5 Easy Steps

Twitter is a microblog in which you post status messages, links to research, websites or whatever you think is interesting with people in your own personal network. My Personal Learning Network (pln) is made up of edtech and online teachers from around the world.  It has been my greatest source of learning in the last two-plus years.  You can also use twitter to find out whats going on in places.  Take the Iran Election for example.  Average people will post real time messages about what is happening in Iran that you can track if you follow that person on Twitter or simply search #iranelection (all one word and include hashtag).  You can use Twitter to communicate with friends, family, or follow celebrities if that’s your thing.  Its amazing how much information you come across in a day that you will want to share if you know people are listening.

1.  Go to Twitter.com and sign up.  Fill out your profile and make sure you add a clear headline/description and picture.  Click here for an excellent blog post that will highlight the importance of getting off to a good start.

2.  Then go to Find People up on the top bar.  Search mrplough07 and when the results pop up click Follow next to my name.  You will notice I follow about 290 people or so.  Each of them is in the edtech field except for an occasional reporter or website owner.

3.  To begin building a list of people with edtech interests, go through some of the people I follow.  Click on their name and look at their profile page.  I always look to the short bio at the top right which is their personal description.  If they are edtech-change agent-type people, I follow them.

4.  After you click on a few people and follow them, then go to Home and watch your Twitter stream.  Messages that the people you follow will come on the page.  The more you follow the more messages and the faster they will pop up.  Click on links and begin learning.

5.  Let me know if you have any questions.  When you sign up to follow me I will get a notice.  Please send me an email (or direct message in Twitter) with your username so that I can tell my edtech friends to welcome you to the community.

note:  I originally wrote this in a lesson for my grad school class but decided to put up here in case anyone else could use it.

Twitter Avatar, Colored Green to Support People of Iran in their Fight for Democracy, for pics click here

What better way to get me around my writing embargo then a little post dedicated to just me, about me, and not about anything else but me   Well, actually I’m going to dedicate this to Beth Still and Adina Sullivan who both tagged me with this meme within a couple days so now I feel obligated to respond.  As a few of you know, I haven’t written much this school year so far, but I hope that can change.  As for now, lets try to uncover a little more of who I am.  Wow, that sounds strange to say outloud (or even in my head).

Here are the rules to participating in the 7 things meme:

• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter and/or Plurk.

Here we go:

1.  I have lived in 37 houses and 21 towns/cities/municipalities in my 33 years.  I was not an air force brat, but moved alot nonetheless.  Wish I could tell you more about that one but I will have to leave it to imaginations.

2. I have neck, back, wrist, elbow, knee, and hip problems.  I think its from all the sports I played growing up, or all the time I spend on the computer, or I guess it could be that degenerative spine issue my ortho talks so highly of.  From what I understand it’s common but the doctor says I should probably avoid picking up my 17 month old son anymore if I want to be able to walk when I’m older.  That sounds depressing, really, its not so bad.

3.  I believe in sarcasm.  Some say its for the weak.  Others say it just masks insecurities.  For me, I just use it as another way to critique what I see as wrong in the world so its more of an analytical tool.

4.  I actually liked High School even though I almost didn’t graduate.  Well, let me be clear.  I hated most of my classes, disliked most of my teachers, couldn’t stand the emotional ups and downs, but all in all, I have fond memories.  I wonder if thats just time dilluting the experience.  When I decided to become a teacher, it was because I wanted to help kids who weren’t going to make it through unless someone took an interest in them.  I don’t think anyone ever took an interest in my future so I want to be that person for a few.  I’m not sure how this all adds up to me liking HS, but I can tell you I certainly didn’t hate it as much as most of my students do.

5.  I looooooooooooooooooovvvvvvve movies.  Watching them is my favorite hobby.  My other favorite hobbies include playing on the computer, playing with my Nintendo Wii, and eating brownies.  All of which add up to me not leaving the house very much.  Maybe I should find some new hobbies?

6.  If I could go anywhere in the world right now it would be Ireland.  That probably has to do with the fact that I was born on St. Patricks Day, have freckles, auburn hair, and no living relative who can definitively tell me if I have Irish in my blood.  There is something alluring about the possibility so I will just believe my grandma when she says “I think you have a little, sure.”

7.  I long to be led or to lead by goodness, intelligence, openness, and collaboration.

Tag, you’re it:  Oh, and since I haven’t been reading too many blogs recently, sorry if you were already tagged but just know I was thinking about you.

@teachakidd – she is funny
@michellek107 – she is funny too
@mkbwsu – leader in online education
@robinellis-  I wish I had her job, I think
@stonyriver – so generous with his knowledge
@robletcher – great ideas about online education
@kdumont – Mr. Mac

A student of mine contacted me the other day and asked if he could use Quizilla to complete a compare and contrast assignment by making a quiz.  It seemed like a really interesting method for a student to demonstrate a higher level of thinking so I said “go for it” before I even looked at the site. When I pulled up the site the next day, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it offered 5 ways to create:

• quizzes
• stories
• polls
• poems
• lyrics

A student could use any of those creative options to demonstrate learning for most of my lessons.  I sent this out to my kids and told them to feel free to develop and publish their own story as a replacement for any writing assignment as long as they cover the basic lesson requirements.  Meaning, if their story shows me they understand my objectives then they can be as creative as they want in how they turn work in.

They could also create a poll and publish it.   If its interesting enough people will take the poll and they could share the results as part of the assignment.

Writing poetry or lyrics for a song takes a special talent, so I encouraged them to “use it if they got it” but just make sure they demonstrate clear knowledge of the topic.

http://www.quizilla.com/

Back Story

At the beginning of school last year, I decided to call all of my students to welcome them to my courses.  I had about 150 students.  It took me 3 weeks to call them.  I was making calls at night and on weekends, averaging about 5-10 per night.

Usually I don’t need to call every student, just the ones who have fallen behind.  But in a school, a district, and a state that has difficulty graduating kids, we have a lot who are behind.  Enter Phonevite.

Here Comes the Great Tool Part

I can now call 150 students in 5 minutes.  Okay, okay, I’m exaggerating a little bit.  First off, I don’t have 150 students this year, I have under 100 (wish I would of known about Phonevite last year).  Secondly, it takes a little more than five minutes.

You have to set up your phone book.  I currently have 55 contacts which took me about 30 minutes to input over a couple sittings.  This is the longest part of the process.

Then you have to record your message.  I try to keep my messages around a minute.  My last one said something like ” Hi, this is Mr. Plough calling.  Your child currently has under 55% in my course.  Please give me a call back so that we can come up with a strategy to help them succeed.”  Of course, that’s the abbreviated version, and you can add as much or as little as you need in order to get the parent’s attention.

One of the negatives is that you can’t answer all the calls that blow up your phone right after your call goes out.  And, many of the parents calling me back wouldn’t leave a voicemail.  I could see they called on my ‘missed call’ list, but I feel a little awkward about returning a call when someone didn’t leave a message so I have to take those for a loss.

The best part is that parent’s get your messages, most of them listen to the entire message (you can check on Phonevite), and student’s start doing work. Immediately.  The teacher is connecting, albeit with an automated message, to the parents and then the parents are sitting down with their kids, or giving them that extra push they might have needed, and the assigments start rolling in.

Even though I’m excited about this tool, it is not the end all for contacting students.  I still have to meet them in their classes, call the parents personally and have long discussions, and send dozens of emails everyday.  But, this tool makes communication easier than it ever has been in my five years of teaching online.

It’s one week before the first quarter ends, and I have my highest passing rate ever at this point in the year.  Coincidence?

I’ve been writing about once a week for the last year, and while much of it has been about students, online learning, and technology, some of it has been about my charter school.

Working at a charter school is unique, and I haven’t read many blogs from teachers, change agents, or technology leaders who operate in that segment of our public school system.  So, I’ve talked about what its like being an educator at an online charter school.  I have discussed my high expectations, my exultation’s, and some of my frustrations.

Prior to this school year, I had decided to try and be more of a leader at my school.  Whether it was to lead by example, lead vicariously, or just to speak up when I felt something was wrong.  With that in mind, I made some comments in a couple staff meetings this year that I should have phrased differently.  There was a moment where a teacher and I had a discussion in class while students were working that should have been moved to the hallway.  So, I was called in for a meeting with administration.  I was in the wrong and took full responsibility.  I should have conducted myself in a more professional tone, and I have learned from my mistakes.

My blog was brought up in that meeting.

I know that what I say in here can have an effect on my job.  Everybody with a Myspace page should know that.

I feel like I need to change my voice so as not to phrase my blog in the negative tone that affected me at work.  Since part of why many of us write about education is out of hope and frustration, this will take a little getting used to and a possible reconstitution of why I blog.  Until next time…….

Have you used video essays (vlogs) as a tool in your courses?  How did it go? Do you have any suggestions?

In the past couple years, I’ve spent a lot of time networking in order to learn more about teaching with the hopes of using what I’ve learned to help my students achieve more.  I came to the point where I had learned a lot and felt that I should share it with others who didn’t know as much about certain tools, or resources, or research, or methodologies as I did.  That’s fine.  That’s not a bad thing, and I’ve had a lot of fun presenting and working with people online.  However, I’ve lost a little focus along the way.

No longer was I looking to just learn more in order to better teach my students.  I have been trying to tackle too much.  I have high hopes of making online learning a viable option for students and schools across the country.  But, I have failed to do the one thing that really needs to be done ahead of all my other goals, get my students learning as much as they can in my classes. I spend so much time on my classes and really thought that I had been giving it my all, but to be honest, there is still more I can do.

I am refocusing my purpose.  Time that I spend at home on Twitter or in CR 2.0, I can use to call my kids.  Time that I spend preparing for conference presentations, I can spend building better examples for my online students.  Time that I have spent emailing and chatting with people in my networks, I can spend creating audio recordings for my lessons.  There is so much more that I can do to help my kids that I have to refocus all of my energy on that until I figure out what works.

The first couple weeks of school have been very dramatic, a lot has changed, budget cuts and a reemphasizing of fundamentals has overtaken our school.   These changes and challenges have made me really examine my goals for the year.

Instead of several wide ranging goals like I had last year, I’ve narrowed it down to one.  Just one little thing.  Nothing else.

Get all of my kids to pass all of my classes and learn to the best of their ability.  That’s it.

photo from Flick User: Scott Robbin

Last semester my assistant principal, a couple teachers and I piloted a private Ning network with the hope of creating a place for students at our online school to meet, share, and learn.  It went really well so we are expanding it to the entire school.  It will be voluntary, but has the capacity to have over 700 students and 30 teachers.  Those numbers are the extreme, but we had 200 in our pilot so guessing we could at least see half of our students on the Ning this year.

We moved the network to a private domain for this year, added a chat application, and are conducting an orientation session that focuses on the network.  This should help us alleviate some parent and student concerns from last year.  Namely, our students didn’t like that they couldn’t chat easily and conducting the orientation gets everyone involved from Day 1.

I have high hopes that the network can be a source of change and create a community of learners at our school.  Right now we have a culture of failure, in both our students and staff.

I’m betting that if students can form better relationships with peers and teachers then they will be more motivated to do the work.  I’m betting that if they have easier access to assistance through peer tutoring and teacher availability then they will complete more assignments.  I’m betting that if they feel like they are connected to something at a deeper level than just logging into classes and doing multiple choice assignments then they will have more success.  I saw evidence of this when I interviewed kids last year about using Web2 and social networking in our school. Now, we just need to expand those opportunities to all of our students and hopefully failure and dropout rates will begin to change.

Somehow he has the ability, as an abnormally good Anthropology Professor, to take a pop culture tool like Youtube and analyze it for the scientific affects it is having on our world’s culture.  And, and, he makes it entertaining which is the opposite of what my Anthro teacher did when lecturing in college.  He makes me want to be an undergrad again just so I can go to KSU.

If you are too busy right now to watch an hour long video (I understand, had to literally stop working on my final project for a Masters class to fit this in) then go to your Google Calendar, or iCal, or Outlook Calendar and “pencil” in some time.  This video helps explain the power of the social web in a way we have not studied or read about prior!

If you haven’t see Michael Wesch’s other education related videos, click here and here, heck, watch them all.