Personal Learning Network - Screenshots and Reflection
PLN - Final Twitter Reflection
Well it finally comes down to deciding whether or not I think Twitter is a positive for education. (Drum roll please…) And the verdict is… well the jury is still out.
“What!?”
“Are you serious?”
“Come on man!”
Yes I understand that many of you are wondering how a person can go almost 12 weeks of using Twitter and still not decide whether or not it is beneficial for education. My response would be, that it depends on who and what is being tweeted in order to justify its role in schools. Take Christine Agenta’s tweet in regards to ADHD for example. This is a fantastic tweet! This is someone who clearly cares about education and wants to share with others information about a medical condition that affects millions of students every year. A+ for Twitter.
Now there are other times, and for sake of keeping this reflection polite we will not mention names, where people use Twitter as a means of venting. Often people post quick, temper fueled, 140 character rants that do nothing but cut down or disrespect other people in the education field. How do tweets like this benefit students, teachers, and education as a whole? They don’t, but I believe that incidents like this are outweighed by the positive and thought provoking tweets people post, especially when tweeting to groups like our very own #INDT501.
Maybe I’m starting to answer my own earlier question here and Twitter really can help schools. I mean, thanks to Twitter I found Stacey Goodman’s (2014) article on enhancing creativity in the classroom. Here’s the link for anyone who wants to read it (it’s really good)! So referencing back to the initial question: is Twitter a positive direction for our educational system? Well I guess the jury has decided, and the answer is yes – but with an “*”. What I mean by this asterisk is that Twitter can help as long as students know how to filter through the pros and cons of using such a media source. Using groups like our #INDT501 can drastically eliminate any negative or useless tweets, but make sure the group you join is a good one. Finding a community on Twitter like this one isn’t always easy, but once you do Twitter is believe it or not, a good resource for students and teachers alike.
“What!?”
“Are you serious?”
“Come on man!”
Yes I understand that many of you are wondering how a person can go almost 12 weeks of using Twitter and still not decide whether or not it is beneficial for education. My response would be, that it depends on who and what is being tweeted in order to justify its role in schools. Take Christine Agenta’s tweet in regards to ADHD for example. This is a fantastic tweet! This is someone who clearly cares about education and wants to share with others information about a medical condition that affects millions of students every year. A+ for Twitter.
Now there are other times, and for sake of keeping this reflection polite we will not mention names, where people use Twitter as a means of venting. Often people post quick, temper fueled, 140 character rants that do nothing but cut down or disrespect other people in the education field. How do tweets like this benefit students, teachers, and education as a whole? They don’t, but I believe that incidents like this are outweighed by the positive and thought provoking tweets people post, especially when tweeting to groups like our very own #INDT501.
Maybe I’m starting to answer my own earlier question here and Twitter really can help schools. I mean, thanks to Twitter I found Stacey Goodman’s (2014) article on enhancing creativity in the classroom. Here’s the link for anyone who wants to read it (it’s really good)! So referencing back to the initial question: is Twitter a positive direction for our educational system? Well I guess the jury has decided, and the answer is yes – but with an “*”. What I mean by this asterisk is that Twitter can help as long as students know how to filter through the pros and cons of using such a media source. Using groups like our #INDT501 can drastically eliminate any negative or useless tweets, but make sure the group you join is a good one. Finding a community on Twitter like this one isn’t always easy, but once you do Twitter is believe it or not, a good resource for students and teachers alike.
PLN - Educator's PLN
So for the final PLN assignment I chose to make an Educators PLN account. Initially I just read multiple archived accounts to become familiar with them before I followed a discussion live. I did this because I didn’t want to look foolish by posting comments especially considering a) I have yet to teacher full time and b) I don’t even have my teaching license. However, after reading what other teachers commented on, I realized that a good portion of people on this website were either aspiring teachers or were in the midst of their first year.
My initial reaction to the Educators PLN was that I liked it… a lot! I liked it because people post suggestions and comments on very specific topics that are hard to find unless you’re actually in the building teaching. For example, belowis a discussion on how teachers can deal with administration that is not helping to develop or lead their staff. Very specific topics like this are hard to find answers to and often the answers come from a single bitter employee at the school you work at. However, Educators PLN has several people who have dealt with similar issues and make regular comments and post to questions like this. If worse comes to worse, and no one has made a post about something you would like answers to, then you can always make a post yourself! I tool like this is fantastic for those tough, specific questions in my opinion.
The second thing I liked about this cite, was its ability to filter down to the subject matter you are most interested in. For me, it was biology. I found this awesome app for the iPad were students can dissect a frog. This is the link for it. This is great because it eliminates a lot of cost that schools do not want to spend now days. Schools don’t have to buy dead frogs ever year, they don’t have to worry about kids cutting themselves with sharp scalpels, they don’t have to worry about students feeling inhumane towards animals, and most schools are looking for any reason to fund iPad or tablet purchases. I plan on asking one of my practicum teachers next week what they think of using an app like this. Overall I really like Educators PLN.
Below is one of the transcipts for the topic discussed on Educators' PLN
My initial reaction to the Educators PLN was that I liked it… a lot! I liked it because people post suggestions and comments on very specific topics that are hard to find unless you’re actually in the building teaching. For example, belowis a discussion on how teachers can deal with administration that is not helping to develop or lead their staff. Very specific topics like this are hard to find answers to and often the answers come from a single bitter employee at the school you work at. However, Educators PLN has several people who have dealt with similar issues and make regular comments and post to questions like this. If worse comes to worse, and no one has made a post about something you would like answers to, then you can always make a post yourself! I tool like this is fantastic for those tough, specific questions in my opinion.
The second thing I liked about this cite, was its ability to filter down to the subject matter you are most interested in. For me, it was biology. I found this awesome app for the iPad were students can dissect a frog. This is the link for it. This is great because it eliminates a lot of cost that schools do not want to spend now days. Schools don’t have to buy dead frogs ever year, they don’t have to worry about kids cutting themselves with sharp scalpels, they don’t have to worry about students feeling inhumane towards animals, and most schools are looking for any reason to fund iPad or tablet purchases. I plan on asking one of my practicum teachers next week what they think of using an app like this. Overall I really like Educators PLN.
Below is one of the transcipts for the topic discussed on Educators' PLN
PLN - RSS Reflection
After creating my Feedly account a while ago, it took me a while to get use to checking it regularly. This isn’t of any fault to Feedly, but more of trying to break old habits of logging on to each individual website whenever I wanted to look for something. I’d say after about two weeks I finally started to use Feedly regularly and now find it much easier/quicker to use rather than visiting each website separately. Who ever thought of making the RSS system is really smart!
I enjoy listening to podcasts, so I set up my Feedly to pull multiple podcasts from several education websites and blogs. The first idea I pulled came from Google Educast (2014) and was about using Google Earth to take students to real life examples of the topic being discussed. For me, as a biology teacher, I think this concept would be great when discussing the different biomes on our planet. It is one thing to look at a picture in a text book and see what temperate grasslands looks like. However, if one uses Google Earth, students can see just how massive this biome is compared to other biomes. You could even have them search for different animals or plants that might be common for that particular biome. I think that using Google Earth would be a much more engaging and fun alternative to simply remembering what snapshots of biomes look like in textbooks.
The second idea I heard while listening to podcasts was about creating “easy-to-modify” video games to use in class (Gilbert, 2014). I like the idea of being able to modify the game because I could then use it to help explain the concept of natural selection. For example, maybe create a game were the students are wolves and they have to find and “catch” rabbits. In the game I could make all but a few rabbits bright pink. Obviously these pink rabbits would be easier to find compared to normal color rabbits so the students would catch more of the pink ones. I could then tie this into natural selection processes and show why over time the normal color rabbits are growing in number while the pink rabbits continue to decrease. If any students had questions I could hopefully modify the game so such students could replay and maybe answer their own question. This is not because I do not want to answer questions, rather that I believe students get more of an, “Oh yeahhh” moment when they can discover their own answers. Again, I like how a game can get students more engaged with the learning material compared to the average teacher lecture.
There are probably 10 more ideas like these that I have heard over the course of the school year thanks to Feedly. Instead of having to constantly check each website on my phone before I start driving, I just pull up my Feedly account and click on the latest podcast. It’s ridiculous how simple and easy it is! Two giant thumbs up for Feedly.
References
Gilbert, Zack. (2014) EdGamer 144: yummy game creation using gamesalad. EdReach: Edgammer, Audio source retrieved from http://edreach.us/2014/10/11/edgamer-144-yummy-game-creation-using-gamesalad/
Google Educast. (2014) Google play gets educated. EdReach Network, Episode #123. Audio source retrieved from https://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/
I enjoy listening to podcasts, so I set up my Feedly to pull multiple podcasts from several education websites and blogs. The first idea I pulled came from Google Educast (2014) and was about using Google Earth to take students to real life examples of the topic being discussed. For me, as a biology teacher, I think this concept would be great when discussing the different biomes on our planet. It is one thing to look at a picture in a text book and see what temperate grasslands looks like. However, if one uses Google Earth, students can see just how massive this biome is compared to other biomes. You could even have them search for different animals or plants that might be common for that particular biome. I think that using Google Earth would be a much more engaging and fun alternative to simply remembering what snapshots of biomes look like in textbooks.
The second idea I heard while listening to podcasts was about creating “easy-to-modify” video games to use in class (Gilbert, 2014). I like the idea of being able to modify the game because I could then use it to help explain the concept of natural selection. For example, maybe create a game were the students are wolves and they have to find and “catch” rabbits. In the game I could make all but a few rabbits bright pink. Obviously these pink rabbits would be easier to find compared to normal color rabbits so the students would catch more of the pink ones. I could then tie this into natural selection processes and show why over time the normal color rabbits are growing in number while the pink rabbits continue to decrease. If any students had questions I could hopefully modify the game so such students could replay and maybe answer their own question. This is not because I do not want to answer questions, rather that I believe students get more of an, “Oh yeahhh” moment when they can discover their own answers. Again, I like how a game can get students more engaged with the learning material compared to the average teacher lecture.
There are probably 10 more ideas like these that I have heard over the course of the school year thanks to Feedly. Instead of having to constantly check each website on my phone before I start driving, I just pull up my Feedly account and click on the latest podcast. It’s ridiculous how simple and easy it is! Two giant thumbs up for Feedly.
References
Gilbert, Zack. (2014) EdGamer 144: yummy game creation using gamesalad. EdReach: Edgammer, Audio source retrieved from http://edreach.us/2014/10/11/edgamer-144-yummy-game-creation-using-gamesalad/
Google Educast. (2014) Google play gets educated. EdReach Network, Episode #123. Audio source retrieved from https://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/
PLN - Twitter Chat #ptchat
For this portion of the PLN assignment I followed a Twitter Chat using Susan Bearden’s (2013) referencing on the Journal website and it was about encouraging dialogue between parents and teachers. Before I can continue, I must say my initial reaction was, wow these things move FAST! When I logged on about two minutes before the chat was to start I was just kind of sitting there waiting. Then, once the host arrived and started the initial chat – BAM! It was like 20-30 tweets a minute. Now I’m not a slow reader by any stretch of the imagination, but with all the hashtags, @ symbols, and retweets it was rather hard to follow along. Every time I tried to pull a link or save a website, it would be bumped down by another tweet. To be honest it moved so fast that I didn’t even post a comment because by the time I had a thought down and worded correctly, the original post was already moved off screen.
I latter went back and read the transcripts to the chat so I could make sense of the whole thing. Somehow, people were actually having conversations at alarming speeds and with decent word value (kind of hard to do with only 140 characters but none the less). Looking back at the beginning of the chat I would have said the Twitter chat was not focused and rather scatter brained. However, after reviewing the transcripts, the Twitter chat was more like multiple groups having conversation while all being on the same form. Now I was on a rather popular form, #ptchat, so maybe I was not use to the large number of people tweeting at once. If this had been scaled down to a smaller size, like between me and the parents of one of my classes, then yes I could see how this would be a great way to hold group discussions. Maybe I just need more practice with Twitter in general to process the sudo-language that is tweeting at a faster rate.
References
Bearden, Susan. (2013) 13 great twitter chats every educator should check out. The Journal. Retrieved from: http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/09/23/13-twitter-chats-for-educators.aspx
I latter went back and read the transcripts to the chat so I could make sense of the whole thing. Somehow, people were actually having conversations at alarming speeds and with decent word value (kind of hard to do with only 140 characters but none the less). Looking back at the beginning of the chat I would have said the Twitter chat was not focused and rather scatter brained. However, after reviewing the transcripts, the Twitter chat was more like multiple groups having conversation while all being on the same form. Now I was on a rather popular form, #ptchat, so maybe I was not use to the large number of people tweeting at once. If this had been scaled down to a smaller size, like between me and the parents of one of my classes, then yes I could see how this would be a great way to hold group discussions. Maybe I just need more practice with Twitter in general to process the sudo-language that is tweeting at a faster rate.
References
Bearden, Susan. (2013) 13 great twitter chats every educator should check out. The Journal. Retrieved from: http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/09/23/13-twitter-chats-for-educators.aspx