Wk 10 Blog Post 12

Section I: Learning from hashtags

This week’s #Hashtag search on twitter has been extremely eye opening! I have had a twitter account for more than 5 years and mostly used it as a way to chat and crack jokes with friends I met while in Germany. I’ve used hashtags on twitter and have done a few searches using hashtags, however, I’ve never thought to use twitter for educational hashtags. I did not even know they existed until this week. Being an aspiring teacher, the hashtag I was most interested in was #ntchat which is constructed for new teachers. As soon as I scrolled down I viewed images and tweets that were full of information and helpful tips. One picture in particular displayed a ladder and cartoon drawings explaining the difference between teacher centered classrooms vs. learner focused classrooms. I went to school during a time when no student or teacher thought of the idea of a learner focused classroom so seeing this is very intriguing because that is truly how I feel education should be. Another tweet provided a link to EdSurge News and an article titled Teaching With Your Mouth Shut. Before reading the article, I went through a Q&A with myself to wonder what the article could be about and why the title was so important. The article highlighted some great concepts I have learned during my graduate studies at UTEP. An example being that strictly lecturing and ‘teaching through telling’ is reflection only done by the teacher, not the student. This type of teacher lacks in authenticity for the students, almost guaranteeing that students will only regurgitate the information on an exam and brain dump the knowledge afterwards. It was a great learning experience this week seeing that I am able to use twitter as such a powerful educational resource in my classroom.

Teaching With Your Mouth Shut

Section II: Ideas for using Twitter for teaching and learning

From what we have seen this week, twitter is a powerful resource tool that hundreds of millions of people utilize to connect, laugh, learn and express themselves. It also can be utilized in the classroom as well. One way you can use twitter in the classroom is to have students do a research paper, only using twitter as their resource. This would be best geared for high school students, 9-12^th, who are responsible enough to use a platform like twitter. The teacher can provide a list of hashtags that can steer students in the right direction for their research. The goal for the paper is for students to be able to see that some of their everyday social media platforms can do more than just take display pictures, emoji’s and 160-character venting. This can be completed in every subject across the curriculum.

Another great usage of Twitter in the classroom came from a fellow peer earlier this semester. That idea is for teaching summarizing with the usage of Twitter. Since tweets are limited to only 160 characters, users are required to summarize their thoughts and be creative in limited space. I think that this is age appropriate for 2^nd grade and above in language arts classes. Students must be able to read and write in order for this assignment to work, however, it is a fun and interesting way to incorporate technology and teach summarizing.

Lastly, a way to use twitter in the classroom is through back channling, as mentioned in one of this week’s Lynda videos. This would be most appropriate to use in high school, upper grades due to their maturity levels. Having students logged into twitter during a lector to participate in a classroom discussion that is concurrent with the lector provides opportunities for students who are shy to voice their opinions and participate in the classroom discussions.

Wk 9 Edmodo Blog

Before this week, I had never heard of Edmodo. However, after mentioning this week’s assignment to my girlfriend, a 3^rd grade teacher with 5 years of experience, she lit up with excitement and interest. She disclosed that during a professional growth conference they once covered Edmodo. However, it was brief and lacked detail and follow up so she was not able to capitalize on its format and its classroom usage. I feel very fortunate to have been introduced to Edmodo this week! Its Facebook style format provides what I feel has been the easiest, most user friendly Web 2.0 tool we have used thus far.

I believe a great utilization of Edmodo can stretch across the curriculum from 8^th grade to 12^th would be utilizing Edmodo as a class blog. Since a majority of the world is already familiar with Facebook, Edmodo being used as a class blog just makes sense. Teachers can use it to post interesting notes, assignments, updates, etc. Also it allows for easy communication between Teachers and parents/students.

Another way that Edmodo can be used is for continued class discussions. This would be more so for high school level students in any subject. When time expires on a teacher in the middle of a useful discussion, the teacher can extend it by posting to Edmodo and assigning homework for students to continue to chime in so during the next class, the teacher can provide feedback and closure on the topic.

Continuing with a discussion idea for Edmodo, it can also be used to create a co-classroom between different teachers or even different class periods the teacher may have. A co-classroom allows for teacher to collaborate on a lesson easily in one place. Teachers can create lessons together, and teach those to their classes, and have their classes take the same assessments. This allows for better comparative data for students learning levels and subject strengths. Even more useful during this idea is forwarding students the opportunities to participate in discussion with other classes. This provides students different perspectives than the ones their used to from their peers in their classes.

Edmodo’s simple poll allows for Teachers to gain quick input from students. This poll option provides teachers in grades 6^th-12^th, all subjects, to provide students a chance to give their inputs on upcoming lessons, which in turn then provides authentic learning for students. Teachers can provide a question such as “What book should we read next?” and students are able to give their input and feel involved in their classrooms.

Week 8: Blog post 10: Self-directed Learning using Feedly

For this weeks’ reading reflection I chose two articles that focused on teacher and parent relationships and partnerships. As a parent and an aspiring teacher, I understand and acknowledge the importance of continual communication between teachers and parents. The first article I read was by Elena Aguilar and titled ‘5 Ways to Create a Strong Parent Partnership’ and the second article is titled ‘6 Ways Technology Can Reinvent Parent-Teacher Conferences’ by Carolyn Fruin.

In the first article by Elena Aguilar, she mentions that during her career as a middle school teacher she regrets, in hindsight, not better accommodating parents’ needs. It was not until she became the parent of a middle schooler with 7 different teachers when she realized truly how difficult it was for parental inclusion with all the teachers being on separate pages from one another. The author offers 5 ways to help bridge the gap of communication between teachers and parents to assist in leading to better parental participation in the students’ education. A key point that stuck out to me that Elena mentioned was how grade level teacher teams should collaborate at the beginning of the school year so they are all on the same page as far as the method in which they prefer parents to communicate with them. Ms. Aguilar mentioned that each of her child’s teachers offered different specified times and methods to contact them, which left her feeling overwhelmed and wanting to cut off all communication between her and them.

5 Ways to Create a Strong Parent Partnership

The next article, by Carolyn Fruin, addresses ways that teachers can spruce up Parent-Teacher conferences so they are not boring and mundane. Expressing how both parents and teachers can dread the conferences, teachers can help alleviate that pain by approaching with new methods that turn the conferences into an open communication forum instead of a one-way communication street. A key point that I enjoyed and will more than likely implement is turning things into a parent-teacher-student conference. Utilizing the student to be able to reflect to their parents brings a sense a pride to the student and allows for a more honest and genuine conference. Additionally, understanding that the conferences are not just for reading testing scores and grades to the parents. Instead, be creative and provide parents with resources and materials that afford them the opportunity to support their students learning and motivation. Also, Carolyn offered the suggestion of taking advantage of technology and utilizing Skype or a video conference program. It can be hard for parents to take off work early to commute to the school to meet with their child’s teacher for 15 minutes. Skype is a great way to save the parents time and still communicate the safe information with the parents.

6 Ways Technology Can Reinvent Parent-Teacher Conferences