Twitter-chatter #Edtechchat

I had never heard of twitterchat until today. It's a shame. What a great communication device. I do believe that twitterchat is a great way for professional development. I came across a youtube video about President Obama and "The White House- Student Film Festival," I was amazed by Obamas' attempt to, within 5 years, demand technology in every classroom in the U.S. I would have never even heard of this unless I went on this twitterchat at this exact moment. I think that's incredible. How easy communication becomes. As a future teacher I could simply browse through all the posts and learn an extreme amount. I honestly never thought of twitter for this purpose until now. These chats can definitely broaden my horizons to future educating. I think because anyone is allowed to use the chat, the amount of information is endless. Twitterchat is a very simple way to find new information as a teacher, and also you do not have to even post anything if you don't want to. You can simply browse what other's have to offer, and possibly when you feel more comfortable sharing information you may do so. I also think the twitterchat is great because you never know what people will post. I came across a blog I had already seen, which I found to be ironic. I  really just think this chat can connect you to educators all over, which is important because each state, town, etc. is different. You can view others opinions and ideas in a second! Twitterchat is a nice way to develop your technology skills as an educator and keep update with new up and coming technology offered.

"Tweet-Tweet"

According to " 10 Amazing Ways For Teachers & Tutors To Use Twitter In Education" "Twitter like all other social media is a virtual Aladdin’s cave."This fits twitter to a "t." There is so much information a learner can receive from twitter, if the teacher takes the first steps. There are so many ways teachers can connect with their students using twitter. You can set up a 'classroom' hashtags around lessons and topics. This way the students can look back and keep a record of what was taught. "Hashtags also make it easy to follow interesting topics related to the curriculum or anything else that might broaden a student’s knowledge base." Twitter makes it easy for an after class discussion or if students need help they can get a hold of the teacher or their classmates for help! Language learners can begin to use BICS. There is no pressure to communicate "correctly" and hashtags keep everything together. I find twitter could be especially useful for intermediate ELLs to become familiar with English from a whole different perspective. Teachers can also use twitter as a bulletin board, interact with students parents, or even create a classroom newspaper. It genius!! I would love to able to communicate with my parents on a daily basis and that's easy. Teachers can easily tweet something that all the parents could see, or connect directly. My favorite idea I found was a history graduate posting events from WWII and it could become an interesting history project that brings things to life. You could pick all different events in history. It's a new way for learning.

According to an article called "How To Use (Internal) Microblogging For Education,"
"Microblogging is an outstanding technique for supervision."  You can encourage students to track their  activities in a microblog.  If students are posting information about their work, this creates more time for the teacher to participate in the students work and track their progress. We are all able to then stay connected! Teachers never seem to have enough time to really track each students progress, twitter could possibly make our lives a little easier. Possibly more time consuming, but we also would have a better grasp on each student as an individual learner. You can create microblogs for everything!

A Useful Social Networking Group

Joining http://community.eflclassroom.com/ seems useful to me because I will soon be certified in ESOL and there seems to be a lot of information in this site.  There are a lot of the teaching tools available on this site, one that we have already discussed in our previous Mod's.was voice thread. My favorite parts are the teach and learn tabs. I can find lessons, games, flashcards, etc. to help me teach!

Connect-ivism. What is it?

I learned about Connectivism from reading one article called "Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age" and watching one video "The Network is the Learning."

A learner is like.. its own network field. In the fact that "the network is the learning". "That network enables me to stay current in my own field." One must continuously be keeping up with current information and be able to "cast light" on the rest of that network. It's like blogging. People find out new information and want to share it with the rest of their network, and that's also where the people are learning from too! By sharing and receiving new information you are learning new content all the time, without even realizing it some of the time. "We derive our competence from forming connections." 

"Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than we know today." This fascinates me. Years ago, who would've known we would be learning this way. Connectivism IS the up and coming way of learning. Think about it. Students no longer need a teacher, they have the internet. Now I'm over exaggerating, but a lot of information kids want to know about they can find out on their own. This is why we, as teachers, need to become familiar with things such as networking. "The starting point of connectivism is the individual." Students need to be able to connect with their own knowledge.

Creating a DIIGO account V.S Scoop.it account

Scoop.it and DIIGO are both useful sites. They differ in a few ways, and the purpose of each site are similar in my eyes, yet different. On the Scoop.it site you can highlight text in saved articles and also use multiple tags. You will not appear in comments on this site by copying and pasting from the original article. You can follow other's using Scoop.it, and they can follow you, but you can not comment on their site. You are offered an overwhelming amount of suggestions for related articles as well. I like Scoop.it because it is a good way to keep track of articles you find useful. I also like the set up of the website and enjoy curating new topics of my own. I would continue to use this site for the education field.

On the DIIGO site you can also highlight text in saved articles and use multiple tags. I am unsure when you would appear in comments from an articles site. I do not think others can comment on my site. You can follow others, and others can follow you! You are not given any suggestions for related articles, but in a way this is nice because this site is more for bookmarking sites you find of interest, not others. I would possibly continue using this site instead of bookmarking. You can categorize things very easily, and I like tagging. Both sites a neat in different ways!

Ch-Ch-Changes

I recently viewed two extremely interesting videos for educators. I was shocked by the information I received, although I probably shouldn't have been. The first video I watched was The Networked Student by Wendy Drexler. At first the video seemed a bit odd, but give it a chance. It is all about connectivism. It is a theory of learning which emphasizes the role of social and cultural contexts. It is definitely something educators should look into. Students could benefit greatly by building a personal learning network. And learning a tremendous amount from others. Sharing information with the rest of the world is how we continue to grow. Connectivism makes is easier for student to connect and can make learning new information fun! So, why do we need a teacher? They teach the 21st century student how to build a network by offering guidance and support. The teacher is there to help the student also differentiate between good and bad information as well. 

The other video is a long one, but well worth the watch! The Future of Learning, Networked Society puts a shocking new twist on teaching! First the video  touches on the fact that all learners are different. This is extremely important to realize as a teacher. I surprisingly found out that the origin of the education system came from the military. If you take a good look at a school, how we process students is like a factory. Sadly,students that don't conform to the system get medicated, such as students with ADHD. 

Now a days, if students want information they can simply look it up! "Knewton" is a brilliant new adaptive learning platform. The course figures out how and when you learn best which could be detrimental to some learners. Not everyone learns great in the morning. We can predict and prevent failure in advanced. It's genius! Showing every student has a path to success. So, why is our system failing? Standardized testing. You only take them once in your life, such as the SAT and that determines what colleges you get into, and then what? As stated in the video, it's a big scam and corrupting education. At the same time, we can't completely do away with assessment, and it is not going to change in a day..so what do we do?

The benefits of educational blogging

One way you could use blogs with your students is by having the students create their own blog and publish their  own creative writing stories. It is different for students to create a piece of writing on the computer and have their fellow peers be able to access their creative stories as well as their teacher. Posting a story on a blog would seem more official and exciting. The students would have to practice the writing process during this time, and also could be excited about looking at their friends work! The students would have to edit their own work with the help of the teacher, and their peers before publishing a piece to their blog. Standard 11 incorporates easily with one way students could use blogging for educational purposes.

English as a Second Language Standards
11. Use the process of prewriting, drafting, revising, and
proofreading (the “writing process”) to produce
well-constructed informational texts. (L, S, R, W)

I also find blogging very useful for professional development. By creating a blog, you as an educator have your own opinions and ideas to share with the world. You can also learn from other educators ideas. Technology has made so much sharing possible. You have a way of communicating with educators everywhere, and can choose to follow people of interest to you and your specific field. The best part is, as new teacher, you can learn so much from educators that have been teaching for years. They've already learned from many of their mistakes, so it would be wise to follow teachers with experience.