So much spinning around in my brain stemming from this course:

Thought #1: On the first day we had an interesting conversation about teachers being present professionally online. Or how we aren’t but should be.  This conversation has also arisen with a colleague and I a few weeks ago. My colleague had mentioned to our police liaison officer that he has no online presence at all. The officer was shocked and suggested that my colleague should have a presence in order to build a positive profile and to better be able to see if someone was building a profile without his knowing it.

Take away:  -Build a better professional presence online in order to protect myself and stay aware of any negative uses of my name online.

-Encourage my students to do the same for themselves.  Make them aware of the consequences of having a negative online profile (reduced educational and employment opportunities).

Darren Laur -white hat creeper -friends students in schools he is presenting at (shocking to students who he is in the end) -digital first responders

Thought #2: Jenny posted a response to my connected-self and culture post by asking me to think a bit deeper about how technology affects the learning process and ourselves. From this I have been thinking about how much online learning I have been doing for this program but often feeling a bit empty about my learning.  As a very social being who processes information better when it has been delivered within a face to face format I have struggled with the online only aspect of my T-L diploma courses. As a result of this experience I have vowed to seek out a Masters program that is cohort based as opposed to on your own and delivered online. My most enjoyable learning experience has been as a  cohort. Leaves me to my own conclusion that I need to remember that technology is a tool for education facilitation but may not be the best mode for actual delivery.

The other positive that comes from face to face learning is the idea of personal connections.  Face to face interactions are more meaningful and will result in better longterm professional connections that are then strengthened and maintained through technology. i.e. Teacher-librarians use twitter to stay connected once they have all meet and formed a hashtag for their group. 😉

Take away:

-What research exists about cohort and face to face models of education that incorporate and utilize technology versus technology only based models of delivery?

-Face to face personal connections, in my opinion are more meaningful –> allows for conversations that spark more ideas. Why? Faster to say than type?

Thought #3: Time for technology?

Eking out time for learning about new technology, trying new technology, incorporating new technology, and managing technology within just our educational lives can be overwhelming.

How do we as educators set up the time within our busy work schedules to do this?  What are some of the ways to find time for good technology integration?

I wonder if our lack of time is one of the reasons why teachers have not used technology in their professional spheres as much as other professions?

Take away: Set up a Pro-D group within my school that meets at specific intervals (once a week, every two weeks, once a month?) to explore a technology topic or program. Power in collaboration and socially networked learning (we could twitter with each other)

Thought#4: Information Literacy versus Digital Literacy

I view these two concepts as being very different. Info Literacy is the ability to recognize what information is needed for a specific task or purpose and all that is related to the process of finding that information. (search skills, determining reliability, determining usefulness of a source…)

I view Digital Literacy as being able to navigate (hopefully for critical purposes as well as entertainment) in a digitally based world. (using software, trouble shooting problems, knowing the uses of different devices, using social media, understanding tech vocabulary…)

Take away: As teachers we should all be trying to constantly improve our own digital literacy and to intentionally encourage digital literacy in our own students through our teaching practices.

As a teacher-librarian it is my task to specifically teach information literacy skills (these are our set of Learning Outcomes) but recognizing that these skills increasingly overlap with the digital world and require that students also have strong digital literacies.

Thought #5: Uses of Twitter in the classroom.

See blog post.

Thought #6: Bring your own devices? Use of cell phones and personal devices in the classroom and at school? Access to WiFi? Policy regarding these issues?

These questions all began rolling around in my head after day two conversations about the connected self and culture in relationship to education. If things are changing and we are expected to incorporate technology into our teaching practices we need to unlock the barriers to doing this.  The first step is to ensure we have the tools to teach with technology in our hands.  What is the best and most ethical way to get hardware in the hands of teachers and students? What is good policy regarding internet connections: speed, wifi, permissions? What policies exist in other places regarding these issues?

Questions that I would like to explore as a potential final project topic because in my school is complaining about but not talking about these issues.  I feel that doing my research on this could bring information to the table from which we can begin a discussion at my school.

Feeback via Twitter hashtag and blog forum

Thought #7: Appreciation for this method of learning and to at least participate in it as an ideal model of what learning should look like.  Now if only UBC could adopt the Pass/Fail model that SFU has.

I enjoyed reconnecting with the Twitter platform today. I had briefly used it in a previous course where I was required to set up an account.  I have been meaning to spend a bit of time figuring it out a bit better.  My previous use with it was limited because I didn’t understand the idea of a hash tag and I found it hard to follow on my iphone.  Having logged in on my computer today I think it will be my preferred device for my twittering activities as I can see the bigger picture a bit better and see and archive linked information better.

My concern about platforms like twitter and my google reader is that of organization and information overload.  If I am going to spend the time perusing these communities I also need a way of organizing and storing the information that I find so that it is accessible to be in useful ways.  I suspect that a program like pearltree might be a possible solution to this dilemma.  I need to do some further research in this area and will be listening to the 10 minutes of fame presentations for any further suggestions.

In using twitter today and listening to Jenny’s suggestion of student use of twitter during lessons to post thoughts and questions made me wonder how else twitter can be used in the educational sphere.  I have found a few website with Twitter in the classroom suggestions:

http://fluency21.com/blog/2013/02/19/60-inspiring-examples-of-twitter-in-the-classroom/

One of the points in this list suggested that tweeting in the classroom helps students to build a positive “brand” of their own on the internet. This is something that Darren Laur, an internet safety expert, speaks about with students. Students can have a hard time getting jobs and entering into post-secondary schools if their online profiles have questionable content or behaviour.  Tweeting in a positive, educational way can help build their online profiles.

In this list I like the ideas of:                                                                                                           -tweeting parents updates                                                                                                                -twitter pop quiz                                                                                                                                  -silencing blurters (similar to Jenny’s suggestion)                                                                            -twitter recap after a lesson                                                                                                                   –projecting live tweets to spark and encourage discussion                                                    -a record of important information and ideas brought forward during a discussion (assign a group of students to be the twitter recorders                                                                           -following important figures that are related to a school project (ie Chris Hadfield for International Space Station unit)                                                                                                                          -word games                                                                                                                             -short grammar exercises                                                                                                                -vocabulary exercises (using a specific word within a sentences                                           -twitter poetry                                                                                                                                      -twitter book club                                                                                                                                 -quote of the day

http://www.teachhub.com/50-ways-use-twitter-classroom

This list has lots of repeats from the previous but also some new and interesting ones.

-asking students to summarize a lesson or discussion (they only have 140 characters)                                                                                                                                      – analyzing tweet stats                                                                                                                   -curate an online art gallery                                                                                                               -math and science puzzles                                                                                                       -create progressive stories                                                                                                                -create a class poll                                                                                                                      -live tracking of field trips

https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2013/06/20/twitter-in-the-classroom/

This article suggests ways to incorporate tweeting into your teaching practice. I especially like the suggestion of choosing one day a week for tweeting.  It can be hard to eek out the time needed to follow lines of information like twitter, choosing one day a week seems like a reasonably doable task that will still serve to keep new ideas flowing and the skill of tweeting building.

http://plpnetwork.com/2012/04/27/twitter-in-the-classroom/

Another article about tweeting for teachers and how to incorporate it into the classroom.  I like the suggestion here of doing announcements on twitter.  Ah can you imagine how much time and sanity we could regain to not have to listen to announcements every morning! 🙂

Today’s research group about the connected self and the cultural dimension was hard to get started as we found that we needed to first wrap our brains around the idea of culture and education.  I first found it difficult to remove my thinking from the immediate context of my classroom and to think on a broader level about big ideas in education that affect more than just my class, school, and district. However, once we got started the ideas began to flow.

Our group identified several aspects of educational culture that have developed alongside the emerging technologies that are fast becoming a part of our how we operate and communicate.  Some of these topics include: 21^st Century learning, acceptance of technology devices in the classroom, internet safety, cyberbullying and the policies that accompany these. We also talked about the ideas of the internet, wi-fi, apps, and devices all being new terms that are part of our everyday vocabulary and which are part of the educational culture within which we teach and learn. As teacher librarians we also identified the emerging concepts of digital literacy and multimodal literacy as being new forms of knowledge that students need to learn.

We also discussed early learning initiatives, (read, sing, dance, play, talk..) which seem counter to the concept of screen time that many pre-school kids receive.  On the flip side of this we also identified the introduction of technology to kids at an early age as a recent shift. The connected self now begins much earlier than before; my two year old can navigate my iphone fairly well and knows which apps are for him. Interesting as well the development of apps that are geared toward young children and education.

As part of this discussion about the connected self and educational culture my interest has been peaked by the issue of access to technology in the educational setting.  At my own school there is no clear policy about cell phones in the classroom and while we now have wi-fi in the school there has been no discussion or policy put in place for its use either.  Some teachers allow students to access their devices and the wifi while others are dead set against it.  This is confusing for students and I believe that we need to have an active conversation on this topic at my school and in my district. I am leaning towards possibly pursuing this topic for my final project as I feel it is something that I can bring forward in my school as part of my new role as teacher librarian.

Here are the beginnings of my search findings:

http://www.marcprensky.com/videos/ (If you could choose one piece of equipment to change teaching and learning, what would it be).  This is an interesting conversation about cellphone use in education between Marc Prensky and Stephen Heppell. Of particular interest to me was the discussion about cellphones as personal devices and the acceptance that these are devices that most students will bring with them as opposed to the education system providing them.  I think this is true, though I agree that a contingency plan does need to exist for students who don’t have devices I don’t necessarily think that we need to buy devices in large quantities.  It is better to get students knowing and working with what they have or they won’t use it.

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/218620060?accountid=14656           This set of guidelines issued by the Ontario Principals’ Council in 2007 demonstrates the opposite view, or at least how cellphones in classrooms were viewed not so long ago.  They were encouraged to be restricted and hidden.  Safety considerations were clearly a high priority for administrators. I am curious if these policy suggestions are still in place or if they have been changed to reflect the even greater number of personal devices that students are bringing to class?