• Implement a Pineapple Chart initiative to encourage staff members to share best practices with each other on a consistent basis. You can learn more about this by reading Mark Barnes and Jennifer Gonzalez' book Hacking Education. 
  • Pro: Foster sharing among faculty members 
  • Con: Educators have been living in isolation too long and might be reluctant to participate
• Start a Student of the Day initiative to recognize every single student in your school. I wrote about this initiative in a previous blog post that you can access here. 
  • Pro: Every students should be recognized for the great work that they do on a daily basis. 
  • Con: Some may say that not every child deserves to be recognized. 
• Leverage the power of social media to tell your classroom, school, or district story. Informing stakeholders of school happenings in real time via Twitter or Facebook can do wonders with support a healthy online reputation. Read this blog post on branding in education. 
  • Pro: School stakeholders will stay well informed and educators have control of the story that is told. 
  • Con: Some might say that the virtual transparency might be raise privacy issues and that social media has no place in education. 
• Start an Advisory Program in your school. Research says that every child needs an adult advocate. There is no better way to do this then by having staff members connect with kids through character building activities. Learn more about Black River Middle School's advisory program by clicking here.
  • Pro: Students and teachers develop stronger relationships with each other.
  • Con: Some may say that Advisory is just another thing that we have to do and parents should be the one's raising their children. 
• 1:1 Chromebook Rollout or making devices accessible to every student should be strongly considered. Through creative funding, grant opportunities, or allowing personal devices in the building will help build momentum toward an innovative learning environment. 
  • Pro: Students can learn and show what they know about the topic at hand in ways once thought unimaginable. There are so many ways that students can drive their own learning when having access to devices. 
  • Con: Devices do not belong in the school setting. Students can do bad things with computers. Districts should not be funding digital curriculum, infrastructure, and devices. 
• Student Roundtable discussions provide school leaders with an opportunity to see what is working well and areas of improvement. It's important to remember that school is about students not about what makes adults happy. Selecting a group of about 12 students from across multiple grade levels and meeting with them on a monthly basis can work wonders. Tip: let them build part of the agenda by using a tool like Google Docs. 
  • Pro: Moves school forward in a positive direction by incorporating student voice in the decision making process. 
  • Con: Some people think that students might rule the schools if they are giving too much voice or power. 
• Choice in all about how students are able to show what they know about a given topic. When students are given the autonomy to show what they know from a tech and not tech perspective more often than not productivity will rise. Providing a list of options for students gives them the power to choose how they learn and be assessed. 
  • Pro: Students can thrive within various learning experiences when given the option of creating iMovies, PearDeck presentation, designing and printing on a 3D printer, or using Blendspace to flip learning. 
  • Con: Some may say that all learning experiences and assessments should be standardized so that all students are on an even playing field so that their progress can be gauged accordingly. 
• Seating arrangements should promote collaboration. Classrooms should not resemble a cemetery where seats are situated in rows. Teachers should be the guide on the side and promoting discussion about important topics. Some control of learning should be given to students through tech and non tech ways. 
  • Pro: Students will be much more comfortable and engaged when learning in a space that promotes collaboration, discussion, reflection, and creation. 
  • Con: Some may say that discipline issues will arise if students are given free reign to sit in pods as opposed to rows. 

In the near future, probably April, my new book will come out. It's titled 140 Twitter Tips for Educators and is being published by Burgess Consulting. I am writing the book with my fellow Evolving Educator partners Billy Krakower and Scott Rocco. As I was writing my portions of the book I jotted down some things that Twitter should be able to do, but currently does not for one reason or the other.

1. Modify sent Tweets. Facebook allows users to modify posts. Why can't this become reality in the Twitter world?

2. Pre schedule tweets. There are great apps like Buffer, Hootsuite, and Tweetdeck that allow users to pre schedule tweets. So why can't Twitter have this same feature?

3. Tweet more than 140 characters. I heard that this feature may soon become reality. Sometimes a tweet just needs a few more characters.

4. Have share options embedded. It would be cool if users were able to share to other social media sites right from a tweet.

5. Earn credit icon. Since many Twitter users are educators they should be able to earn professional development credits while sharing and interacting through tweets. It would be nice if there was some way to archive Twitter work by tapping a little icon.

6. Archive option for chats/hashtags. Twitter users love to participate in chats. Many of the archiving options are clumsy or too difficult at best. There is one tool out there that has potential and it's made by Participate Learn. l wish there was an Archive Chat option feature within Twitter that would save an hour long discussion thread from a particular hashtag.

7. Access to data from past polls. I love the new poll feature that Twitter now offers. Access to the data associated to the polls is limited. Or at least that is how I understand it. There should be a feature within the poll function that archives past polls.

Maybe I am way off base with this blog post. Do you have any suggestions to enhance Twitter? If so, share them in the comments portions of this blog post.