 That's right. You heard it here first. The Twitter feed never lies. Or at the very least it provides users the ability to access classroom, school, or district content that would otherwise be hard to obtain if observing from afar. Teachers, principals, and superintendents from around the world are taking 140 characters to get the message out and move the educational conversation forward.
Throughout the 2016-2017 school year Black River Middle School, by way of the @BlackRiverMS Twitter handle, was able to give stakeholder's an accurate depiction of learning experiences that take place across all grade levels and subject areas. Mrs. Moore's 4th grade classroom by way of the @MrsMooreFRSD Twitter handle was able to expand my knowledge as a parent of my son's daily learning experiences. The Falls Creek School District in Wisconsin leveraged the power of their hashtag #gocrickets and Twitter handle @fccrickets to promote all the great things that are taking place on a daily basis. There are so many great examples of how educators use Twitter to push the positive. Tweets highlight the great work of students, the innovative methods that teachers implement, and the exciting learning environment that leaders support. All it takes is a smartphone, the Twitter app, and a commitment to tell your story through social media. A great way to become acclimated to all the things that Twitter has to offer is by purchasing the book 140 Twitter Tips for Educators. It provides novice, intermediate, and expert users ideas and insight on how to make this invaluable tool work for you. At the end of the day, if you do not tell your classroom, school, or district story, someone else will and it could be wrong. Brad Currie is the author of the newly released 140 Twitter Tips for Educators. His other books include All Hands on Deck: Tools for Connecting Educators, Parents, and Communities and Personalized PD: Flipping Your Professional Development. He is one of the founding partners of Evolving Educators LLC. Brad is a 2014 ASCD Emerging Leader and Google Certified Trainer. Brad currently serves as a K-8 Supervisor of Instruction and Dean of Students for the Chester School District in Chester, NJ. He speaks and presents nationally about technology integration. Learn more about Brad by following him on Twitter@bradmcurrie or visiting his website at www.bradcurrie.net.  The time is now to rethink the way classrooms, schools, districts, and organizations communicate with stakeholders in the digital world. Differentiation is key if students, parents, and community members are to stay informed and feel proud of daily accomplishments that take place in their educational institutions. I speak to this in my book All Hands on Deck: Tools for Connecting Educators, Parents, and Communities. I truly believe that if you do not tell your story someone else will and it could be wrong. In my upcoming book, 140 Twitter Tips for Educators, the importance of connecting with school stakeholders through tweets is highlighted in great detail and stresses the importance of accessing real time information from a few taps of a person's mobile device. Here are five ways communicate with stakeholders in the digital world... Smore: Create weekly or monthly digital newsletters to keep stakeholders informed of school and district happenings. Canva: Design visuals and engaging documents that can be shared out and downloaded by stakeholders across multiple platforms. Tumblr: Host a classroom, school, or district blog that highlights all the wonderful educational experiences that place on a daily basis. Periscope: Create an online television channel that stakeholders can then access in real time to stay current in a more authentic and personal manner. Tip: use Katch to archive Periscope episodes. Snapchat: Reach your student population to inform them of upcoming events and celebrate accomplishments. It's important that educational institutions meet their stakeholders where they are in the digital world. No better way to do this than by leveraging the power of available web tools and social media. Take a risk and choose a few of the tools mentioned above. It's perfectly fine if it doesn't work out. The important thing is that you begun the process of exploring what is possible. Over time, it will become more clear which tools meet your stakeholders' informational needs. Brad Currie is the author of All Hands on Deck: Tools for Connecting Educators, Parents, and Communities and the newly released Personalized PD: Flipping Your Professional Development. He is one of the founding partners of Evolving Educators LLC. Brad is a 2014 ASCD Emerging Leader and Google Certified Trainer. Brad currently serves as a K-8 Supervisor of Instruction and Dean of Students for the Chester School District in Chester, NJ. He is a Google Certified Trainer and speaks nationally about tech integration. Learn more about Brad by following him on Twitter @bradmcurrie or visiting his website at www.bradcurrie.net.
Image Credit: http://fox13now.com/2014/02/17/the-classroom-behind-a-super-bowl-commercial/
A student's ability to speak in front of their peers has always been an important real world skill to develop in the school setting. With the evolution of technology, in particular mobile devices, students now have the ability to share their thoughts globally with a few taps of the screen. Being that we now in the year 2016, it's imperative that educators support students efforts to communicate clearly and effectively on smartphones, tablets, and laptops. For the most part, most devices in today's world come equipped with microphones and cameras. It's so easy for students to show what they know or learn more about the world around them by way of a Google Hangout, YouTube video clip, or podcast to name a few. Students must be put in digital situations where they can practice looking into the computer camera, speaking off of digital notes, communicating clearly, social cues during an online group discussion, and making their point with images and text on various presentation platforms. In fact, the same can be said for educators that are leading or participating in a webinar, Skype call, etc. The more teachers provide students with the autonomy to leverage the power of this particular technology, the more opportunities there will be to improve their digital speaking skills. Here are eight tools that can help students communicate in the digital world...
FlipGrid ~ Post a topic or question and have participants respond via recorded video. Blab ~ Watch, record, and participate in live virtual conversations. Google Hangout ~ Conduct live and recorded conversations. SoundCloud ~ Upload, record, share, and promote voice recordings. Voxer ~ Tap to talk web application with image, text, and video capabilities. Skype ~ Video call an individual or groups of people. YouTube ~ Create a maintain your very own online media channel. As you can see there are so many options for kids to show what they know in the digital world through video and voice. Click here to access rubrics aimed at helping understand expectations when put in these types of learning experiences. There are other ways for students to work on their digital speaking skills through apps they already utilize such as Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook. It's important to note that students should have options available to them when they are tasked with having to use this sort of technology. Looking for ideas on how to connect students on a global scale? Check out Connecting Your Students With The World by Blumengarten, Naugle, and Krakower. A one size fits all approach will back fire and limit creativity. The time is now to take a risk and put students in a position to succeed as they communicate and collaborate in the virtual world. Brad Currie is the author of All Hands on Deck: Tools for Connecting Educators, Parents, and Communities and the newly released Personalized PD: Flipping Your Professional Development. He is one of the founding partners of Evolving Educators LLC. Brad is a 2014 ASCD Emerging Leader and Google Certified Trainer. Brad currently serves as a K-8 Supervisor of Instruction and Dean of Students for the Chester School District in Chester, NJ. He is a Google Certified Trainer and speaks nationally about tech integration. Learn more about Brad by following him on Twitter @bradmcurrie or visiting his website at www.bradcurrie.net.  This guest blog post was written by first year teacher Sylwia Denko. Learn more about Sylwia by following her on Twitter @MissDenko or visiting www.missdenko.weebly.com. Innovation. To me, innovation means: change, risk-taking, new, and maybe even most importantly, fun.
My name is Sylwia Denko and I just completed my first year of teaching. I teach third grade and work in an incredible district with unbelievably supportive and dedicated administration and colleagues. My first year was absolutely wonderful. Part of the reason why it was so great was because of an important word: innovation. As a first year teacher, I was told by several people: “Play it safe, stay quiet, do what everyone else does, don’t feel pressured to get involved or take risks yet.” I understood where they were coming from, but that is simply just not me. I believe that the reason why I am who I am is because I am different and I take risks. I was offered a job three days before my graduation date last year partially because I am different, because I take risks. Just because I secured a job through many risks taken, does not mean that I will stop taking risks now. Risk-taking can be, well of course, risky. However, the way I think about it is “What’s the worst that could happen? I fail and then have to fix it, no big deal.” Without failure, we cannot learn and grow as people. That is what I encourage my students to do, take risks and get back up if they do not succeed. There is no judgement, only support. I was lucky to have talked to my friend Brad Currie at EdCamp in November who told me to be different, be true to myself, and to showcase my skills without feelings of judgement or fear; and that’s what I did. I love learning. I love talking to people, reading, and researching. I enjoy having a plethora of knowledge, strategies, and resources to choose from and to make my own; so I talk to people, colleagues that I work with and my professional learning network online. I take so many different ideas and incorporate them into my teaching. As a first year teacher (well, now, second year teacher), I do not have a lot of experience to help me. Instead, I have people with experience to help me. In addition, I have my mind that is always spinning with ideas, thinking about ways to make my teaching even better. My mind enjoys the idea and thought of incorporating technology in the classroom. If you think back to my definition of innovation, technology is exactly that: change, risky, new and fun. I love technology and students love technology. I decided that I wanted to change the way I taught and incorporate more and more technology. The first thing I did, which no one had done yet, was create a classroom Twitter in the beginning of the year. I wanted to be a transparent educator for many reasons. As a new teacher, I wanted to alleviate any feelings of discomfort of the parents in my classroom. In addition, I wanted my administration to see what I was doing in the classroom in case they were not there in person to see it. My students were always doing wonderful things and I wanted to showcase that. Eventually, I wanted my students to become more reflective in our classroom and more involved in sharing what they do. I had a “tweeter of the week” that would compose tweets about our day and those tweets would be posted on our classroom Twitter. I have had very positive reactions from parents, administration, and colleagues. Parents enjoyed seeing what was happening to avoid the conversation of: parent: “What did you do in school today?” student: “Nothing.” (however, I would hope that students had more to say about our day together than just nothing!!). Now, in order to further the conversation (just in case they did respond with “nothing”, parents could say “Well, on twitter I saw…”. I even had a parent tell me “A classroom Twitter is the best thing to have happened in school.” After seeing my classroom Twitter and my professional Twitter, my administration asked me (a first year teacher!!) to develop two professional development sessions to my district about Twitter in the classroom and a professional Twitter. I was so excited about this opportunity and of course, I agreed. Through this, many of my colleagues have joined Twitter and we have developed our own personal hashtag for our district. Our district is a growing district in terms of population and technology. The number of students are growing as well as our resources. This year, there were three classrooms in our school piloting a Google Chromebook program. I was hoping to someday have the opportunity to teach in a 1:1 classroom like them, but just because I wasn’t at the time, did not stop me from incorporating technology in my classroom. I used technology daily by incorporating videos and digital manipulatives, and eventually the google platform, into my teaching. Although we did not have Chromebooks, I taught my students how to use google drive and create documents for them to work on at home and documents that were worked on collaboratively in class. I took my students to the computer lab as often as I could when they were working on collaborative projects so groups could be working on the same document at the same time. When we were not able to go to the computer lab, we developed a system together that allowed one group at a time to work on our classroom computers while everyone else worked on hard copies. As time went on, students took the initiative to use the google platform on their own. I even created “office hours” for my students while they were working at home so I could confer with them outside of our time in class together. Not only did students benefit from this, they enjoyed it. One of my student said “Miss Denko, THIS IS SO FUN!” In May, we found out that the Chromebook Initiative would be growing in our district and I would be one of the lucky teachers who will be teaching in a 1:1 Google Chromebook classroom next year. I am so excited that my administration is confident in me to take on such an exciting and innovative initiative. Now that the school year is over, I am excited to reflect on a successful and innovative year. My year was also filled with smiles, laughs, loving, and learning within the walls of our classroom. I am so happy to look back on my year and know that I have successfully made it through, what people say, would be my toughest year as a teacher. It may have been challenging at times, but people are strengthened through challenge. The best part is that next year, I can do it all over again, but better. I cannot end my post without thanking my unbelievably amazing administration, colleagues, PLN members, family and friends who supported me the whole way through. Thank you more than you know.  image Credit: http://cloud.addictivetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Inter-iPhone-iPad-iPod-touch-File-Transfer.jpg During a presentation or while conversing, people will often ask me how being on a tool like Twitter or LinkedIn can help educators improve their craft. Providing concrete examples to people will help them see the power of being a connected educator. I also emphasize the importance of differentiating the way people obtain and share best practice resources. In the end, the more educators share ideas and information, the more student success will be impacted. Here is an example of the sharing process.... I follow Derek McCoy, school leader from North Carolina, on LinkedIn. Early one morning before getting ready for work I scrolled through my LinkedIn feed and came across a great resource that Derek shared. It was a blog post written by John Spencer titled 8 Ways to Keep Informational Text Engaging. I was so impressed with its content that I decided to tweet it to my followers. I then proceeded to put it in my weekly email blast to staff called the Bulldog Bulletin that is chock full of best practice resources. The hope here is that my PLN and fellow colleagues will continue to share out this wonderful blog post by John Spencer. As I said earlier in this post, sharing is contagious and will ultimately impact the success of students. Another example relates to our district's transition to Google Classroom. Alice Keeler, an adjunct, author, and edtech guru from California, consistently puts out great content related to GAFE on her blog titled Teacher Tech. I use a service called Feedly that stores all my blog subscriptions which can be accessed through an app I have on my iPhone. On a weekly basis I will got to Alice's blog through Feedly knowing that she will have timely and relevant content related to GAFE. I can then share her content on my various social media feeds and with my colleagues. In the long run it helps everyone stay current and helps integrate the various tools students use in the most efficient way possible. So what do you say? Take a few moments each day to consume and share best practice resources. It will make all of us better educators in the long run and push our students to places once thought inimaginable. As the old adage says: Connect Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself. Brad Currie is the author of All Hands on Deck: Tools for Connecting Educators, Parents, and Communities. He is one of the founding partners of Evolving Educators LLC. Brad is a 2014 ASCD Emerging Leader and Google Certified Trainer. He currently serves as a K-8 Supervisor of Instruction and Dean of Students for the Chester School District in Chester, NJ. Learn more about Brad by following him on Twitter @bradmcurrie or visiting his website at www.bradcurrie.net.
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