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Ramp Up Learning with Walk Throughs

Posted by Kathy Adkins on September 14th, 2012 No Comments

Building walk throughs have become a vital piece in our district’s support of 21st century learning. Walk throughs in years past have primarily been administrators’ role as part of teacher evaluations. Recent walk throughs have become more learning walks involving teams of media specialists, instructional technology specialist and even small groups of teachers from other schools. Teams rotate and spend five minutes in classrooms to observe and provide confidential feedback via Google docs. What is more powerful than the observation is the learning of the observer. On a recent learning walk educators observed students in a science class sharing images, videos, data and strategies posted in their group motion and force wikispaces project. Students in several classrooms were reading literature selections and back channeling in TodaysMeet. Edmodo was used to share Socrative links and various instructional activities. Students were working in the hallway to pair and share Spanish fluency recordings. All of these activities were possible, not because of textbooks, but because students were using their own devices. I should mention textbooks did physically support part of the science motion and forces lesson. When will you conduct a walk through and ramp up learning?

A Few for Friday – Let Learning Drive the Tools

Socrative can be used to drive learning in so many ways as shared by The Landscape – 13 Ways to Use Socrative. Be sure to check out Socrative’s Blog – Socrative Garden to see how to share quizzes and harvest many other ideas.

TodaysMeet is a great platform for discussion and back channeling. Learn it in 5 shares a how to video and here is a two page pdf guide. Have you seen this great lesson from Read Write Think- Seuss and Silverstein: Posing Questions, Presenting Points. Could TodaysMeet be a part of this lesson and give shy students their voice?

How are you using Edmodo? Check out this Edmodo Resources Livebinder with lesson ideas or view a few videos from Edmodocon 2012.  Mr G Online shares Literature Circles -co-starring Edmodo. This passionate educator’s blog is worth following.

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Push Like and Move Forward

Posted by Kathy Adkins on August 24th, 2012 No Comments

During the opening days of the new school year we are thankful for educational leaders and colleagues that share many items of educational importance via social media channels. The beginning of school can be hectic but we still need to embrace our visions and engage learners from the start. Two great articles, How to Turn Your Classroom into an Idea Factory, a recent post from Mind/Shift and 12 Most Important Things Children Want From Their Teacher, from Angela Mairs, were recently shared via a facebook page. We are thankful for many facets of social media and collaborative channels that remind us of what is most important during this busy time, our students. Remember to like educators and organizations on your facebook feed and follow in Twitter. It will push and move you forward.

A Few for Friday – Like and Follow

Edutopia - This site has shared great inspiration for years. Their team of bloggers provide a wealth of information.  Follow on Twitter @edutopia.

Tech4Learning – Since 1999, this company has created tools to support learning and provided many resources to support instruction using these tools. Follow on Twitter @Tech4Learning.

Mind/Shift – This site has been a leader in covering trends and moving forward to the future. Follow on Twitter @MindShiftKQED.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Peek, Lurk and Learn

Posted by Kathy Adkins on March 9th, 2012 2 Comments

Millions of social media interactions take place every minute of every day. Royal Pingdom posted Internet 2011 in Numbers and shared 2.4 billion social networking accounts exist worldwide. This blog post alone was tweeted almost 6,000 times. Last month Social Jumpstart shared how millions are connecting via an infographic, 00:60 in Social Media. There is no doubt the affection for Pinterest is growing. These conversations on Twitter and pinning of educational resources on Pinterest continue to bring professional development opportunities 24/7. When will you take a peek and lurk to learn? Yes, it is okay to lurk as shared in a presentation from Eric Longhorst via Wes Fryer – Twitter a Powerful Collaboration Tool for Teachers. Longhorst suggests you begin lurking by using hashtags to follow topics of interest. Take time to peek, lurk and learn.

Five For Friday – Twitter Resources – Model Responsibility

The Innovative Educator, Lisa Nielsen, recently posted how educators are using Twitter on her blog, Twitter for Administrators, Teachers and Students.  Follow Nielsen @InnovativeEdu.

Nicholas Provenzano, The Nerdy Teacher, shares guidelines for communicating with students on a recent blog post at Edutopia- On Twitter: To Follow or To Not Follow. Modeling responsibility is key. Follow Provenzano @thenerdyteacher.

28 Creative Ideas for Teaching with Twitter, from Tina Barseghian -MindShift, shares great ideas for educators. Follow Barseghian @MindShiftKQED

10 Women Who Rock … and Teach, is an excellent post from Lisa M. Dabbs, the facilitator of Edutopia’s New Teacher Connections group. You can follow Dabbs on Twitter @teachingwithsoul. She writes and inspires to support new teachers at Teaching With Soul.

Twitter is blocked from students on many districts’ networks. How can you use these ideas to educate young learners on social media? Use TodaysMeet and build learners’ knowledge on using social media responsibly.

Photo captured by irewired.

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Lots of DIRT to Scoop

Posted by Kathy Adkins on December 2nd, 2011 No Comments

Twitter and RSS feeds dig up tons of robust digital informational resources of technology (DIRT) that is shared daily . This time of year it is difficult to keep up with the wealth of information, or great DIRT, so it is helpful to subscribe to an online magazine or newspaper that gathers these tweets and feeds. Scoop.it!, an online magazine, is used by many educational leaders to share information centered around topics such as mobile devices and technology integration. Paper.li, is another online newspaper creator which was shared in a previous post, and is a great tool used to showcase sites also written by others. You can subscribe to these to receive updates. What DIRT will you scoop up to spread with your learning community?

Five for Friday – Great DIRT from Scoop.it! and paper.li

iPads in Education is curated by John Evans, an e-consultant from Manitoba, Canada. He curates his magazine by following blogs, tweets and videos on the web. He also publishes The Tech News Daily at Paper.li. You can follow him @joevans.

Tools for Learners is curated by Nik Peachey and shares of wealth of web based tools to help learners exploit the web. You can follow Peachey @The NerdyTeacher.

EdTechConference is curated by Arthur Preston who shares how technology is impacting and changing education. He also publishes on Paperli at Arthur Preston Daily. You can follow him @artpreston.

Digital Tools and Education is curated by Eric Stockmeyer. Stockymeyer searches for the best articles on using digital tools to improve instruction. You can follow him @stockmeyer1.

#mlearning is published by RJ Jacquez, an Adobe Senior Product Evangelist. You can follow him @rjacquez as well as link to his other publications at paper.li.

Photo Courtesy of  Kevin_P - http://mrg.bz/58Ui2z

 

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Spring Forward!

Posted by Kathy Adkins on February 4th, 2011 No Comments

Ignoring recent blankets of winter snow, bulbs are bursting and stems are breaking ground reaching upward toward the sun. Such determination to push forward seeking heat, transforms a little, brown bulb into a flowering beauty.  How determined are you to transform instructional practices for today’s learners so they can bloom? How can you break ground and turn up the heat to promote rigor and relevance in the classroom?  First take time for reflection on current instructional practices. Then relax for a few by clicking here and doing nothing for 2 minutes! Then spring forward and make some waves to heat up instruction!

Four for Friday – Ideas to Spring Forward

Read these excellent posts, Ten Ways to Technology Supports 21st Century Learners in Being Self Directed and Ten Ways Facebook Strengthens the Teacher-Student Connection from Lisa Nielsen. You can follow Lisa on twitter – @innovativeEdu

Visit an OER (Open Educational Resource) such as 21st Century Skills at Thinkfinity. This site provides lessons and resources to inspire creativity and collaboration to prepare learners for tomorrow’s world.

Subscribe to an educational subscription such as the Creative Educator from Tech4Learning. Download and view the spring issue here. Another great read is The Journal. The January issue contains a great article, The Social Classroom: Facebook, Twitter and the gang have arrived. Can you subscribe to The Journal?

On facebook, LIKE Free Technology For Teachers, to view the latest blog posts from Richard Byrne, a teacher that shares a wealth of information on a variety of topics.

Photo – Bulbs popping in North Georgia. Spring is around the corner!

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Transparent Not Invisible

Posted by Kathy Adkins on January 28th, 2011 No Comments

Can you see my boxer?

Technology integration needs to be transparent and certainly not invisible. With the influx of smart phones and other mobile devices in learners’ hands, communication and collaboration is ongoing and escalating via social media networks. Learners, teachers and students, are capturing information, images and data at all times of the day. Internet  2010 in Numbers, was recently shared by Royal Pingdom via charts and visual data. The numbers for Twitter and Facebook are mind boggling. Did you see 30 billion pieces of pieces of content (links, notes, photos, etc.) shared on Facebook per month?

The time to move away from making these devices invisible to making them transparent in the classroom is now. We all have a role in making this shift happen. Personal Learning Networks are sharing many ideas and strategies to make transparency of devices a reality. The question is not will you be a part of this shift, the question is when?

Four for Friday – From Invisible to Transparent

The Complete Facebook for Teachers from Jeffrey Thomas is an excellent resource. Thomas’ blog, Tech the Plunge, provides useful information for your toolkit..

The Ultimate Twitter Guide for Teachers is from Edudemic. Twitter is a great resource for gathering information on BYOT(Bring Your Own Technology).

The #edchat Daily is an online paper.li newsletter that highlights current trends and useful information from educators across the globe. Paper.li, is an application that lets you create and share Twitter and Facebook as a daily newspaper. It was shared in an earlier posting, Tasty Tweets, A Daily Newspaper.

A Day in the Life of an ipad Classroom recently shared project information on the usage of iPads versus textbooks. Read and find out what happens when an eighth grade classroom replaces textbooks with iPads.

Photo – A recent snapshot from north Georgia

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