http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art31080.asp) lists some of the duties of a museum curator: acquisitions, collections management, exhibitions, research and writing, and community connections.

That sure sounds like what I do as an educator. I acquire content and ideas for teaching it. I manage my acquisitions in my social bookmarking site and in the folders on my desktop computer. I create exhibitions (curriculum, lessons) that are organized collections structured in a way that I and others can learn from them. I research and write so that I can develop new content that is useful for myself and others. And I share with the various communities of which I am a part: colleagues, students, PLN.

CURATION IS WIDELY USED TODAY
 
Curation has taken on a new role in today’s Web 2.0 world. (See Beth Kanter’s (http://www.bethkanter.org/about-beth/) comments about content curation at her blog (http://www.bethkanter.org/content-curation-101/). So much information is created nowadays that we can no longer stay up-to-date by reading or writing about all the news stories. Some folks have developed full-time jobs using tools to help them watch what’s happening all over the world, spotting trends, and sharing that information. I found this 2011 interview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMn-cJHzF8A) of Robert Scoble (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Scoble) by Howard Rheingold (http://rheingold.com/about/) about online curation to be very interesting.

GOOD CURATION TOOLS MAKE THE PROCESS EASIER 

So what are the best tools for educators to use for curation? Many tools were suggested in articles* I researched about curation. I read about bags, binders, and online newspapers along with other ways to create, collect, consume, communicate, and curate data and information. Here are the tools that interest me the most at this point for my curation needs.

Evernote (http://evernote.com/)... collect your sites and documents... access from anywhere

Evernote Taiwan User Meetup / othree / CC BY 2.0

• I have played with Evernote but was never sold that it was an appropriate tool for me. After my research for this blog post and for the new unit that I added to my course I am convinced that Evernote will help my acquisition and management processes be more efficient. It will also provide that anytime/anywhere access that I need for my documents and other files. I think that Whitson Gordon’s (http://whitsongordon.kinja.com/) article I’ve Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here’s Why It’s Actually Amazing (http://lifehacker.com/5989980/ive-been-using-evernote-all-wrong-heres-why-its-actually-amazing) was written for me!

Logo of Delicious / Bernard Goldbach / CC BY 2.0

Delicious (https://delicious.com/)... my old friend for social bookmarking... supports tags and comments... do I need Delicious AND Evernote?

• Apparently it’s a bit of a challenge to import Delicious bookmarks into Evernote. (I came to that conclusion after searching for a method to do so.) I do have a lot of Delicious bookmarks with tags. I don’t have time to play with that at the moment, so for now I will use Delicious along with Evernote. Delicious has been and continues to be a useful acquisition and management tool for me.

FlipBoard (https://flipboard.com/)... create magazine... your sites... uses social media feeds... magazine looks almost real and definitely interesting

Flipboard / Gustavo da Cunha Pimenta / CC BY-SA 2.0

• I have investigated FlipBoard previously and have seen other educators use it. It did not appeal to me as a tool to use with my students. When I create a class or workshop I usually use a wiki as the foundation. Wikis are convenient to use as I’m working with my students. I keep the wikis published and available for the students for several years so they can access them later as they need to do so. I try to make them attractive and inviting. And it’s easy to modify them as technology and my own knowledge change. But... rather than create wikis containing all the content I use in a particular class or workshop, perhaps I should use wikis as the organizational structure with FlipBoard magazines as the unit of structure for individual topics. FlipBoard looks like a good tool for communication and curation.

FYI
 
Would you like to review some of the *articles I read about curation and appropriate tools for curating? Here is a partial list of those that flavored my thinking and my decisions but that I did not quote or explicitly mention in this post.

http://mashable.com/2011/01/06/curation-tools/
4 Promising Curation Tools That Help Make Sense of the Web
by Steven Rosenbaum, author of Curation Nation
2011

http://mashable.com/2013/05/09/curator/
If You Use the Web, You are a "Curator"
2013

http://iteachu.uaf.edu/grow-skills/filelink-management/content-curation-tools/
Content Curation Tools
2013

http://learni.st/users/terry.heick/boards/31293-top-10-content-curation-tools
Top 10 Content Curation Tools
by Terry Heick
2013

http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com/Curation+Tools
Curation Tools
2013

http://www.labnol.org/internet/best-content-curation-tools/
The Best Tools for Content Curation
by Amit Agarwal
2011

Here’s the list of websites that I investigated as I searched for appropriate tools. Many of these websites are very useful for a variety of purposes. The tools I chose in this blog post are specifically for the purpose of curation.

addictomatic: inhale the web
aggregage
attrakt
bagtheweb
blogbridge
---
bundlr
contentgems
curata
curated.by
delicious
---
diigo
evernote
flipboard
google news
huffington post
---
inspiretothrive
list.ly
listorious.com (now called muckrack)
livebinders
paper.li
---
pearltrees
pinterest
scoop.it
storify
symbaloo
---
techmeme
the awl
tweetdeck
twitter
yahoo news

Building Your Personal Learning Network (PLN)

One of the best features of teaching is that every school year has a FIRST DAY. A new beginning. It's always exciting to think about what I'm going to do differently this year to help my students learn how to teach others. Two years from now my students will be planning THEIR first days for their students!

I believe that one of the best changes since my first day in my own classroom is that teachers no longer go into their classrooms, close the doors, and teach on their own islands. Today we communicate with each other. We collaborate on what works, what doesn't, and how we can do it—whatever it is—differently... and better. And our students benefit from our communicating and collaborating with each other.

One of the topics that my students and I will explore this semester is our Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). I've been putting together some ideas about PLNs. What would you add to this diagram that I created using Inspiration?