Here are the screencasts for my peer review of a mini unit created in EdTech 543. I used Screencastify, which is a sceencasting extension for Google Chrome. I found it to be very easy to use.
I have found this course to be quite helpful to me, and I have learned a lot about new tools for implementing social media in my classroom. I have been using LMS in my classroom for a few years, but I never felt very comfortable using social media like Facebook to have students be more engaged in class. I think this is a common feeling in my school, and I look forward to working with my fellow teachers who want to use Facebook more often. I don’t know that I will be using it a lot more in my class, but I know other classes and teachers that want to try it in August. I am really excited to have some understanding of what they are trying to accomplish, and be able to help them in their pursuits. I think I will at least create a Facebook and Twitter for my class. I found some really cool resources for using Twitter in the classroom that I want to try out. I also really like the idea of curating. I look at it kind of like a new version of a research paper, in that students have to do research, find important articles, and comment on why they are important. I think having the students synthesize the information is important for them in their knowledge retention. I completed 6 out of the 7 blog entries, so I think my grade would be 65 out of 75 or an 86%. This week I got to work with my Professional Learning Network to create a mini unit that uses what we have learned in this course to create a unit that uses social media. I like to work with a PLN to do a project like this. I find it fascinating to be able to work with others that are in different parts of the country to create one project. Since this is a summer course, we all have different schedules and are in different time zones. This presents a challenge, but is easy to overcome using social media like Google Docs and Facebook. We are also using Edmodo to build our unit. Edmodo allows students to collaborate and post to their PLN in the class in a similar way that they could in Facebook.
Our curriculum has students working through a tutorial on introductory coding using basic coding language. The students go through the beginning portion of the tutorial and learn about the different types of commands that can be used in coding. Students have to tweet their thoughts to other students, make blog entries and comments, and share artifacts that they found on the internet that would be helpful to others. This unit combines all the different tools that we learned about in this session. Link for the mini curriculum When creating policies for social media use in my school district, I had to take into account that we currently do not have any policies in place regarding social media specifically. My high school is beginning to implement more technology devices to allow for more use of social media in our classrooms, and I think this will be a good start to take to my administrator. My intention is to get feedback on this document from my administration, and then the staff that will be using social media in their classroom. After that process, we can begin developing professional development for teachers so that they can become more comfortable with using social media in their classes.
The use of social media in the classroom is expanding and there needs to be a set of guidelines to help both staff and students to participate appropriately in this learning tool. Currently there are no guidelines in place for the Nampa School District for the use of social media in the classroom. My hope is that this initial document will provide a launching point for the board to adopt a set of guidelines for use. This is a living document, and as such, will need to be amended as necessary. It is my recommendation to seek advice from all parties involved to get a feel of any additional concerns that may arise. These parties include teachers, staff, students, administration, and parents. My recommendation is to set up a polling portal for feedback on policies, and suggestions. 1. While using social media, it is your responsibility to abide by the school’s code of conduct at all times. You are representing the school. 2. Remember that everything you post is public. Do not post anything private or that you do not want everyone to know about. 3. Do not use anyone else’s identity to post to social media. This will be treated like you are representing yourself as someone else. 4. Never share personal information with anyone outside of your network. Be cautious about sharing with your network as well. 5. Make sure that your privacy settings are set so that only people in your network will be able to see your information. 6. Make sure you have permission before posting pictures of fellow students. 7. Make sure to credit any work that is not yours when you post. If it is not your original thought, then it needs a source. 8. Make sure to obtain permission from parents before involving their students in school sponsored social media. 9. If you come across inappropriate content on school sponsored social media, report it immediately. 10. Posting inappropriate content will lead to disciplinary actions according to the district handbook. Resources: Anderson, S. (n.d.). How to Create Social Media Guidelines for Your School. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/edutopia-anderson-social-media-guidelines.pdf Bartels, D. (n.d.). socialmediaguidelines / Student Guidelines. Retrieved from http://socialmediaguidelines.pbworks.com/w/page/17050885/Student%20Guidelines Pingry School: Social Media Guidelines. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.pingry.org/page.cfm?p=887 I researched how social has been used in science and math classes, and I found some really neat ideas. The projects ranged anywhere from blogging to tweet wars. Students were asked to blog about their learning, and then were also asked to comment and discuss other student’s blogs. Taking this even further, students were asked to tweet out new information on their blogs. The students were forming a community with themselves for learning.
Facebook is used to deliver math problems to students, and then they can interpret the problem how they want, using their creativity. The students also get a chance to discuss the problem how they see fit, rather than a structured classroom setting. My personal favorite article that turned up in my research was having students take notes using twitter. When the students have to condense their notes to 140 characters, there isn’t much room for fluff. The students all get something different from the topic, and the conversation about those differences can be very collaborative. This is definitely something that I want to try in my class, or help another teacher to develop it in their classroom. Here are my curated articles on using social media in math and science classes. For module 5 we had to create a diagram of our PLE in visual form. I chose to look at the networks that I use often and web them all back to me in the diagram. I discovered that I use more networks than I thought I did. It makes a big difference when you are actually putting them all down. I thought I was only using a few select networks regularly. After building my list that I wanted to put on the diagram, I saw that I actually use 11 regularly. Admittedly, many of them I use through the masters program, but I have been using them a lot more often. In fact, I have used all of these resources during the last 5 weeks! As I have been working through this module, I have found that there is a lot of information out there in many different places. In order to find more relevant information, you have to get into these different networks and do some digging. I intentionally left some of my networks off of the diagram, because I want to see what my classmates come up with, and there is never room for everything. The styles of my classmates and even past diagrams are all very different, but they all have a lot of tools in common. I don't think I saw one that didn't include some representation of Facebook in it. A PLN diagram posted by Jennie Finarock used a similar style as mine. She tied her different tools back to each other where it was appropriate to the categories. She had some different tools listed such as Instagram and youtube. I really like how some of her tools are tied together. Another classmate created a picture that was drawn on paper. She described it as a way to do an assignment that didn't involve staring at a computer screen. She created a really neat drawing of flowers that represented the different tools she uses in her PLN. What I thought was unique was that the flower centers were the tools, and the petals represented the different uses of that tool. This allowed for a lot more of the uses for the tool to be added to the diagram without cluttering it up too much. I am excited about seeing more of my classmates diagrams because I am sure I will get a ton of ideas from them. I think the tool that I am most interested in is Pinterest. After curating articles and tools using scoop.it, the common consensus from my classmates was that it was similar to Pinterest in how it works. I am not very familiar with Pinterest, but I know it is a common social media tool, and I think I need to try it out. In my research of my digital footprint, I have discovered that I may be somewhat of a homebody. I say this because I was not at all surprised by what I found out about where and what I had been doing. I am fortunate to have a pretty unique name. There are very few Emmetts with this spelling, and the only Wemps I have ever known of are in my own family. I have googled my name a few times to see what would pop up, and about the only thing that is questionable is that there is a radio station in New York with the call letters of WEMP. Even in that realm, there wasn’t much going on. In the course assignment, we were given a website to check out what was available out on the web. Peekyou.com included personal addresses and phone numbers, arrest records, and email addresses. I did notice that it was not completely accurate on a lot of the social media aspects. I included my typical username in the search, and it found a lot of other users who had similar usernames. It also found a lot of expired addresses, such as the house I rented in college – 14 years ago! In reviewing other resources and information, the thing that really made me think was getting tagged in others photos and videos. In this Youtube video by NBC 10 WJAR News called Your Digital Footprint May Be Unflattering, college students are tasked with doing a search on their digital footprint. They thought they had privacy settings set up correctly, but their party pictures still got out. One student even was tagged in another users post at a party, and that is what stuck to him even though all he did was be in the room. (nothing wrong with that) I think the moral to the story is that with most HR organizations doing searches on their potential hires, you need to make sure what they find is what you would want them to find. I didn’t find anything bad or damaging, but I found it interesting that it is so simple for someone else to essentially ruin your reputation online.-image courtesy of :digitalfamilysummit.com Here are my strategies for maintaining your Digital footprint. I knew going into this course that I would have to join some social media platforms. I use Facebook a little bit to keep up with friends and family, but that is about it. I would say that is the extent of my experience with social media. I was really apprehensive about creating a twitter account. I know though that it is an excellent way to get information to people and for them to collaborate with me as well. I am looking forward to seeing what it can do.
I have never used social media for professional development, but I know that a lot of schools are using it. I am hoping that I will be able to integrate some social media into professional development at my school. We have a lot of technology coming into our building and I think that social media will be beneficial to my development of PD. I do use some social media in my classroom though. In my classroom Learning Management System, I often will have students discuss questions or respond to each other on projects. It allows them to communicate in collaborative groups and even incorporates a shared whiteboard. I have found that they really like this feature, especially when they are in the design phase of a project. I expect that by the time I am done with this class, I will be much more comfortable with social media, and able to incorporate it into my class. I am hoping that I can also incorporate it into other things that I am involved with such as a summer camp that I direct that is STEM based. I have been tinkering with Facebook, but I want to be able to stay in better communication with the parents. |