Microblogs & Professional Development

The use of microblogs and social networking sites like Twitter are fantastic tools that help today's teachers continue to grow professionally and maintain a firm grasp on technological tools. By utilizing such tools in my, hopefully not too distant teaching career, I will be able to share, spread, and discuss ideas with other professional educators. As can be seen in this post, the ability to share ideas with like minded professionals is a priceless commodity that has been greatly expanded over the past decade. As teachers we will not be limited to professional interaction within our own schools or districts. By use of these sites we'll be able solve one another's dilemmas, expand on our ideas, or just share strange experiences.
In the future I plan to utilize these tools in order to maintain a plentiful flow of fresh ideas on how to present and prepare meaningful lessons for my students. By following tweets by other teachers or sharing blogs with countless others I will be able to adopt the unique thoughts of other teachers into my own classroom. Through sharing and networking I will be able to seek solutions to situations or lessons that did not go as planned as well as provide my own solutions to the issues others face. Joining one of these online social communities is a must for today's educators.

Classroom Community

I found this blog particularly interesting because it discusses the importance of creating a community within the classroom within the first weeks of school. The example provided is at a higher level of education however, the idea remains the same: within the first weeks of school it is important not only to build a relationship with your students but to build the relationships they have with each other. This is a concept that I feel extends beyond small ice breaker activities and into the realm of more complex tasks students must work together to complete- much like the example provided in this blog.

EFL Classroom 2.0

EFL Classroom 2.0
This social networking site is huge! It's loaded with recent articles about teaching English in a foreign language setting. The site map is a great way to navigate through a plethora of teaching activities, lesson plans, worksheets, classroom games, teacher training's, videos, readings, you name it! This site is awesome, it even breaks apart the age level of learners so that you can choose the level of activity that is most appropriate for your setting.

A learner is like...

A learner is like a tree in an ecosystem.

Connectivism discusses a great deal of group more than individual knowledge. George Siemens (2005) describes connectivism as a cycle: "Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual." This cycle is entirely self sufficient in which the failure of one component of the cycle would ensure the destruction of the cycle as a whole. The cycle cannot exist without it's three key components: personal knowledge, a network, and institutions/organizations. This cycle is much like the ecosystem insofar as a tree is an component of an ecosystem dependent on other components in that system- all of which cannot survive on it's own. In basic terms a tree is dependent of water, sunlight, and  nutrients (soil comprised of decomposed matter). Beyond sunlight, the reason anything exists, a tree has it's part in providing and consuming the components of the cycle as a learner has their part in providing and consuming components in the connectivism cycle. 
In his video, "The Changing Nature of Knowledge," discussing connectivism George Siemens states that the networks that learners form become the primary point of learning, that "the network becomes the learning." This statement holds true to my earlier analogy of learners being a tree in an ecological environment. As a tree grows and develops within an ecological environment it grows its dependance on the environment in which it has formed. The environment acts as the tree's network in which it seeks and provides nourishment much like the network a learner forms, utilizes, and maintains. 

Social Revolution and Fat Boy Slim

So I just watched that "Social Media Revolution 2" on Youtube.com and it was pretty nuts. I choose that one simply because it was at the top of the list and it had the word "Revolution" in it so I thought it might be cool. I haven;t heard that Fat Boy Slim song in awhile so that was pretty neat. It's probably going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day now; hopefully not for the whole weekend. It is kinda catchy..."Right here, right now, right here..." Remember that Fat Boy Slim music video with Christopher Walken in it? That was super cool. Here it is.

Anyway, the social media video was pretty neat.  It throws a lot of interesting facts at you in a very neat and visually appealing manner. It kept me entertained for nearly 5 whole minutes! I had a pretty solid idea that social media has become a big deal, however I did find a lot of the statistics in the video to be impressive. For instance, if Facebook were a country it would be the second largest in the world! That's pretty insane! At one point they compared the social media movement to the industrial revolution. Remember how insanely rich some people got during that time?? We need to invent a social networking site that has something the others don't. Any ideas?

Come on! It's common sense!

One reoccurring theme that seems to have popped up a lot while reading safety tips about children's' internet use is parent education. Quite a few people have posted their concerns that parents are not well informed enough about either the dangers of unsupervised/restricted internet use or what their children are viewing. That being said, I suppose the place to start in regards to ensure safe blogging for students would be parental as well as student education. Of great concern seems to be the amount of information some children provide when blogging or using a social network site. Students should be made aware of the dangers that exist when divulging too much information about themselves freely- one site I recently visited simply asked parents to tell their children to leave some lines blank when asked to divulge certain information. Common sense tips like those can go a long way, especially to younger kids who do not stop to consider possible dangers.
Another simple tip I had come across is to utilize the privacy settings on blogs and social networking sites. Such settings are accessible for a reason and students/children should be made aware of their uses as well as instructed on how to limit sharing their information only to those they know.
Summing up a lot of what I came across is parent education as well as student education as well as the use of common sense. It's important to explicitly instruct students as well as parents on the obvious ways to protect students to ensure that safety precautions are being taken.

Blog #1

One thing that really stood out from reading these first three chapters is the discussion about teachers being behind their students in terms of being technologically savvy. I see this a lot even at the University level: I am the only one whose noticed that most of our professors can't use powerpoint correctly? Many of the classrooms I enter are the same way- I find it particularly frustrating when a teacher I am filling in for insists on showing me some software or program to use for a lesson that he/she hardly knows, though I can figure out in a heartbeat. Looking over the national TESOL Standards I find it amusing that the first "Goal" is for language teachers to gain and maintain technological knowledge. Through first hand observation of the gap between teachers and students I fear that one day I may become that teacher; that technology will advance too quickly for me to keep up and my students will suffer the consequences. Therefore, my first step towards utilizing technology as a professional teacher is maintaining my know-how while at the head of a classroom.
A great online tool I have seen utilized in the field of teaching is a teacher home page which is linked directly through a school district's website. Students sign onto the district site, locate their school, from there choose their teacher, and are then taken to that homepage. Most often students, as well as parents, find postings on the days homework, upcoming tests, special events or announcements, and links to educational websites and online games. This sort of practice has become standard in my eyes and is therefore something I cannot imagine working without.
Using blog posts for educational purposes is not something I've ever considered. However, after reading through these first few chapters, I can see how blog posts can be immensely beneficial to students of all ages. Some of the examples presented in the text such as: Asking students to respond to a though provoking question, or post about a picture you've posted, are great ways to get students to write under minimally controlled conditions- a practice I fear we have strayed far from.