Twitter: First Thoughts

I have just started using Twitter, and so am just beginning to understand its uses and possibilities.  I follow several CBC personalities, Ted Talks, and my sister.  I receive news updates from CBC, which I find very useful.  I am also enjoying a few # hashtags: #sd33 (my school district), and #edchat (an international community of educators).  Both of these clusters of tweeters (I'm sure those are not the proper terms) contain some tweets that I just skim over, and some that I explore further.  I think that Twitter has some interesting applications for professional development, collaboration, and communication.  I find it a bit odd, though, that I have a follower: someone I've never heard of.  I've never tweeted, so I'm not sure what she gets out of following me...  More thoughts on Twitter as I explore it further.  It wasn't on my Inquiry Proposal, but I am going to add it as one of my Web 2.0 Tools.

Online Discussion Forums: Connecting to the Text

I actually got the idea to add an online component to my literature circles when I was reading Kist (2010).  In his book, The Socially Networked Classroom, Kist brings up the idea of using blogs and wikis as a forum for discussion of lit circle books.  He even gives a specific example on page 84, describing requirements and grading criteria.  While I chose a discussion forum as the most effective medium for my groups, my requirements are similar to Kist's example.  Students are required to make a minimum of one original post and two responses each week.  I provided them with sentence starters to guide their thinking, and each response must use the word because.  Once they have met the minimum requirements for number of postings, students are graded on the quality of their posts.  I use the Reading Literature BC Performance Standard to assess their contributions.  I am finding grading the discussions very interesting so far, because students who shine in written work and face-to-face discussions are not necessarily the stars in the online discussions, and vice versa.  The online discussion forums have given my students yet another way to demonstrate their learning, and so their marks are more truly based on their understanding of their novel.

Online Discussion Forums

This is my second year experimenting with Moodle in my classroom, and I am constantly discovering more and more things that it can do.  Even so, I know that I have only scratched the surface.  My latest Moodle endeavour has been setting up and running online discussion forums as part of my literature circles.  Each week students are responsible for reading the assigned chapters of their novel, completing two paper reading responses of their choice, participating in a face-to-face discusison group, and joining in an online discussion group.  I have worked with my class on structures, expectations, and social responsibility in an online forum, and they have class time to compose their posts and responses.  Students with internet access are also able to post from home, and I have posted a link to the Moodle site on my class website.

I set the discussion forums up with help from our district tech helping teacher (to whom I will be greatly indebted by the end of this course), and we worked together to iron out the few wrinkles that have come up so far.  This is the third week of online discussions, and, knock on wood, things are going smoothly.

The first week, students were really excited to chat with their group members online.  Most posts had little to do with the novels, and consisted mostly of lol's and emoticons.  But after some reflection, goal-setting, and added structure, the second week was much more productive.  Students knew how to log in, post, and reply, and they knew that they were accountable for their posts, both in terms of social responsibility and Language Arts marks.  Discussions were much more focused and purposeful the second week, and I am excited to see how the third week goes.  I have attached a sample discussion thread from week two of the The Daring Game (by Kit Pearson) discussion.  Names are blotted out for privacy reasons.  Please ignore the spelling and punctuation.  That is an issue for another day...

I think that the online component of these lit circles adds another opportunity for students to express and develop their learning.  It is a motivating format, and allows students who are more introverted or slower processors to shine, when they might not be able to in a face-to-face discussion.  Students can take the time to think, and to carefully formulate their responses, as they are not required to respond to a post instantly.  I believe that my lit circles are richer and more widely differentiated for learning style now that they include this online discussion component.  Students are assessed on three different ways of demonstrating their understanding of a novel, and they are learning skills that will help them to be comfortable taking the online courses that are very likely in their futures.

I am posting this at school, and I don't have my text books, so I will add a post connecting this to the readings on another day.  In the meantime, I am looking forward to seeing how the online discussion forums mature throughout this session of lit circles!

Voicethread

The first time I ever made a Voicethread was when I created my Autobiography of a Tech User for this course.  I had a lot of fun using it, found it pretty easy to figure out, and was pleased with the results.  I saw plenty of possibilities for using Voicethread in my classroom, and when I searched the site, I saw many examples of student and class-created Voicethreads.  I had a few concerns, though, because in order to sign up, students would need an email address.  Even if we bought the edu license, students would still each need an email address.  Teaching ten year olds, I am not going to be responsible for managing 24 email accounts. The tech helping teacher for my district said that Voicethread could be used within Moodle, and that using google, there was a way to have one email address broken up into many, and that the students could not use these accounts for sending or receiving email.  I don't know the details, but this would eliminate some of my concerns.  Also, the Voicethreads would then only be visible to other people within the Moodle classroom, so students could create and comment in a contained environment.  There is a teacher in my district doing a pilot with Voicethread within Moodle, and when that is over, it will be opened up to other people who are interested.  I am going to wait to use it with mu students until I can do it in the secure environment provided by Moodle.

In the meantime, I am still excited about Voicethread as a tool.  I downloaded the app onto my iPhone, so I can easily create Voicthreads wherever I am!  I made one to introduce division with remainders to my students, and they were quite positive about the presentation.  They said it was fun and interesting, and they paid more attention because it was different.  I will post the link here.

Division Voicethread

After we watched it, discussing and practicing as we did so, my students worked in pairs and used the iPods that are on loan to another class in my school to create similar presentations using an app called SonicPics .  It works very much like Voicethread, but without the social networking part, since the presentations are saved on the individual iPods.  I am going to try to email them myself, and then upload them onto Moodle so that my students can easily view and comment on each others'.  The kids had a lot of fun making the presentations, and I found that they clearly demonstrated how much they understood about solving problems with division with remainders.  New ways of demonstrating learning tend to be fun and engaging, whatever they are.

I am not sure how legitimate my concerns about students publishing their work on an open social networking site are.  I think that before I did anything like that, I would have to involve students and parents in a conversation about security, safe practice, and the purpose behind it all.  Will Richardson (2010), in Blogs, Wikis. Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, says that by publishing their work to a wide audience, students are empowered, learn that their voices matter, and expect that their voices will be heard.  This seems like a lesson that students, if they are to become active, responsible members of a democratic society (which is our eventual goal for all children), desperately need to learn.  Perhaps we, as adults, need to put aside our trepidations, teach digital safety and citizenship, and help our students dive into a world where their voices count.