Creative Commons and Open Educational Resources (Things 23 & 24)

Creative Commons (@creativecommons) and the Open Educational Resources Commons (OER - @OERCommons) seem like great resources for the classroom. I got a 9/10 on my Creative Commons quiz; somehow I missed that you could license through Creative Commons just by including the website!

Here are the images I found searching the Creative Commons on Flickr (top picture) and Pixabay (bottom picture):

I like owls and writing, so...there you go. :) The images were much better quality than what I would get by Google image searching, and I had the added bonus of knowing that I wasn't violating any copyright by using them. Usually, I operate under the assumption that whatever I'm using for educational purposes is fine, but I should be more aware of the actual rules of using and sharing. Because we only had to find an image for this particular assignment, I stuck with the images sections, but I think I should go back and look for more audio and/or video resources because it seems like I could make good use of many more things.

The OER has a staggering number of resources available in different formats. I like that they are somewhat curated for me; I still had to do a few different searches to find what I needed, but again, I have the comfort of knowing that they are there for me to use, and most of them are organized by category.

I found the International Literacy Association's Reading Lists (ILA) on the Learning Registry; this will be a great resource for me to review and recommend independent reading books for my students. It should also be a good place for me to find read-aloud books or books that would make good additions to my classroom.

From the Illinois Shared Learning Environment, I found a rubric for informational writing from ReadWriteThink. This is one of my favorite resources as it is part of the ILA and NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) and they often have ready-made resources that are useful across the curriculum. Emily Keeter and I try to integrate reading, writing, and science, and having a common rubric like this might make it easier. It's pretty basic, but this might work in our favor for different types of writing.

As I looked through the #GoOpen hashtag on Twitter, I found several people worth following and a handful of tweets that I thought were really useful for saving and retweeting. I was unfamiliar with the Go Open movement before this week, so I did a quick review of some people's profiles and learned a lot about it through what they had to say as well as whom they followed and retweeted. I always look to make sure that people I follow have broader interests and areas of expertise than just technology; I'm more likely to learn from people who talk about education in general and how to incorporate technology into core classes.

Here is my image from Spell with Flickr:



It says "Welcome to S201!" (my room number). I liked playing around with the different letter formats, but I think I could easily waste a lot of time trying to find the perfect combination! 

I also tried the puzzle-maker from Big Huge Labs. I didn't see what the point of this particular feature of the website was until I saw that you could actually order your photos on a puzzle. That's pretty cool - this is a photo taken by one of Teri's students in her Photoshop (I think) Adventures classes. When they were practicing airdropping, I got to be the recipient, so I have a lot of nature pictures.  :)  

Another feature of Big Huge Labs that I liked was the mosaic-maker. I tried to play around with that, but it wasn't available unless I registered with the website. I think it's free, but since we have so much stuff to get through this summer, I just bookmarked it and will go back and look through it later. I can see use for these creative options for advisory mostly; we take a ton of pictures and most of them end up just living on the iPads we use to take them. If I had an easy way to compile and print them, I might actually do more with them.  

I think knowing about Creative Commons and OER is important for any educator. I'm glad that I know more about what I am supposed to be doing when using resources that I find online, and I'm also happy to know about more and different databases that I can use to find those resources.

Prezi, Voki, Animoto, and PowToon (Things 19-22)

Full disclosure: I like the idea of using different presentation tools in the classroom, but I don't like the learning curve that often comes with them. Sometimes I think that the time it takes to master a tool is not really worth the final product; I'm not entirely convinced that using a shiny online tool to present material is any better than a posterboard. I know - the right tool for the right thing! One of the major projects in my seventh grade class is a combined English/Social Studies exploration of the Civil War using Gary Paulsen's Soldier's Heart and Steve Sheinkin's Two Miserable Presidents. We used to have the kids do a binder with the information they learned: they had to research a major battle, write a newspaper, and compose some poems, among other things. A few years ago, in an effort to include more technology in our classes, we switched to an iWeb and then a Google Site. Since we switched, it has not been a successful project because more time has been spent with the kids learning how to create and update the sites than learning about the Civil War or exploring the books. It's enough to make us want to use binders and posters again.

Some of these tools, however, seem to be pretty easy to master. I've used Prezi before and would like to switch some of my Keynote or Powerpoint presentations to this format because I really like how it shows the relationship between ideas - it's much easier to follow than simple slides. There are some things that I haven't quite mastered, though; when I added another detail to the third sentence type, I couldn't get the line to curve, which bothered me enough to spend three minutes trying to fix it...but no more! :) I think Prezi would be a great addition to my classroom presentation tools - I will definitely use it for my Go to School Night parent presentation instead of a Keynote. I could see the students using it for presenting research projects or informational texts.



Here is my Voki - I couldn't use the embed code without paying for the service. I recorded my own voice several times but it wouldn't save and I got tired of trying over and over again, so I just went with the text to talk feature instead. I can't see a use for this in the classroom right now except that maybe the kids could use it to create visual representations of characters from books. However, this is one of the tools that I think would be more trouble than it's worth to work with since some of the characters are only for use with the paid subscription, so it might be difficult to get accurate representations of characters. (Side note: my niece and nephew, five and nine years old respectively, LOVED playing with the different characters, so it's clearly a fun thing to do!)

Animoto was really fun for me as well as very easy to use. I liked looking through the different themes, and for practice, it was great that I didn't have to upload any of my own pictures or videos. Video editing is one of the things I'd like to be better at, and Animoto makes it so I don't have to learn that for a beautiful final product. Again, when I incorporate technology into my classroom, I don't want to have to spend a lot of time teaching the kids how to use it. I would rather have something that is quick and easy to master so they can spend the majority of their time on the content, and Animoto, like Prezi, provides this. I think this would be a great tool for advisory; the students could make short videos to introduce themselves at the beginning of the year instead of the traditional paper interviews. They could also use it for their Shadow Day presentations (when they go to work with their parents and bring back a report of what they learned - they're supposed to take pictures too, so this would be great).



The final "thing" for this week was PowToon. This was my least favorite tool by far because it took way too long for me to learn how to use it for (in my mind) very little payoff. I think this is the classic example of style over substance; at least in English class, there aren't many reasons to make a video or animation to show what you have learned (instead of using another method of representation). I think my students would get way too distracted by all of the different options for formatting and focus on what the project looked like instead of the information they were trying to convey. It's cute, but I don't know that I could manage it well enough to help the kids show all of their learning effectively. 


It was good for me to explore these tools this week; I definitely would like to include Prezi and Animoto in my classes next year! If my students already know how to use some of these tools, I would absolutely encourage them to use them for a project if they think that they would be more effective than a poster, paper, etc. in some cases. However, when the method of delivery (such as an essay) is being assessed along with the content (such as supporting main ideas), it cannot be replaced by one of these. I keep thinking about this idea, though:

I don't want to - in fact, I flatly refuse to - incorporate technology into my lessons just for the sake of having technology, so I've been thinking a lot about how my lessons and objectives need to change when I change my technology. I don't have a lot of answers right now, but thinking about the change is a step in the right direction for me. 

Book Creator, Haiku Deck, Notability, and Paper 53 (Things 15-18)

After exploring iTunes U in the last "thing", I got the experience of being a student this week to learn about some publishing and note-taking apps. I had heard of all of these apps before, but I hadn't taken the time to explore them because I was sure that none could be better or easier than what I already had in place for note-taking (and I wasn't terribly interested in publishing in a non-physical form). However, that attitude was shortsighted because I did discover some really cool things from each of these apps. Also, the tiny step I took into online publishing/digital storytelling this past year with Storyboard That was pretty successful, so I should be looking for new things to build on that! :)

The first app was Book Creator (@BookCreatorApp). After playing around with it and seeing how easy it is to use and how beautiful the final products could be, I actually tried to implement it with my summer class kids. Surprisingly, they weren't really into it and decided to go with the traditional blank books that they have always used (if you need those or other creative paper products - you can even make your own puzzles! - Bare Books is a great company) over the app. So, I haven't used it with students yet, but I did make this book introducing myself to my students for Thing 15.

The next app was Haiku Deck (@HaikuDeck). This one was actually the most frustrating for me because I was trying to work with it at my school, where the filters originally blocked all the images that I was trying to use. It works marginally better there now, but I just had to do it all at home for it to really work. This would be a big stumbling block for using it with students because if the features don't work like they're supposed to, the products won't be as good as they can be, and the kids will be more focused on their frustration with the tool than on showing what they know (as I was!). I liked the way there were stock photos that actually made sense with the words that were on each slide, and each of the different themes were beautiful. I didn't like how I couldn't resize the text myself and how all the slides in the same deck had to be on the same theme (or maybe I can resize it and they can be different themes, but I couldn't figure out how to change those things). It's not so much that Haiku Deck is better than Powerpoint or Keynote, it's just that it's different because the options are more limited and the slides do look more professional in a much shorter amount of time. For Thing 16, I made this Haiku Deck about what I have learned so far in this course.

Thing 17 was an exploration of Notability (@gingerlabs), an app that promised to make me "Fall in love with notetaking." Well, mission accomplished! I mean, I was already pretty into taking notes because that's the only way I remember things, but I was also pretty committed to my pen and paper method. I like being able to draw arrows and symbols easily (without having to remember the keystrokes for them) and color-coding as I go. I also like being able to change my method halfway through by just turning the paper or changing the notebook I use. I've started to take more notes using Google Docs in meetings, but when I'm reading something or preparing for an assignment, I'm still into writing by hand. Nevertheless, Notability won me over. I love that you can include an audio clip, and it is so easy to switch between typing and writing! I don't know when I would use the features that allow me to import a photo or a symbol, but I like that they're there. However, my favorite feature is one that I'm sure it's totally superficial, but I love it anyway: the three top font options at the top of the note! I like to change the fonts of my notes based on the content of them, and this allows me to do it. I also now have a use for the several styluses that I've somehow collected over this school year.  Here's part of my first exploration into the different notes I could take (that's a picture of my fish - enjoy! :) ).

The final "thing" for this week was to learn about the concept of sketchnoting. I'd heard about this before and been really impressed with some of the sketches I saw on Twitter from educational leaders (the #adesketchnote hashtag will take you to some from Apple Distinguished Educators), but I've never wanted to try it because I've never considered myself an artist. After looking through some of the introductory materials for sketchnoting and Paper 53, it became pretty obvious that most people who do this do not consider themselves artists. I still think that writing words is more effective for me, but I enjoyed trying to put my thoughts into images. It made me think more about what was actually important when I didn't have to words to explain what I was drawing. I do know that sketchnoting has words AND pictures, but I was trying to focus on the drawings to fully embrace this new thing...I couldn't help myself from writing a caption, though.

I like the different writing tools available - my favorite was the fancy fountain pen! I definitely need a better stylus to really make sketchnoting happen because I kept running out of room - I need to be able to write smaller.

Here are some examples from sketchnoters who are way better than I am so you can see the vast possibilities:

From Sylvia Duckworth (@sylviaduckworth) - Her tweets and notes made me feel like I was at ISTE too!

From Sylvia Duckworth (@sylviaduckworth)

From Brad Ovenell-Carter (@Braddo)

An important note about sketchnoting is that it doesn't HAVE to be on an app; you can definitely do the same thing with paper and pen/pencil/marker/quill. This is a great post about using sketchnoting (or sketchquoting, as Heather Marshall calls it) in the classroom with no apps necessary. I would LOVE to try this!

I liked the fact that this week was dedicated to apps that I had been wanting to make time to explore. I also liked that being required to make a product for each app forced me to go through the process the students would go through instead of just skimming the features of each one. I would really like to incorporate at least one of these apps into my class for next year; I don't require that the kids take notes any specific sort of way, so sketchnoting might be an interesting thing to introduce to them. They doodle a lot anyway, so it could be a natural progression. A few years ago, I went to a reading conference where the presenter showed us some examples from her students' reading notebooks that looked like versions of sketchnotes, and I've wanted to try it ever since. I'll have to do some more research to make sure I understand it better before I try to present it. I'm not totally sold on Haiku Deck as being much better than other presentation tools, but I do think that Book Creator has a ton of possibilities for improving booktalks or independent reading responses. 

Another thing I liked about these apps is that most of them "talk" to the Google apps, so it's easy to upload them to Keep or Drive. I think it'll be easier to organize them that way instead of having to open the different apps to get to my notes or products. I'm also getting more familiar with iBooks through practicing with these apps. I think Notability has some great possibilities for professional use, especially since you can share the notes easily and do a combination of writing, drawing, audio, and pictures. I could see using this for a department or team meeting to brainstorm. I'm not sure that these apps lend themselves to regular parent communication, but I might try to use a Haiku Deck instead of a Keynote for my Go To School Night presentation. That would be hard to do if I couldn't access the images for presenting at school, but I might try. I usually have too much text on my slides so I don't forget my points, and Haiku Deck does do a nice job of limiting that.

I'm still not a fan of iTunes U for learning myself, but maybe that's because I'm already using the wiki and Google Classroom and I don't like to have so many platforms going at once. I do like how the iTunes U course is organized with the assignments that you can check off and each app having its own section, but I don't like that you have to do everything on the iPad. I much prefer working on my laptop!   

iTunes U (Thing 14)

iTunes U is overwhelming to me, especially on the heels of the educator blogs from the last "thing." There are a lot of courses and collections available for free, which is great, but it's hard to know what is good and what isn't with just a cursory glance at them, which is all I seem to have time for right now in this class. So I did my usual thing and downloaded like 20 of the most promising courses and collections that appeared in categories that I teach, including the "Teaching with Technology" and Apple Distinguished Educators (ADE) content that we were required to look through. I'm using my iPad because it seems easier than way than installing the iTunes store app on my laptop which I think will be good for the next few "things" as well since they're all apps.

It seems like the courses are more geared toward teachers and other school leaders than students (unless I'm totally missing something in my searching).  I found several courses and collections that I would like to explore further, including TED Talks in Education and Management, "Vocabulary Instruction," "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer" (I think I have an earlier version of this on paper), "Harvard Thinks Big," "Harvard EdCast" (there are a few of my former professors here that I'm looking forward to revisiting!), and the "Design Thinking Challenge." The ADE content that I was most excited about - "Lessons for the Classroom - To Kill a Mockingbird" - was blocked from being downloaded onto my iPad because it had "explicit content." I'm not sure what that could be, but it's frustrating that I can't get what seems like good material because of our device settings. There are other courses from the ADE that I'm excited about such as "Flipping the Classroom: The Why and the How," several middle school language arts lessons ("Write Your Own Adventure: Interactive Fiction," "Tapping into Digital Media for Storytelling," and "Figurative Language in Descriptive Writing"), and "Discovery - Challenge Based Learning." Of course, there is way too much for me to really learn from each course before school starts, so I'm going to have to pick two and three and go from there.

For administrators (and teachers too!), I think the ADE's "Creating a Culture of Innovation" and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development's (ACSD) "The Whole Child Podcast" would be great. It's important for administrators to know how to evaluate and support teachers, but it is equally important for them to remain connected to the school culture and vision that they espouse. I think we need to keep our "whole child" approach at the front of our collective mind because it can get lost among things like standardized testing and other requirements that are handed down from on high. I love that many of these courses and collections have podcasts as well as written material because that means more people will be able to access the material, and it also means that I have something new to listen to on the train.  :)  Here are photos of my course library in case you would like to see them:

For my students, I found several apps that I think would be good in "Learning at Every Level" in iTunes U. My students are already familiar with Quizlet; I think it's required for some classes, and they sometimes also use it for English for vocabulary flashcard review. They can share their cards with me electronically, which eliminates the need for hundreds of physical notecards which will only be thrown away (or recycled, if we're lucky!) once the vocabulary quiz is over. They can also revisit their cards at a later date or share with friends when they are studying. There was also an app called Creative Writing Prompts that was supposed to be good for writers of all levels, including students. I have a lot of writing prompt books in the classroom that get a lot of use, but with an app, the kids don't have to share the book or wait until one of their friends is finished. They will also have it with them at all times on their iPads. Finally, I had a lot of fun with an app called Starting Shakespeare; luckily enough, the two plays included in this app are Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream, the two that I teach the most! It includes background information, vocabulary, and textual connections (among many other things). It is also specifically geared toward students who are just starting their study of Shakespeare, which almost 100% of our students usually are. 

I think we have enough online learning platforms as it is right now for our students to juggle. Adding iTunes U would probably be overwhelming to them, just like having to pay attention to the course wiki, Google Classroom, and iTunes U is for me. I can see the opportunities that it holds for me professionally, but I don't think that I'll be incorporating it into my classroom directly (except for finding the apps). I don't like the idea of just sending them to a course to figure it out for themselves; that can be confusing since they're not all set up the same way and many of them have videos, PDFs, links, etc. all in one course. Again, it's mostly good information, and I would make sure that the course was relevant and meaningful before sending them to explore it, but it seems like a lot of work for me to preview and then have to reteach when they inevitably struggled with either the technology or the content. So, I do like learning about how to teach Shakespeare from iTunes U, and I appreciate that I can connect with even more educators this way, but I'm not sold on it for my students.

EdTech Blogs to Follow (Thing 13)

This "thing" was really difficult for me! I already feel like I have too much information to digest regarding my teaching practice, too many things I'd like to learn or implement, just from talking to my colleagues and attending conferences. Add in Twitter and blogs and my head just about explodes! So while this list of bloggers was helpful in that it gave me some direction (rather than just Googling topics I'd like to learn about) and more people who could help, it was also sort of overwhelming because I wanted to read everything everyone wrong. And take notes. And ask everyone follow-up questions.

I settled for reading the most recent post of each blogger to see if he or she were someone I would learn from. It turns out that I was following a few of them on Twitter already, so I was semi-familiar with their ideas. The blogs that I thought were worth following for me were ones that dealt with educational technology in general or language arts specifically; the blogs that were more geared toward STEM or new gadget/products don't really interest me and aren't applicable to my classroom, which is what this course is all about for me. 

Of the list we were provided, Audrey Watters and Josh Stumpenhorst wrote the most readable blogs for me. They were musings on how to improve education in general and what technology can do to help us. I feel like these two write much in the same way that I do; this doesn't mean their blogs are better, it just means that they feel familiar to me and therefore I am more likely to read them. Vicki Davis and Scott McLeod both have a wealth of information to share that is curated very well, and they use podcasts and voice notes, respectively, which is a cool way to interact with their audience. I loved that Smart Brief on Ed Tech allowed me to choose which categories I wanted to hear more about in their newsletter, and I was already a fan of Edutopia, both in terms of their content and how they deliver it. I'm also looking forward to reading more of Monica Burns' reading and writing tech tips because I'm always looking for other teachers who are incorporating technology into the subjects I teach. As always, I appreciated that many of the blogs had newsletters I could sign up for and read at my convenience, and several of the bloggers are also on Twitter, which is my preferred social media platform right now. 

One thing that I learned about my own blogging from looking through these blogs was that I should try to make my entries shorter and more focused when I'm writing for a larger audience. Since these entries are reflections for class, I tend to write longer, and I think that's okay. But if I were trying to build an audience from strangers on the internet, I would want to have shorter, more focused pieces that others could read quickly and easily. I appreciated the blogs that had cleaner layouts (not with ads or including photos or Twitter feeds) and I liked when they linked to articles for further reading. My students don't blog for an audience beyond our class, but that might be a good way to get them some real-world "publishing" experience. If we incorporate that into class, I'd have them read some student blogs and decide who they wanted their audience to be so they could focus their content more easily.

However, all that being said, Dr. Alec Couros' "The Connected Teacher" video was my favorite part of this "thing." He said so many important and relevant things in under 13 minutes, and he said them in an easily understood and organized way. I often (okay, almost always!) find myself wanting to take notes when I watch these videos, and the fact that he listed two or three important things and then reiterated them made that much easier for me.

I think my favorite part of this video was when he said that the question we need to ask ourself is "What endures?" Over and over again, I've heard and believed that the most important thing about education is the relationships that we build with our students and our colleagues. Dr. Couros said it here beautifully: the tools that we use to teach will come and go, but the relationships that we create will endure. We should "build the kind of relationship that [we] are willing to continue even when the tool goes away." This is a great way to understand that our goal should be to connect with people in such a way that it will make us pursue the relationship even when the tool we used to build that relationship is no longer around. In other words, if I connect with an author via my blog and that relationship matters to me, I should be motivated to continue that relationship via another means if my blog doesn't endure.

The other thing I really liked was when he identified two central questions and three steps that he expected his students to explain. Although he teaches undergraduate students, I think these are also applicable to my middle schoolers, and I will be doing my best to incorporate them into my classroom next year.

Central Questions:

1. How are you making learning visible?

2. How are you contributing to others' learning?

(image via https://icestentatious06.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/umbrella2.jpg?w=586&h=505)

I found this image and I thought it matched with Dr. Couros' message - it also reminded me of the end of the video when the man interviewing him said that they had used the word "learning" much more than the word "education" in their chat. That stuck with me because I think it's worth noting that today, we talk a lot more about "education" than "learning" when we decide on policies for children. What is the point of the education if the children aren't learning? (More on that later, I'm sure.) 

Steps to Show Learning:

1. Here is my learning.

2. Here is what my learning meant.

3. This is how I perform my learning (help others to learn).

(image via https://isb21.wikispaces.com/file/view/21st_logo.jpg/33110593/21st_logo.jpg)

I think this image sums up what Dr. Couros was talking about when he said that networks are essential in education. Our students (and we!) have to be learners, but they also have to be creators and collaborators. I especially like how the person who created this image included the adjective "tenacious." I have noticed that the longer I teach, the more I encounter students who lack perseverance and critical thinking skills. I think it's because so much information is readily available to them; they have learned that they can find the "right answer" almost instantly, so they are unused to solving problems for themselves. When we build networks and connect with others, we need to be tenacious and flexible so we can find what we need and figure out how to use it. This is a great reminder for everyone.

I also found this image that I think speaks to what we've been talking about during this course so far and in our department and team meetings this year. It's something that I'll revisit throughout the year, hopefully, to help my lessons reach more students and stay on track.

(image via https://wisconsin2008.wikispaces.com/file/view/whereto_long2.jpg/35046937/whereto_long2.jpg)

Before beginning this course, I knew there was a ton of excellent information available to me online via social media and other teacher networks. It's been fun discovering all of the different perspectives and ideas in the teaching and learning world, but it has also been overwhelming. I think part of what I need to do this summer is learn how to manage and review the material that's going to be the most applicable to what I'm doing in the classroom. Otherwise, I'll just collect an online version of that file cabinet in my classroom that hasn't been touched since 2008.

Creating a Google+ Community (Things 10 & 11 Stretch)

I have created the Google+ Community Independent Reading Life. If you are part of District 36 and want to talk about how we can continue to help our students become lifelong readers, please join!

Illinois Computing Educators (Thing 12)

Illinois Computing Educators (ICE) seems like a great professional community. I like that their resources are online for everyone to view, not just members (although there are probably more things available for the members - I'm not one, so I don't know). As I looked through the past events, several of them caught my eye: I liked the idea of the EdCamp Illinois very much because it seemed like participants can make their own choices about the sessions they attend and if they don't work out, they could change their minds! I usually feel kind of boxed in at professional development seminars, so the freedom of choice and applicability to the classroom really appeals to me. The Whatever It Takes conference also seems cool because they have different levels of training based on how comfortable you already are with the technology being presented. I also like how they are focused on classroom and school culture as well as incorporating technology because as I have said before (ad nauseam to those of you who have been reading these entries), I take exception to the idea of putting the technology first. I think we should think about what would make our schools better and then see if the technology can help with that improvement. One of the speakers at the Whatever It Takes conference also maintains this blog, which I think will be a good resource for me.

I have never been to an ICE or other technologically-focused conference. I tend to spend my professional development time and money on things related to writing and reading, but over the last decade, I have seen more and more sessions and resources at literacy conferences begin to include technology. At first, I was reluctant to attend those sessions because there no guarantee that our district would pay for or support new technology, and I preferred to spend my time learning about things that I could control. I can implement new curriculum or activities into my own classroom with no or minimal support from other people (although it always helps to have a second pair of eyes!). After looking at the resources available from the conference on the ICE website, though, I think that it would probably be a good experience for me. I like that there are sessions on building partnerships and connecting what students do in the classroom to the larger community through technology, and there were several workshops that looked connected to literacy even at first glance, like digital storytelling and writing. Several of them also mentioned leadership and creativity, and these are skills that each of our students will continue to need beyond their school experiences. Finally, I loved that the presenter notes for many sessions were readily available and that there was a shared document for each session where the participants could take notes together. That's a great example of the technology in action!

Another example of the technology in action making things easier is dotstorming. I visited the NICE Meeting Ideas dotstorming board and was, at first, a little confused about how it worked. I thought the dots were all pieces of information about each idea, so I was trying to click on them, but then I realized it was really only for voting about what people would like to learn about in future meetings of the Northern Illinois Computing Educators (NICE). There were some great topics; I voted for Student Feedback/Self-Assessment, Global Audience/Publishing, Student Leadership/Voice, Lesson Development/Technology Integration, and Blended Learning. I also suggested the topic of Creating a Community of Readers (no votes yet, but hope springs eternal!) because I think it is so important that my students know how to seek out and find a community beyond the classroom. I would actually love to use dotstorming in the classroom; I often ask students for feedback on several choices, and this would be easier and more readily available for future use than asking students to raise their hands and writing down the numbers on a post-it. It's also good that your name is not linked to your choices (at least I don't think it is) because then, students who pick an "unpopular" choice would not feel self-conscious. I could see using this to decide which Autumnfest booth my advisory wants to do or what day to give a quiz in English. The more choice students have, the more they will own their learning.

I will definitely explore ICE and NICE more in the future. I will also look into attending a conference because I know the more comfortable I get with technology and the more I can talk to teachers who are implementing it successfully in their English/Language Arts classrooms, the more likely I will be to implement it in mine. Learning about the apps, programs, websites, and extensions on my own or through an online community can really only take me so far. I know I need to talk to people in person and be able to ask follow-up questions on the spot for me to really learn it. Going to a local conference is a bonus because it is likely that I'll meet people who teach near me or in communities like mine, so I can hear about experiences that would be directly applicable to my classroom. Going to conferences like the annual one from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) or Scholastic's Reading Summit always leaves me energized and inspired, and it's time some of that enthusiasm was directed toward the technology that can help me reach more students.   

Google+ Hangouts in the Classroom (Thing 11)

I'm not entirely sure that Google Hangouts or Hangouts on Air have a big place in my classroom (at least, not in the way that I've set it up or visualize it now). I can't think of a way to use the live chat feature within the class that makes sense, but I do see how the recorded Hangout on Air could help me "flip" certain aspects of my classroom. Right now, I have just started to record videos on grammar concepts to post to my Schoology class page; I know the science department has flipped a lot of their lessons and it seems to work, and I like the idea of having the students exposed to a concept before we talk about it in the classroom. That tends to cut down on the time I spend lecturing and gives us more time to practice the concept together. I only tried it once last year (as a result of a session with Emily, Jesse, and John from the Washburne science department at an institute day) and then I kind of let it fall by the wayside. I'm thinking that if I get most of the videos ready over the summer, I'll have a much better chance of actually using them for instruction.

I COULD use the live Hangout on Air to make myself available for questions from the kids during non-school hours - kind of like a virtual office hours thing. (I read this article that sums up the difference between Google Hangouts and Hangouts on Air to make sure I was using the terms properly!) It turns out that you can only have 10 people in a Hangout, so if I were going to implement this idea of virtual office hours, I would want to be able to help as many kids as needed it and even perhaps facilitate some group work. I'm dreaming pretty big here, though - I'm not sure if many (or any) kids would take advantage of something that required them to be at their computers or other devices at a certain time outside of school to talk to a teacher. Emily had a great idea about using it to bring in people who are professionals in the science field, which sounds like how we sometimes use Skype to have online author visits - that would be nice!

The Hangout on Air that I hosted (tried to host?) this afternoon wasn't really a success. I was teaching about Socrative, which is one of my favorite instant-response systems for classroom use, but I couldn't see or hear Emily, who was kind enough to try several times with me! She could see and hear me, and my screen-sharing worked (that's a nice feature), but we couldn't talk the way we were supposed to in a Hangout on Air; we had to post comments in the event itself or use Gchat. I'm not sure what went wrong, so I probably need to try again when I'm in the same room as the person, which defeats the purpose, but could help me learn! Here's a screenshot so I can prove that I tried, at least.  :) (You can see it's titled "Socrative Take 3" because that's how many tries it took me to to even get it to semi-work...Google+ is really giving me a run for my money.)

Mystery Hangouts is pretty cool, though, and I can definitely see a use for it in the classroom. Once I get back into my classes next year, I'll see if any of the kids are interested in participating, and if they are, I'll volunteer to host one for sure. I like the idea of students learning about each other and guessing their different locations through clues with no other strings attached. Pen pals, both physical and electronic, certainly have their place, but sometimes I think they serve more to reinforce stereotypes or existing ideas about places that are "other" from our students than anything else. Not being pressured to come up with interesting anecdotes about their lives or learn anything specific about anyone else is what makes this opportunity unique, and I look forward to trying it.  

Google+ and Google+ Communities (Thing 10)

Okay, I have a confession to make: before I started this week's "things", I kind of thought that "Social Media Manager" or similar jobs were fake. Like, how much time can it take to tweet or post Instagram photos or keep up a Facebook page for a business? After learning more about Google+ and the communities, however, I totally take that thought back. There is so much to curate when you're really engaged in social media and branding, and there is way too much content to read everything on every social media when you're trying to continue your professional development on your own. So, to the supremely talented Social Media Managers who keep the content coming, to the committed educators who blog, post, tweet, and share so I can learn, and to the larger online learning community: my apologies. You have a Herculean task!

The thing is, there's a lot of great stuff out there. Google+ is one of the few social media platforms that I haven't really explored because I wasn't that interested in it. I've only used it professionally, not personally - a few years ago, our eighth graders started participating in Global Nomads Group, a fantastic organization that connects students across the world. (On an unrelated to Google+ note, I am always so proud of the kids who come in to school at 6 am to talk to their counterparts halfway across the world!) They use Google+ to have video chats and post reflections on their conversations, so I set up my profile because I had to moderate the girls' groups. All I ever did was read their comments and sometimes respond; I didn't really get involved with everything that Google+ had to offer since it seemed kind of overwhelming and I didn't need another social media account to manage.

This week, I have enjoyed taking the time to add my colleagues on Google+ and organize them into circles. I have to keep everything I do in this class professional; I'm only following people I work with even though my personal contacts have popped up on my suggestions of people to follow list. If I start using Google+ for my personal use, it'll end up being a big time-suck and I'll basically use it as a second Facebook. I like having everything organized into circles and groups because then I know where to look when I'm looking for something specific. I created the D36 Learning 2.0 circle for this class, the D36 circle for my colleagues who are and aren't in this class (since it's going to end this summer and I still want to have my co-workers added), and the Authors circle for authors I'm following (so far, it's just John Green, but I'll add more). When I have some more time, I'll probably make more circles, but I'm still getting used to this platform, which makes me reluctant to do more adding until I've practiced with it more.

I joined several communities, most of which have to do with education or ed tech since I'm only using it professionally. Here they are:

Mystery Hangout 
Google Apps in Education
Educators on Google+
EdTech
Google Plus Pro Tips
36 Things...D36 Learning 2.0
GEG Chicagoland
The Winnetka Experience: MLI Reflections
Winnetka University Reflections
Advisory Ideas and Links (thanks for starting, Emily!)

I also explored the photography, food and drink, and education general communities. 

There is a wealth of amazing information on Google+, but there is also a lot of useless junk. It takes me much more time to go through people's postings on Google+ than on Twitter or Facebook because there are so many more people in the communities; it's not just people I have chosen to follow or "friend." I had my notifications turned on for one day and I got about 75 emails, so I promptly turned them off for the more global communities and only kept them on for the specific Winnetka communities that had both far fewer people and posts that I was sure would be useful to me personally.

I'm really interested in the Mystery Hangout group - I think it would be very cool for my students to connect with another classroom in a different location and try to guess where they are. I would love to volunteer for this group but don't have any students until we start school again, so I'll have to remember to keep checking in with them. The GEG Chicagoland group had some interesting "real life" opportunities where I could actually meet up with people to talk in person about the integration of technology in the classroom. This sounds like a great opportunity but not one that I think I'm going to take advantage of right now since I'm still learning here. Maybe when I have more to offer to the conversation? I think the Advisory Ideas and Links group will be the most helpful for me since it is geared specifically to the Washburne advisors, and I'm grateful that Emily started it since we do need to share more across the school.

I scheduled a Hangout on Air for next Monday, July 11 about Socrative. I'm nervous about running it because I'm still not sure that I totally understand how to do it, so I'll probably do some practice ones before Monday. When I watched parts of the archived hangouts (Maureen's "Giddy for Google" and Josh Denson's "Teachers as Innovators and Entrepreneurs" as part of the EduOnAir (#eduonair)), it was pretty amazing to me how the participants came together and bounced ideas off each other. There was the usual lag time and some awkward talking over each other that comes with online collaboration, but overall, people seemed to really benefit from the meeting. I enjoyed Emily's Hangout about how to use Recap - she showed how the app worked, included examples of what her students had done with it, and answered all of my questions about what it did. I think it will be a cool thing to integrate into my classroom next year, mostly taking the place of paper and pen exit slips. It was also beneficial for me to participate in a Hangout before having to host my own because it showed me exactly what I didn't know about how Hangout worked. I had trouble joining the Hangout and figuring out how to comment, but we worked it out in the end. Thanks, Emily!  :)

Twitter (Thing 9)

Ah, Twitter. I have loved Twitter since 2013 when it enabled me to connect directly with educators from around the world in my International Education graduate seminar. I had the privilege of learning from Pasi Sahlberg, Finnish educator and author of Finnish Lessons. (You can follow him on Twitter at @pasi_sahlberg.) 

In this TedxEast talk, he makes a lot of really great points and also opens with a joke that he told in class and I've been laughing about ever since.

Using a hashtag with our class course number, we had weekly discussions with prime ministers, ministers of education, global educators, professors at other universities, and countless other leaders in our field. This would have been impossible without social media in general and Twitter in particular. I would argue that it is the single most important connectivity tool that we have right now: it's easy to use, provides an instant connection, and allows you to learn from others with a single "follow" click.

Before taking that class, I wasn't really interested in using social media to learn. I had a personal Twitter but didn't use it that much - I mostly tweeted about reality TV and new restaurants. I didn't have that many followers, and almost no one that I knew in real life was on Twitter. But when I went back to school, a lot of things changed. I was able to be immersed full time in a community that supported and provided opportunities for continual learning, growth, and reflection, and Twitter seemed a natural outgrowth of that. It is one of the rare cases in my life where technology made everything better instantly and easily. We were encouraged to tweet in during class time using the class hashtag, and Pasi kept our hashtag live feed on a screen projected in the front so we could refer to it during our discussions. It provided a way for us to respond to the material in a timely way even if we didn't want to raise our hands or if the discussion had moved on before we got a chance to share. It also provided a way for other educators to join in our discussions even if they couldn't be there in person. We were able to talk about educational reform with world leaders without ever leaving our classroom. This was amazing to me!

Upon my reentry into teaching, I found almost immediately that it was impossible to maintain the energy and motivation to learn new things that I had rediscovered in grad school. There simply was not enough time to plan lessons, grade papers, attend meetings, continue my professional development, have an actual life, AND spend time on Twitter or other online teaching communities to keep up with what everyone else was doing. It was a rough welcome back, and I felt incredibly guilty that I was not giving my best to my students, colleagues, family, and friends. 

Once I readjusted, I realized that I could still maintain my Twitter learning, but it would be different from when I was a student. I had more responsibility again, and my continuing education would have to look different. I started by trying to make lists and categorize the people I followed, but I didn't really like that (I'll try it again, but the organization didn't really help me much). Then I tried to only follow people I knew would tweet about education, but I also wanted news and other information. The thing that really helped me organize my Twitter experience was hashtags and Twitter chats. Scholastic recently began their Summer Reading Summit conferences, and I have followed along from afar with the hashtag #readingsummit, gaining new resources and people to follow with every tweet.

The great thing about the hashtags is that the feed will show you all the activity from people using it: who followed whom, who retweeted what, etc. This gives me even more information and inspiration.

I also followed along with #ISTE2016 since several of my colleagues were there along with many of the educational gurus that I follow on Twitter: Jennie Magiera (@MsMagiera), Pernille Ripp (@pernilleripp), and Sylvia Duckworth (@sylviaduckworth), just to name a few. Even though I couldn't be in Colorado with them, I benefited from their learning because they would tweet out pictures, links, resources, and notes from their experience. All of this FOR FREE and FOR MY CLASSROOM USE! Amazing.

Finally, I learned about Teachers Write (#teacherswrite) this year from a retweet that led me to Aliza Werner (@alizateach), who is now one of my favorite people on Twitter. She is a prolific tweeter of excellent material - we first got into a conversation about book choice and how important it is for students - and through talking with her, I also got to connect with Donalyn Miller (@donalynbooks), author of The Book Whisperer, one of the best books I've ever read about matching students with books. This is an incredible personal and professional development opportunity for me as a writer and teacher of writing, and I've enjoyed the first week and am looking forward to more. Truthfully, I'm a little behind, but this has made me much more accountable for my own writing!

Over the past few weeks, I've followed many more people than I usually do because of my activity on Twitter. I've learned that you only get out of it what you put into it (like with most things) and so I've made a conscious effort to do more than scroll mindlessly. I followed Donalyn, Aliza, and Sylvia (usernames above) as well as Kate Messner (@KateMessner), an author who founded Teachers Write, Susan Cain (@susancain), the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking (a book I loved and that changed my whole approach to teaching, especially since I am an extrovert), and Silvia Tolisano (@langwitches) who wrote this article from this week that I really liked. Craig Kemp (@mrkempnz) was in one of the related articles this week, and I saw that he did a lot of discussing specific issues with other teachers via hashtags, so I followed him too. There are many more, but you can go to my "following" list and check them out if you're really interested!

Here's Susan Cain's Ted Talk in case you haven't seen it (which I know is unrelated to this "thing" but I think everyone should see it):

I'm currently at 136 followers, which is definitely on the low end, but certainly better than when I started; a friend of mine from grad school who has his own educational consulting company is currently at 3,450 followers (Simon Townley, @The_Gorilla_LC) and used to say that when I retweeted him it was like "shouting into an empty room." The truth hurts sometimes.  :) I have picked up more followers pretty steadily - a few a week, usually - from following more people, tweeting more focused information and ideas about education, and participating in the Twitter chats. I can see how if I wanted to dedicate more time to this, I could "build my brand" on Twitter and other social media. I'm not into that for now - I'm just in it to learn more and connect with people I wouldn't otherwise get a chance to talk to. I also tried Hootsuite and Tweetdeck; I can see how they would be useful for that brand building, but for now, they're just fun to look at and see Twitter in a new way. They make it easier to see my interactions with people, and that's cool.

I could say a ton more about Twitter and how much it has helped me in my professional development, but this is probably long enough as it is. I'll say, in closing, that the program Elluminate came up in several articles and is probably worth exploring, and that this article about hashtag PD was very interesting. There's so much good stuff out there that will literally come to you if you let it!

P.S. I'm @_maggie_coyne_. Let's chat!

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I liked learning about the link shorteners like Bitly because I often run out of characters when I'm tweeting and I refuse to shorten my words into textspeak like 2 or ur, but it's SO frustrating to have those shortened links blocked at school! Often, I'll try to click on an article that is related to what I'm teaching only to find that I can't get to the resource because it uses a link shortener. Is there any way around this?