Twitter for Parents

As student engagement in social media continues to become a common activity, it is important that parents understand both how and why students and schools are engaging. Here is a quick guide for parents to begin the process of understanding the engagement, using Twitter as an example. Why Twitter? Many parents are already on Facebook. So the kids have "flown" away. To Twitter!

What is Twitter? 

 Twitter defines itself as " an information network made up of 140-character messages called Tweets. It's an easy way to discover the latest news related to subjects you care about."
The best way to obtain a basic understanding of a social media tool is to visit the help or FAQ page.

FAQ Link

On Twitter's FAQ page, there is a "Twitter 101: Getting Started with Twitter"   which provides such details as how to start using, what Twitter could be used for and tricks and tools to get started. Important concepts include the use of #hashtags and finding people you wish to follow. The Blog post "Mom, This is How Twitter Works" details how tweets appear visually based upon how the tweet is constructed.

How Twitter is being used in Education

Teachers, administrators and school board members are using Twitter to build Professional Learning Networks (PLN).  Some in the form of organized "chats" (see #MichEd); discussions and reactions to presentations and conferences (see #MACUL13); model best practices (@Miech25); conduct exam reviews in a trivia format (@MichaelCesaro);  send homework reminders (@msburnsAHSmath); praise students for work well done (@msburnsAHSmath, @kathybarraco); resource sharing (@AHSmuskrats); news and updates (@algonacsports) social connections and much more.

Here is a great presentation from Scott Kapala (@scott_kapla), Assistant Principal at St. Clair Shores Lakeview, regarding the use of Twitter as an tool in Education.

   

Twitter recommendations for high school parents

Twitter can be a great tool to help your high school student navigate through the college and career ready process. There are several blogs, organizations and education related Twitter feeds that may be useful. I suggest you start with the following:

@nytimescollege: New York Times journalist Tanya Abrams of The Choice Blog offers regular updates here on the college admissions process http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/

@caraleeadams: Free lance writer who writes a blog "College Bound" for Education Week.

@ahsmuskrats: daily announcements, sports updates, school points of pride 

Your Child's Digital Footprint

From the time your child begins to participate in social media they are creating a trail, or story, of their online self. From a developmental perspective, children, even many high school students, have not yet achieved the level of cognitive development that allows them to truly comprehend how current behavior has long term consequences. Why does this matter? Consider the following:

• According to the Wall Street Journal, some companies are asking applicants  to submit a "Tweet" in place of a traditional resume: The New Resume: It's 140 Characters
• College Admissions Using Social Media to Evaluate Applicants
• Want a Scholarship? Better Clean Up Your Facebook and Twitter.

Important points to remember: privacy settings are continuously being updated and changed by social media corporations. Failure to stay on top of the changes results in even the most locked down of accounts being open, at least for a while. And once it's posted, it doesn't go away because you have hit delete. Everything that posts has a "capture" in time.

What's Your Responsibility?

Every family needs to determine how they will handle minors engaged in social media but here are some suggestions:

1. Abide by the rules of the social media tool to enforce good digital citizenship. Right now most require 13 years of age. That is possibly changing in the near future, but in the meantime showing children how to operate within required limitations is an important concept.
2. Engage with your child. This can be accomplished either by requiring usernames and passwords be shared with you or by "friending" or "following" your child
3. Discuss posts, name choices that you see and why you are concerned. Often great conversations emerge from these learning moments.
4. For more information and ideas see the Educaton.com article A Parent's Guide to Twitter.

Conclusion

Your children are connected in a way that most of us never imagined at their age. Their tech-savvy nature can be intimidating. Have them help you as you travel this new path. They love being the "experts".  However, just because they're the "experts" doesn't make them the parent! Be brave. Join them.

Flipped Student Led Conference

In an effort to push myself as much as I push my fellow educators, I experimented with "going digital" during conference time. There were several issues that I wanted to address during conferences:

•  As an elective teacher of juniors and seniors, I am not a priority for even the best of parents. In fact, in a video of a student-led conference, a parent admits that he wouldn't be worried about my class, it's an elective and his student has an A. I understand that thinking. By the senior year, most students either have figured out school or they haven't. Elective courses are not a primary focus or concern. I don't believe that this is a reflection of apathetic parenting; rather, an effort at prioritizing tasks in a reality of being scheduled for more than can be accomplished in a day. The comment made transparent what many parents are thinking and how this thinking is different than how educators view conferences. There is as much a benefit to the student and parent to understanding what is going well and why as there is to identifying what isn't going well and what needs to change.

•  Students, especially in their senior year, need to become the owners of their education. Understanding course requirements, communication, assignments, etc and reflecting upon what is going well and what adjustments need to be made are college and career readiness skills, applicable to higher education and the work force. How do I, as their teacher, scaffold them through this new ownership?

•  For the reasons above, how do I make more school-to-home connections? I'll admit, this was the motivating factor that made me first consider shaking up my conference approach. And it may have to do with new evaluations that address this connection. But I like that detailed evaluations have me reflect upon my instructional practice in a way that connects my actions with student outcomes. And how I provide evidence to that end. 

The idea of making my students conduct their own conferences started rolling around in my head as I was reading articles and tweets about different ways to "flip" instruction. I sent a tweet out asking if anyone  had done anything like what I was imagining and received some interested replies, but no one who had tried this format. A Google search led to some detailed video examples of student-led conferences, but the conferences were a part of a well-developed strategy that combines mentoring and portfolio assessment. Obviously not applicable. So, with encouragement, I ventured into uncharted waters.

The first thing that I did was try to get the students excited about the process. That was fun. They don't seem to enjoy being the guinea pigs as much as I enjoy the mad scientist role. But I did involve them in the process from the very beginning. The first thing we had to discuss was how the conference could be recorded. Acknowledging that there may be technology issues and problem-solving before implementation was helpful. Solutions from iPads to webcams to Smartphones were identified. Next, I found several examples of rubrics for student-led conferences and  spent some time with my students evaluating the content from the perspective of what the students thought their parents wanted to know about a class when they attend a conference. Content was taken from two forms and added to the format the students thought was most user-friendly. The resulting document was comprehensive and served as a guide for the students to use while conducting their conference.

Yes, I accepted the "verbal" signature for points!

What I learned from this process was a confirmation that introducing new strategies, especially those that involve the use of technology, requires patience and flexibility. As an interesting aside, most of my students parents actually came to conferences this year! I think my students were trying to avoid the student-led conference. I made it as an assignment for points in order to encourage participation by parents and students. Technology difficulties included loss of wi-fi service and coordination of schedules. I remained patient, but firm, that the assignment needed to be completed. In the end all of my students (yes, all 8!) did complete the flipped conference. When I had received all of the links for completed conferences I sent hand-written thank you notes to the parents for participating. Including in the note was several ways to contact me with any questions or concerns.

In reflection, I believe that this project did address my concerns regarding conferences. I plan on doing this again, but am looking for input and suggestions from my colleagues more experienced with the "flipped" concept and/or student-led conferences. Unfortunately, the conferences that required the most flexibility and patience were the parents that I did not see during face-to-face conferences so there is still a bridge that needs to be built to connect to parents that don't traditionally attend conferences. Assigning points definitely helped.  Feel free to add your comments to this post or send me a tweet.

The Power of We

In celebration of Blog Action Day 2012, I started thinking about #Power of We in the K-12 education community and what immediately came to mind is the book It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton. The idea behind the book, which is obvious from the title, is that outside forces, groups, society and culture impact a child's well-being. And in order to do right by children we must, as a society, create a culture that not only values children, but supports families through the process of raising adults.  The children, cliche and song lyric worthy as it may be, really are our future.

While the book has been out for some time, I think it is imperative in the current political and economic period to consider what this means as we move forward. Unfortunately, educators are currently being portrayed as "on the dole" part-time workers with little or no interest in student achievement. Union members can't possibly be negotiating for interests other than their own, right? Lawmakers have passed national standards, reforms that are not based on proved methods and instituted legislation limiting benefits that will deter our brightest and best from pursuing education as a career. Parents feel polarized and left-behind in a sea of failing schools, if we are to believe Waiting for Superman and Won't Back Down. Somewhere, in the middle of all of this finger-pointing and blame, there are still children. Failing. Without Resources. Or succeeding, while few notice.

What if "we" acknowledged that some students aren't getting the education they deserve? That if children come to school without their basic needs being met the school may not be able to overcome all of the obstacles to achievement? What if legislatures valued teachers (not just say it, but put support and finances behind the rhetoric), making them a part of reform? What if teachers were willing to be less defensive and respond professionally to criticism or reform? What if parents decided that they were going to support the efforts of the school instead of placing blame? What if the children really came first.

There is no way as a teacher that I can meet the need of every student that I teach. It isn't humanly possible. That doesn't give me an excuse to not challenge each student and champion them to the highest standard of achievement that is individually possible. But if "we", all of society, stopped blaming one another and became the village described in Clinton's book, maybe we could accomplish what is best for children.

Project Showcase

One of the highlights of my experience at Edcamp Bluewater was a lively discussion about Project Based Learning and the difference between assigning projects and project based learning. I have some ideas about how to tweak my quarters to reflect the difference. In the meantime, my library science students culminating project from Quarter 1 was to create a public service announcement for Banned Books week. They studied intellectual freedom, the 1st amendment and its application to the school library throughout the quarter by reading a book that was on the ALA banned/challenged list and following a book challenge from the Miami Dade school district that went all the way to the Supreme Court. The following are the two best examples from the student submissions. They used the CogDogRoo site to choose the best digital format for their PSA. I look forward to using these as promotional material during Banned Books Week 2013. Nice job Andria and Kristen!


Andria's Banned Books Week PSA

Kristen's Banned Books Week PSA

Edcamp Bluewater

Had a great time at Edcamp Bluewater Saturday. For those of you not familiar with the Edcamp concept, think of it as self-directed professional development. With your colleagues delivering information based upon best practices, innovation and classroom experience. Had a great time and wanted to follow up with my new Twitter and blog followers with a recap and some links.

The session I conducted was on my new favorite tool: Instagrok.   We had a great discussion about how the tool can be used from elementary through high school, its possibilities for instructional differentiation, submission options (including purchasing an app on Edmodo) and assignment options. We also discussed some concerns from a research perspective as some of the key facts come from student assignments and the depth is not sufficient for a long-term research paper at the higher levels. We agreed that this tool has a lot of potential. The conversation took a natural turn, leading to comparisons of Edmodo and Moodle as classroom virtual learning environments. The best part of the session is that the group shared, not me with as the presenter with the expert knowledge (which I admitted up front I didn't necessarily have for this tool). Other participants showed how to look at apps in Edmodo and shared student work that had used CogDogRoo storytools.  When I reflected upon the day, I though about how this would apply back in the classroom. Everyday teachers struggle with the digital shift that has created educators who are not  the experts in all aspects of our teaching. We are certainly usually the content experts, but what about the technology, applications and connections to the students world?  What I experienced at EdCamp could certainly work in a classroom. A shared expertise that left us all more prepared. This is what I envision in the new cycle of technology integration and student connection.                                             

Hurricane Sandy Reading Recommendations

 The devastation across most of the Eastern portion of the United States, as well as an inspiring conference over the last couple of days, has me thinking of books that relate to a theme. If I were to hash tag my thoughts on Twitter I would use #hurricane, #globalwarming and #evacuation. Those three hash tags have me recommending the following two reads:

Zeitoun tells the story of a man who chose to stay in New Orleans during the mandatory evacuation period following Hurricane Katrina. The story is at times warm, funny, heart-breaking and thought provoking. In addition to the personal liberties denied during the emergency situation is the opportunity to understand a unique cultural perspective of an American woman's conversion to Islam.  The detainment, while rife with examples of prejudice and mistreatment, should have the reader also questioning personal responsibility, the role of the government during times of crisis and suspension of liberty. YouTube search Zeitoun for interesting first-person interviews.

                                                                               
Carbon Diaries 2015 is an award winning YA novel of the near future global climate change world that results in carbon rationing. Wen predicted natural disaster actually strikes, many of the same themes found in Zeitoun are explored. As a bonus for my teen readers, this is the first book in a series, providing continued reading choices!

Grab a book, share it with your friends and family and let the conversations begin.

 The devastation across most of the Eastern portion of the United States, as well as an inspiring conference over the last couple of days, has me thinking of books that relate to a theme. If I were to hash tag my thoughts on Twitter I would use #hurricane, #globalwarming and #evacuation. Those three hash tags have me recommending the following two reads:

Zeitoun tells the story of a man who chose to stay in New Orleans during the mandatory evacuation period following Hurricane Katrina. The story is at times warm, funny, heart-breaking and thought provoking. In addition to the personal liberties denied during the emergency situation is the opportunity to understand a unique cultural perspective of an American woman's conversion to Islam.  The detainment, while rife with examples of prejudice and mistreatment, should have the reader also questioning personal responsibility, the role of the government during times of crisis and suspension of liberty. YouTube search Zeitoun for interesting first-person interviews.

                                                                               
Carbon Diaries 2015 is an award winning YA novel of the near future global climate change world that results in carbon rationing. Wen predicted natural disaster actually strikes, many of the same themes found in Zeitoun are explored. As a bonus for my teen readers, this is the first book in a series, providing continued reading choices!

Grab a book, share it with your friends and family and let the conversations begin.

High School Reading

A former principal tweeted me a very interesting article (thank you Mr. Case!) about how high school makes kids hate reading. It's an interesting read and I can't argue with many of the points. However, it is a fact that literature and developing the skills of literary criticism are part of the English curriculum. And should be! What we need to focus on and allow time for is choice reading. Unfortunately this can become a difficult task when many schools are forced by our tough economic time to reduce library staffing or eliminate it all together. Today as classes come to the library we are going to start our discussion by looking at the 4 ways high schools make kids hate reading. And then break all the rules by going around those 4 assumptions. Starting with the students helping me write my book order. Here's to choice reading! 

AHS students, please post your suggestions for new books below. You can post specific titles or topics that you would like to have available for choice reading. Take control of your high school reading!