I love Twitter! It is one of the most amazing source of information for 21st Century educators. Twitter is a social media tool where users can send short messages (up to 140 characters) into the Twittersphere for others to read. Tweets are usually hashtagged (eg. #education #ICT ) to allow people to search for topics. You can follow people and see their tweets and they can follow you. I follow many different people and hashtags. Edudemic, Cybrary Man and OzTweechersPLN provide a quick guide to educational hashtags for teachers. While the Index to Educational Twitter Hashtags is another great place to start out.
TWEETING IN SCHOOLS
There are many reasons why we should tweet within schools but there are also concerns that are raised by some who believe that social media is not suitable for children. In my opinion social media can be successful in schools as long as it is used properly, like all teaching strategies used in schools. I’m sure we have all seen teaching strategies and methods that make us cringe because they are not being used properly of safely. Social media is the same. Use it within the guidelines set out by your school and it can be a phenomenal tool.
The following are some articles which highlight some of the positive and negative reasons for the use of social media in the classroom:
Pros and Cons of Social Media in the Classroom
Social Media in the K-12 Classroom
Twitter in My Classroom
Social Media Belongs in the Classroom
WHAT YOU NEED TO REMEMBER??
Like all social media you can choose your privacy settings… You can protect your tweets so that only your followers can see what you have written, this may be one way of protecting classroom privacy. If you are tweeting as a classroom then all tweets should be approved by the teacher before adding to Twitter. Or use a safer option like Twiducate this site has greater security options available and is specifically for schools and classrooms.
Scoop.it is my new favourite web tool… yes I know I have a lot of those but I guess that’s why I love teaching and learning, there are always new ideas you come across that make what you do so much easier. Scoop.it is a tool which helps teachers troll the internet for information about particular topics. You can sign up for a free account and you are able to create up to 5 topics. These topics help you gather or curate web based articles, webpages or posts about these particular topics. Scoop.it also allows you to follow other peoples posts.
I have two topics which I am currently curating in relation to teaching.
1. Teaching Tools Today – where I gather and curate tools useful for teaching, these include web 2.0 tools, traditional ideas, graphic organisers and more.
2. What’s New In Education? – Here I gather and curate posts about current trends and pedagogical ideas in education.
How does Scoop.it help me? Well…. it keeps me up to date on what is happening in the world of education. I follow other educators and rescoop their posts that are relevant to me. I am able to find new teaching strategies to help me in the classroom and most importantly I’m connecting with others interested in the same thing… educating the future generations.
I’ve added the links to my blog roll so you can get to the directly.
Do you use scoop.it? Let me know your topics and I’ll have a look!
Well not really a shop but I tell you that you will find all sorts of amazing Web 2.0 tools and ideas for education.
Mark Brumley is an educator and technology education specialist. His site contains not only ideas and up to date info on the latest tools out there but also has tips and ideas for using web 2.0 in effectively in classrooms.
Check it out and let me know what you think!
As a teacher I think it is one of my most important duties to teach children about being good digital citizens. This can also be a rather difficult task. I’m sure most teachers have been in a situation where their students have broken copyright or plagarised work from the internet in assignments. What is difficult about this is that students often have no idea what they are doing is illegal or they are aware of doing something illegal but are not worried about getting caught. As a primary school teacher I try to model correct behaviours on the internet to students. I use my own photos or images or I go to somewhere like Creative Commons or Creative Common Australia.
Students need to understand that they are responsible for using internet resources responsibly and the only way to do this is to teach them. I generally start a lesson on this topic by sharing a powerpoint where great swathes of information are copied from the internet, not reference, music from a CD and photos are randomly taken from an image search on an open search site. Then ask the question ‘What is wrong with this powerpoint?’ Other than the obvious points that there is too much information on the slides and the layout isn’t interesting, I’ve found that the students don’t notice the lack of referencing and particularly plagarism and copyright breach. I then show another short slide show with referencing, but still using images, text and audio which is illegal. The question that follows here is ‘What is the difference between the two slide shows?’ They can usually point out the referencing. I then show them yet another short powerpoint using referencing, original text and Creative Commons acquired images and music. They then have them complete a comparison chart. This lesson then leads into lessons on websites where they can legal download images and audio for use in their assignments. I also deliver lessons on plagarism and how to reference material properly.
A recent webinar with Australia E-Series was an excellent refresh of how to reference images and audio from the internet properly.
So this brings us to website where students can legally obtain images and audio for their work.
Creative Commons Australia
Flickr Creative Commons (or Flickr CC)
Jamendo (for music)
Open Clip Art Library
ccMixter (for music)
And for those who didn’t know Google will search for free license items but you need to go to the Advanced Search section and find ‘usage rights’ down the bottom.Google is a favourite of many students and if they want to use this search engine they should be taught about this advanced search option.