Reflective Post #10

Tweeting the Night Away: Using Twitter to Enhance Social Presence

The article talks about how Twitter can be used as social presence in online schooling, twitter in action and other instructional benefits of Twitter.  The article also gives guidelines for using twitter with students.  Twitter, according to the Twitter website, “is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”  The responses have to be in 140 characters or less.  Because of this, it encourages the students to be clear and concisely.  The article explains that faculty has been experimenting on Twitter in the classroom.  Use of twitter in the classroom examples in the article include a student posting a question that they have from a textbook reading, communication with a group they are working on, sharing a video or URL with others, political debating, and students tweeting that they are tired and going to bed.  As for students using Twitter, the article provides guidelines for them.  These include: establish relevance for students, define clear expectations for participation, model effective Twitter use, build Twitter-derived results into assessment and continue to actively participate in Twitter.  The article ends by stating that including Twitter in the classroom can help hit the components of inquiry framework: cognitive and teaching presence.

Reflection: Tweeting the Night Away: Using Twitter to Enhance Social Presence

I think Twitter in the classroom would be a great idea.  I feel that as long as they are using it in an education way, it would be a great tool.  I think that it would increase participation because of many of the students having social media accounts.  With my real first experience using Twitter for this class, I am overwhelmed with it.  It all looks like a jumbled mess that is unorganized.  Being an organized person, I feel that is why it looks so confusing to me.  Facebook is so much easier to use because it feels more organized to me.  I just need to use Twitter more and I think it will come easier to me.  I also liked how the article gave good examples of ways for Twitter to be used in the classroom.  For my classroom, physical education, it would work for students to post different activities they were doing while at home or over the weekend.

Grassroots Professional Development: How Teachers Use Twitter

This article was about how teachers can utilize Twitter and other social media into their teaching.  There was a study done on how to make everyday technologies into “educational technologies” for teachers.  According to the article, tweets can be used as a professional development tool.  “Twitter is a forum for teachers to not only talk about their classroom practice and share practical information and news, but also to find like-minded educators and give voice to their ideological commitments.”  For this study, there was two methods used to collect the data.  The teachers completed surveys of those who tweet and also participated in phone interviews in which were then analyzed.  The first finding was the tweeting teachers’ perceived networks and audiences.  The teachers took a survey where they were asked to describe who they tweet, follow and who follows them.  The results were that they follow teachers and other teachers follow them.  The second finding was what tweeting teachers hear and what they do with that information.  The study was to find what messages teachers received and how it affected their practice.  The results showed that the teachers participating in the study saw Twitter as a way to keep up with educational technology and a place for new ideas.  The third finding was on privacy, safety, and internet literacies.  Many shared their concerns with their young students using social media because it could be a dangerous place for students.  They also thought that the older students needed to learn safety measures and how to be responsible when using social media.  The fourth finding was the policies and barriers.  Many schools, according to the article, saw barriers and frustration towards internet policies and technology.

Reflection: Grassroots Professional Development: How Teachers Use Twitter

After using Twitter for pretty much the first time ever for this class, I feel overwhelmed.  However, after the last two articles, there are a lot of uses for Twitter in the classroom.  I think the findings from this study were very helpful as well.  It is necessary to know who you are following and who is following you.  I noticed that Julia has a secured Twitter account and when I pushed follow, it had to be approved by her.  I think this would be a good idea to have in place for younger students when used in a school setting so they have to approve who is following them.

What Parents Want in School Communication

This article talks about a survey from 2011 of 50 school districts “to learn the communication preferences of both parents and non-parents”.  The results showed that parents would rather have electronic communication verses any other communication method for school news.  The top five answers received were: email from school, online parent portal, e-newsletters, school website, and telephone message.  Ranking at the bottom of the survey for communication preferences was social media (Twitter, Facebook, blogs).  From the survey the parents wanted information from the teachers regarding updates on their child’s progress, slipping performance, learning expectations, homework and grading policies, and behavior.  The parents also want information on curriculum, calendar events, safety of students, and program changes.  Almost half of parents and non-parents would like the updates once the decision is made.  The article ends by stating that each district should have some type of research done about communications in regards to their own community.

Reflection: What Parents Want in School Communication

I think the survey gave good results in what parents and students want to receive and how they want to receive the information.  Our school uses Ohio Alert text messages for information to send out to those that are subscribed.  We also use the website for information that includes a calendar of events.  Our school also uses social media, Facebook and Twitter, to get information out.  We also have a monthly ‘newspaper’ called The McComb Reader that goes out to the community.  As for Mr. D’s first grade website, it is very well organized with different pages to click on, much like a blog format.  Even though it doesn’t seem to be used anymore, since last post was made in July, his website includes good information for parents along with games, a calendar and contact information.  It would have been nice to see a ‘Meet Mr. D’ page.

Five Steps to Better School/Community Collaboration

This article talks about the need for “strong, authentic community connections and actions” to be able to create a transformation in real education.  The research done was broken down into themes:

·         Community/business school partnerships

·         Parental collaboration

·         Curriculum connected to real world experiences

·         Student voice

·         Cross generation learning

·         Locals designing solutions to local problems

There were also five steps given for a school transformation for the 21^st century learners:

1.  Include all community in the vision of school – experimental learning

2.  Reach out to all stakeholders - teachers, local business, students, parents, etc.

3.  Create a community resource map – hand-drawn, Google Map, Mind Map, spreadsheet

4.  Connect with curriculum – project based learning

5.  A design challenge for the community – redesigning classrooms, community garden, shared learning pace, course design, etc.

Reflection: Five Steps to Better School/Community Collaboration

I think that the school and community should work together, but I’m not sure how would happen to work.  The themes given could be related to a lot of schools and communities.  There should be community/school partnership, parent collaborators, connected curriculum, student voice, cross generation learning and solution designs to local problems.  The steps given for school transformation for the 21^st century learners could be beneficial.  I think all 5 would be good practices for many schools.  Especially involving the community in the school as well as connecting with curriculum.  If the community was more involved in the school system, I feel there would be less issues with parents/students.

I also thought the Facebook page was interesting and useful.  Allowing young people to stand up for what they believe in effort to make change is a great thing.  What those students did is great to allow others to hear their voice.