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.
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! :)
