Periscope + EdcampCT = Great Discussion on Social Media in Education with Special Guests Elephant and Piggie

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This week at EdcampCT, I had an opportunity to model the app Periscope with my colleague Judy Arzt. Periscope helps you explore the world through someone else’s eyes (and device). Judy and I decided to model the app during our session on social media in education. We had our live audience in Connecticut, as well as a global audience via Periscope.

When planning our Periscope, I decided to bring some of my Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems. I thought it was the perfect analogy for social media in our schools today. We all know the Piggie in our school. Piggie is the educator who is already on board and excited. Piggie in the educational world is definitely a connected educator (and an Edcamp groupie, for sure). Unfortunately, we all know Gerald the Elephant in our schools too. Gerald is fearful, full of gloom and doom and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Gerald is afraid of social media and is the educator who is not on board and is perhaps rolling their eyes as Piggie shares her excitement over all the awesome things she learned at EdcampCT. The good news is that Piggie, by the end of the story is always able to win Gerald over. It is my hope, that as we start this new school year, we are just like Piggie and win over all the Geralds in our schools and communities.

Since our session at Edcamp, I’ve been thinking a lot about Elephant and Piggie. For fun, I decided to write my own adaptation of Elephant and Piggie. My version is titled, We are Going 1:1! Social Media in Schools. The image is an original, so I would be following proper copyright (and modeling good digital citizenship too!)

Piggie: [Excitement in voice] We are going 1:1!
Elephant: [Panic in voice] WE ARE GOING 1:1?!?
Piggie: Yes Gerald, we are going 1:1! We are bringing social media into every classroom!
Elephant: [Confusion in voice] Piggie, what is 1:1?
Piggie: [Excitement in voice] 1:1 means that everyone has access! Everyone will be able to connect and collaborate with the world.
Elephant: [Panic in voice] The world?!? How will we keep all of our students safe if we don’t have blocks and bans in place?
Piggie: We’ll embed digital citizenship into the curriculum!
Elephant: [Confusion in voice] What’s digital citizenship?
Piggie: Digital citizenship helps students be safe, aware, global and socially responsible both on and offline.

Piggie shows Gerald her device.

Elephant: [Concern in voice] Piggie, won’t the students be distracted with all these devices? How will they pay attention in school?  I don’t think the teachers will like this at all.
Piggie: Gerald, social media is just another tool. It will help the teachers break down classroom walls and bring the world inside the classroom.
Elephant: [Panic in voice] They are going to break down the school walls? That is vandalism. This is not a good idea – not a good idea at all Piggie.
Piggie: Gerald, the school walls will not literally be knocked down.
Elephant: They won’t?
Piggie: No, they won’t. The devices like this one here [motions to the device in her hand] will help the teachers and students connect and collaborate with other classrooms around the world.
Elephant: [Confusion in voice] What will this look like?
Piggie: [Excitement in voice] Teachers and students will be able to use social media tools like Periscope, Google, Skype, Blab, Twitter and lots of other apps to learn together.
Elephant: How will these social media tools help them learn together?
Piggie: [Excitement in voice] The sky is the limit, Gerald. They can blog and get comments from other students and classrooms around the world, participate in Genius Hour, learn through Makerspaces and 3-D printers, participate in global projects like Mystery Skype, Global Read Aloud, Connected Educator Month, Dot Day, Hour of Code, and so much more.
Elephant: [Excitement in voice] Piggie, this is incredible! All these social media tools will provide ample opportunities for all students!
Elephant & Piggie: Yay! We are going 1:1! We are bringing social media into every classroom!

The next day.

Elephant: Piggie, I was wondering, how schools will provide specific professional development on digital citizenship?
Piggie: Administrators, teachers, school counselors, library media specialists, students and parents will buy blocks of tickets to attend the Digital Citizenship Summit on October 3rd in Connecticut!
Elephant: What will they learn at the all day Digital Citizenship Summit?
Piggie: A lot, Gerald! The #digcitsummit is not to be missed! The all day event has national experts speaking about how to embed empathy and kindness early and often, digital etiquette, cyber ethics and law, issues surrounding privacy, how to parent in the digital age, digital literacy, copyright issues, resources to combat cyberbullying and promote a positive school climate, social media optimization for students, empowering educators by creating 1:1 learning environments, technology addiction and so much more.
Elephant: Where can I find more information and buy tickets?
Piggie: Just go to http://digcitsummit.com/ and follow the blog for updates and you can buy your tickets here: http://digcitsummit.com/registration/ or call the ticket office at 860.231.5555. Gerald, also follow @Digcit1 on Twitter for updates too.
Elephant: I can’t wait to go to the Digital Citizenship Summit to learn all about digital citizenship!

Hope to see you on 10/3 for another great day of learning at the #digcitsummit!

*For more information on our #EdcampCT session on Periscope, check out this post by Judy Arzt: School Media in Schools, Why Not?

*Watch our Periscope session, Role of Social Media in Schools on Katch.

The Tweet Seen Around the World

Dear PLN:

Please help me show the power of Twitter during the 2013 International Education Week on our campus.  I’m presenting, “The Tweet Heard Around the World” and will be sharing the benefits of embedding social media into higher education with particular emphasis on teacher education.  It is my hope that my presentation will support the need for iCitizenship in teacher education to further support global collaboration with classrooms, students and teachers across the country and around the world via Twitter.

Please leave a comment below sharing where you are from and any comments. Also, I’d be most appreciative if you would RT this blog post to see if we can get it seen/heard around the world!

Thank you for sharing your time, talent and passion with the world!

*Here’s the link to the presentation I did for the 13th Annual International Week. This entire project has been so inspiring! My 7 year old was actively involved keeping a tally on all the locations that have responded.  He looked up every place on a world map and as a result started his first blog.  He wants to keep the geography lesson going, so please take a moment to visit his blog, Around the World With Curran and leave a comment where you are from and a fun fact about your location.  Make sure you see my son as a guest blogger for Angela Maier too!

Be the solution!

Since the suicide of Tyler Clementi, I have had a new direction and drive in my teaching and scholarship.  I am committed to making sure that our K-12 teacher candidates are well-versed in all aspects of digital citizenship.  It is imperative that 21st century learners, educators and parents understand the seriousness of living in a networked world.  According to the Pew Report in April 2012, 95% of 12-17 years old are online and 80% of those teens are online using social media sites.  If schools ban devices or block social media sites at school, how can teachers model what it means to be socially responsible online?  We desperately need to engage our children into this critical conversation.

Props to Janell Burley Hofman for writing and sharing such an important letter to her son, Gregory’s iPhone Contract.  As a society, we need  more of this!  Our young adolescents will not understand how their actions, words, pictures and videos can directly influence their own lives and the lives of others if we don’t take the time to ask them to be part of this conversation.

Thank you Janell for the inspiration!  As I say every semester, “If you’re not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.”  Here’s to 2013, a year of being the solution!  I can’t wait for our spring semester to begin later this month because I’m going to focus on rules #7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14.

Every breath you take

Adolescence hasn’t changed.  Young adolescents still recycle the same three questions all day long: Who am I? How do others view me? And where do I fit in?  I asked those questions and so did generations before me.  I was awkward as an adolescent.  Who wasn’t?  I made poor choices.  Who didn’t?  The only difference was I wasn’t answering these questions online.

Today’s adolescents have a difficult road to navigate.  Their frontal lobes haven’t developed any more quickly, but social media is recording their every move and decision.  It actually reminds me of one of my favorite songs from high school, “Every Breath You Take”.  (Make sure you listen to the song while you read this post.)

Who would have thought that a 1983 song would depict the future?  Just some of the lyrics: “Every breath you take, every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I’ll be watching you.  Every single day, every word you say, every game you play, every night you stay, I’ll be watching you.  Every move you make, every vow you break, every smile you fake, every claim you stake, I’ll be watching you….”  

How can we help teenagers survive adolescence in a digital age?  How can we teach and not preach about the seriousness of their digital footprint/tattoo? How can we engage more students in this conversation?

They Need Us

I just finished up a great PD day with some amazing teachers through a Mark Twain Summer Grant.  We were focusing on Twitter and how a hashtag can help you narrow your search.  One of the teachers asked me to search #huckfinn. I had expected to find resources posted by teachers, but what we found were adolescents tweeting about their summer reading and it wasn’t very positive.

On my drive home, I was thinking about how sad their responses (and choice of twitter handles) had made me and how surprised I was to witness such negative online behavior when all I’ve ever experienced on Twitter has been so positive and rewarding.  It is a great reminder that our students need us.  No matter what age or subject you teach, it is our responsibility to be teaching and modeling digital citizenship.  We need to engage our students in this discussion – they need us!

 

High School Skype and Twitter Project Request

#EdCampBOS and our collaborative Skype session with #EdCampDet got my wheels spinning. Anything is possible with Skype and Twitter. I’m planning to teach a First Year Seminar for the first time this fall. My seminar, Pleased to Tweet You: Are You a Socially Responsible Digital Citizen will allow freshmen to examine social media and digital citizenship. Here’s the course description:

Schools across the country promise to provide a safe environment for learning, but so many students are afraid and embarrassed to come to school.  In today’s globally diverse and digital world, a bully’s reach goes far beyond the playground.  As more teens use computers, cell phones and other electronic devices they will experience being harassed, threatened and humiliated publicly online at greater rates.  Cyberbullying is the biggest hazard our young people face today and will continue to face in the future as more teens consume and produce digital media.  An interactive multimedia approach to this course will provide students an opportunity to explore the problem and extent of cyberbullying through readings both on and offline.  Using a reflective lens, students will create an action plan to help others navigate the Internet as responsible digital citizens.

I’m looking for a high school teacher or several high school teachers to collaborate and participate in our Saint Joseph College First Year Seminar experience in the fall.  Any takers?

#sschat Reflection: Teaching What Matters Most

Last night I was so proud to call myself a social studies teacher!  The #sschat last night focused on how to cover real-time historical events in your classroom.  It made me miss teaching.  There is a special heartbeat about being in a school that is hard to replicate in higher education.  What last night’s chat made me miss most of all was teaching “Curran” events in my middle school classroom.

For the most part, I remained somewhat quiet during the #sschat since I’m not currently teaching middle school social studies.  I wish I had shared one of my all-time favorite books, Dateline Troy by Paul Fleischman.  I used this book with my middle schoolers to demonstrate the power of using “Curran” events.  The book chronicles the Trojan War and suggests that we are still fighting that very same war today, “Though their tale comes from the distant Bronze Age, it’s as current as this morning’s headlines.  The Trojan War is still being fought.  Simply open a newspaper.”

I loved using the newspaper as part of my curriculum.  I used to drive to Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts to pick up newspapers from different parts of the country and the world for my students to read, compare and examine.  As the chat progressed, I was struck by how much and how fast the world has changed since I first started teaching in 1993.  I wouldn’t have to drive to Harvard Square to pick up my newspapers anymore.

Social media has changed the landscape.  If I were in the classroom now, I’d want to use Newspaper Front Pages: Death of Osama bin Laden to examine headlines from different newspapers and we’d create classroom news articles using Scoop.it. I would use The Choices Program: History and Current Issues for the Class on a daily basis.  We’d use Twitter to evaluate perspective, as well as primary and secondary sources just like Ron Peck suggested last night during the #sschat:

We would also examine how quickly social media can alter history by retweeting a powerful, but totally inaccurate quote.  I’m guilty of retweeting this quote too!

 Out of Osama’s Death, a Fake Quotation is Born

I’d collaborate with my other #sschat teachers that I’ve met on Twitter, so our classrooms could learn from each other and model what it means to be a community of global learners.  Look at the thoughtful comments made by @virtual_teach third graders, Is it okay to celebrate Osama bin Laden’s death?  I would have loved to collaborate with her classroom and students yesterday.  For now, I’ll have to wait until the Fall semester when I teach a graduate methods social studies course.

I’ll end with this last thought, what social studies teachers do everyday is magic.  It is the most important work to be done in a classroom.  We model what it means to treat others, how to live in a community (our own and the world at large), we face issues of intolerance, teach empathy through the use of perspective and we foster curiosity.  I’m so proud to be part of the #sschat – it gives me such hope for the future of education!

P.S. Here’s the start of some resources I found on Twitter and #sschat: 6 Q’s About the News, Teaching Ideas: the Death of Osama bid Laden, The Post-bin Laden World,  Twitter First With bin Laden News, How to Discuss bin Laden’s Death with Children, 9/11 Osama bin Laden Links by @ShawnMcCusker, Bin Laden Resources by @gregkulowiec and the #sschat archive from last night. Please add any other resources that you have found valuable.

 

Around the Rotary: The Roundabout of Learning

As this academic year is coming to an end, I find myself deep in reflection. I launched the new course, Technology for Learners and was asked to teach Educational Psychology for the first time this year.  Teaching both courses has made me practice what I preach: get comfortable with the uncomfortable. All year, I’ve marveled at how my learning curve is constantly stuck in the curve position.  This morning, I woke up and realized that my learning has been more like a roundabout or a rotary.  What a fabulous analogy!  Thanks to Wikipedia for the image and accurate description.  It really captures my learning experiences this year!

I learned how to drive in Massachusetts and have always been proud of how I handle a roundabout.  In fact, I think its safe to say that I’m an expert, capable of fielding any and all questions on how to approach, yield, merge, navigate, maintain your right-of-way and exit a rotary.  I’ve even taught out-of-towners how to do it the Boston way, so this confirms my expert status, right?

The best part of learning is that it is not a destination; its a journey.  Learning is  like driving around a rotary.  Sometimes you enter this way, sometimes you enter another way.  Sometimes you miss your exit and have to drive around again.  Once you are in the rotary, you need to learn how to navigate and own your learning.  The best part of a roundabout is that it is constant; cars are coming and going all the time, just like the learning process.

It has been a transformative year of learning for me.  I immersed myself into the world of social media, developed an amazing PLN and launched The Dyslexic Professor.   I’m so glad that my learning curve is just like a rotary because its in constant motion and I’m modeling what it means to be a lifelong learner.  I can’t think of anything better than this!

How do You Model What it Means to be a Socially Responsible Digital Citizen?

“Surviving adolescence is no small matter; neither is surviving adolescents.
It’s a hard age to be and to teach.
The worst thing that ever happened to anyone happens everyday.”
Nancy Atwell

Young adolescents rotate the same three questions day in and day out: Who am I?  How do others view me? Where do I fit in?  It’s a difficult age to be, to teach and to parent.  As a middle school teacher, I witnessed young adolescents try on different personas each day as they were desperately trying to figure out the answers to these three questions.

Times have changed since I first started teaching in early 1990’s.  The landscape now includes digital media which makes our young adolescents on patrol 24/7. They are now circulating those same three questions online using multiple platforms to figure out the answers.  It is our civic responsibility to help them learn now to navigate through social media.  If we are not integrating it into our classrooms and schools, we are certainly responsible for some of the awful things that are happening all over the Internet.  Take for example the recent story about the “Smut List” circulating on Facebook.

Am I naive?  Could things have been different if social media had been integrated into the curriculum?  Would students have stopped and questioned how this list would have hurt and humiliated others on a global level? Would they have realized that the list included names that could have been their own?  Those names are someone’s daughter, sister, granddaughter, niece, cousin, neighbor and friend.

We need to constantly model what it means to be a digital citizen in the 21st century.  What digital footprint are we leaving behind by the comments, pictures and videos that we post?  Students need the opportunity to talk about this and figure it out as part of a classroom community.  Please take the time to think about your responsibility to positively influence how children and adolescents treat each other in today’s digital world.

I am committed to changing the climate of how we treat others.  I’m currently conducting research with one of my colleagues.  Our website, Gone Virtual has more information and we would welcome your involvement and participation in our research.

 

Modeling Being a Risk Taker EDUC 536

Ok, here I go walking the walk and talking the talk and trying something new.  A little nervous, a little anxious, but excited to take the risk!  It’ s Wednesday morning and I’m creating my first WordPress blog before class tonight.  It’s a new format and I’m used to navigating through my Weebly and Ning accounts.  Plus, I’m very aware that my words and feelings are now public and I find myself typing, deleting and retyping to make sure I’m as accurate as possible.  We’ve been safe in our own PLN in our class Ning, but now our boundaries are expanding.  Are you ready to jump in with me?  In class tonight, let’s take time to try something new.  Get comfortable with the uncomfortable and embrace being a change agent!

Here are a few ideas/applications to get you going…

If you are interested in starting a blog, check out this great resource for students: Blogs for Kids – it’s a fabulous LiveBinders that highlights blogs for students to read and join the conversation.

Love this site I found this week for early education, Little Bird Tales – a great way to capture and record children’s voices.  It’s much like StoryBird, but allows you to narrator your story.

I haven’t created a Diigo account yet.  Anyone up to the challenge?  Voicethread?  Symbaloo?  Jing?  LiveBinders? Fuzzwich? Animation-ish?  Whatever you decide, make sure you are pushing your comfort level and trying something new!

Also, a special wicked-proud shout out to Tracy Mercier and her incredible third grade students for breaking barriers and constantly modeling what it means to be risk takers!  Check out this new concept, Tweet Quest that Tracy created: Tweet Quest.

In case you need a little confidence to help you take the plunge: 3 Ways to Encourage Risk Taking.

See you in a few hours!  I’m all about making tonight a “wow” teaching experience!  Hope you’ll say the same thing after trying something new tonight too…

PS: I’m going to publish this link through Twitter and perhaps we’ll get some comments and suggestions.  For anyone outside of EDUC 536, we’re a graduate class at Saint Joseph College in West Hartford, CT and we’re embracing change this semester and exploring social media in K-12 classrooms.