Ohio Innovative Learning Environments Conference 2013

I have the opportunity to talk to teachers at the Ohio Innovative Learning Environments Conference in Hilliard, Ohio.  It is a week-long conference and I get to participate.  How fun and exciting to get to speak about Using social networks to grow your professional learning network.

I will be talking about using Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs, Google Plus, and other social networks.  Learning together makes it so much more fun and engaging.  How can you use your friends to help gather quality information and make learning a group activity?  Check it out.

Dublin Literacy Conference 2013

Wow.  Today I am fortunate to be able to share Web 2.0 Tools for Literacy with teachers at the Dublin Literacy Conference.  I love showing some of the free resources that are out there.  Here is the slideshare that guides the presentation.

Dublin Literacy Conference 2013 from Scott Sibberson

Sharing What You Know and Learn

I recently viewed the K12 Online Conference 2010 Pre-Conference Keynote by Dean Shareski.  He talks about our need to share what we learn and to share it freely with others.  His talk, entitled Sharing - The Moral Imperative, speaks to what we can learn from others if we open the doors of communication and utilize the technology that is available all around us.  It was a conversation that I had with Dean that motivated me to start this blog, and share what I know and learn with others.  We are forever indebted to many people for what we know.  We need to give back.  Our students will benefit greatly from the stories and experiences we can share with them.

Dean talks about his PLN and how he learns from people all over the world.  Why are we restricted to the teachers in our buildings or in our districts?  We have the ability to learn and collaborate with teachers from all over the world.  He shares stories of the work of math teacher Dan Meyer, who shares his math lessons through is blog online.  Dan's sharing helped another teacher from Scotland, who was using Dan's authentic lessons to help teach his students mathematical concepts.

It is our duty to share what we learn and what we find.  I hope you enjoy this video from Dean and the K12 Online Conference.  Visit the conference site and join in the learning.  It will prove to be a rich experience, I am sure.

Twitter for Teachers

I used Tech Tuesday to talk with teachers about Twitter.  As we talked, I found that they were concerned about using Twitter at school.  As the conversations played out, people started thinking about how they might use twitter.  Our initial thoughts were to get them to use Twitter for themselves and see that there are ways to connect with many people all over the world that share their common interests.  Our hope is that they grow their following, connect with great people, learn and share information, and then start to think of ways to implement in the school setting.  I have struggled to see where schools are using Twitter on any large scale, so it is hard for me to start pushing them directly into using Twitter for a school-only experience.  Twitter can be one of the tools that helps them grow.

When introducing teachers to Twitter, I began by sharing some valuable web sources.  I started with Twitter in Plain English, by Common Craft, the Twitter4Teachers Wiki, and 30 Essential Twitter Tutorials for Newbies and Experts.  These resources are good places for teachers to go to start learning new Twitter skills, as well as locating other experts in their field of interest.  I shared with them how to do "people searches", how to follow people, how to create lists - so that they can organize the people they follow, how to look at people others followed, and much more.  I tried to keep things simple - as Twitter can be a little bit much if you jump in to quickly.

I asked the new users to follow me and told them I'd follow them back.  I had them follow our school (@dublinjeromehs), the school district (@dublinschools), and mentioned some other area groups they could follow.  Many had friends that they knew were using Twitter - so those were easy people to add.  I am interested to see how many will keep going with Twitter and what they find beneficial over the next few weeks and months.  I think there are great resources to be obtained and shared through Twitter and hope that my colleagues can learn as much using Twitter as I have.

I am currently looking for schools and school districts that use Twitter.  I am interested in observing the way they Tweet and seeing possible uses for our schools and district.  My administration and I are working to figure out the best ways to utilize this form of communication, so that teachers, parents, students, and all interested in our building could "follow" us to see the great things that go on.  Twitter can be a powerful tool to inform the community.  Hopefully, we'll see some exciting ways to make it happen.

Results of Survey

Results of survey aug 2010

As you can see from the survey, there is definitely room for growth in many areas of technology when it comes to using online tools for personal and professional growth.  Over the next couple months, we will spend time getting teachers comfortable with some of the tools that can provide much information and allow them the ability to share snippets of information, as they become more and more comfortable.  We will continue to add new online tools, so they can see that there are many ways to communicate to many different audiences.

Some of the things that they have mentioned are concerns about time vs. benefit factors.  Teachers feel that adding new things to their plate (without taking any off), just gives them more to do.  We will attempt to show them that there is so much out there that can change the way they do their work.  There are online tools, communication tools, research tools, and many others that can help make their job more efficient.  They should not just keep doing things the way they have in the past.

We will start with Twitter and see if we can grow the number of staff that use.  We will attempt to share with them some of the ways I use twitter, as well as some of the people that I follow.  We will use sources of A Teacher's Guide to Twitter, by  Kate Klingensmith at her blog Once a Teacher, video clips from Common Craft, and others sources mentioned before, like Jeff Utech's Reach and Will Richardson's book on Web Tools.  We will try to get teachers to grow there personal learning networks.  Finding people from around the world that share their same interests and passions.

We will then discuss some safety and security issues - discussing digital footprint and what they want the web to know about them.  We discuss being proactive in the placement of information.  Many teachers are afraid to put information out on the web, but they don't realize that there is already information out there.  They need to flood it with good information, so that the incorrect or unwanted information is harder to find.

It is our belief that teachers will be much more willing to work with students in technology, if they are more comfortable using it themselves.  We hope they learn a lot of new skills this year that will allow them to be more open and aware of what is available to them and their students, which will push them to think of new ways to approach those old classroom activities.

Wish us luck as we head into the year - trying to get a lot of teachers using online tools.  Twitter, RSS feeds, photo sharing, podcasting, Facebook, and many more may be just part of our culture by May.  We hope they start to think of new ways to use that really help the students prepare for their future.

Reach - by Jeff Utecht

I recently picked up the book Reach, by Jeff Utecht, while attending BLC10 in Boston. I proceeded to read it very quickly, finding it contained many quick resources for teachers. I am going to share it with my staff at school. I had the opportunity to hear Jeff while at BLC10 and found his information to be practical and helpful. This book is both.

In the book, he shares information about communities and networks and how to make these communications work for you. He starts with the RSS feed and shows how it works for gathering information from the sites to which you subscribe. He provides tutorial videos and other information that can be helpful.

He also adds material on how to contribute to your learning community. There is everything you will need to help you start and set up a blog, wiki, ning, or other place to share your knowledge and experience. Again, he provides resources and support in the book. Along with that, you'll find information to help you build your personal learning network. What you need to effectively use Twitter, Skype, Facebook, and others is described and shared.

Jeff's book is a great place to start if you are getting just beginning in the area of using technology to learn and share with students and teachers.