#twittertuesday for Elementary School Students

For the last several years, my co-teacher, +sheila monger and I have been using +Twitter with my fourth and fifth grade students. It provides and authentic writing experience with practice in succinctly capturing a main idea or essence. We encourage their parents to follow us and they work really hard to do their best work for this wider audience. I try to keep an eye on the twittersphere for trending hashtags and use them if applicable to link to current events. For example  On #GSPD we _________________ (global school play day) .I limit them to  ½ 140 or 70 characters...they have to fit it on the paper and I have to be able to read it from across the room.

Logistics

Before the school year starts, I laminate 30 pieces of paper that fit on my back cabinets.  I create a handle for each student using the first few letters of their first and last name. For example Sandra McConnell would be SanMc. I write their handles and glue them to a name tag with an Egg, showing they are a new user on twitter. As the year progresses, some students created new avatars for themselves.

Be sure to start the year with digital citizenship lessons. We rely on +Common Sense Education lessons. We also use the acronym RAMENN with our kids. When posting make sure it's
R - relevant
A - appropriate
M - meaningful
E - edited - and our students added the last two...
N - is it nice?
N - is it necessary?

Each Tuesday I post the prompt and give students time to generate ideas and write. Sometimes the prompts generate a lot of reflection, other times not so much. After most of the tweets are posted to the wall, my tweeter of the week, a classroom job, chooses one to five posts that they want to have represent our class.  They rewrite the prompt in their journal (or take a picture with their iPad) and bring it to my computer to type into our class account in twitter, @mrsmccsclass. Often I will have them include photographs of the students’ tweets to include in the tweet. I have them do it at my computer because I do not want the students to have unrestricted, unsupervised access to twitter.

Although I am not in my classroom this year, our account is still active and you can see what other types of things we post.

General Student Instructions

1. write a draft of the tweet in your journal. Be sure to include a hashtag summarizing or emphasizing your main idea. Proofread.
2. have your post checked by an adult
3. make edits, then with pencil, write your tweet on twitter paper
4. go over letters with a marker (no more than two colors)
5. post in the wall with blue tape at your @handle

Have fun with it! For sample prompts, visit this google doc.

Using Edmodo with Younger Students: Part 2 - 5th graders @work

I have been using +Edmodo for professional development for 4 years and with my students for the past 3 years; 4th, a 4/5 combo and then 5th grade.  (Yes, that's how I roll, something different every year.)  For the past two years I was lucky enough to loop some of my students, so I had a built in set of 'experts' when it came time to introduce Edmodo to my class.

First, let me just say the students are super excited and engaged when they get to use Edmodo. It helps them feel more responsible and accountable for their work and they really do feel more 'grown up' (soon enough, little ones, please don't rush).  As I mentioned in my earlier post, Getting Started with Edmodo, I usually start my kids with a scavenger hunt.  Not only does it help them learn how to navigate around Edmodo but while they are doing that, I get great insight into how well students can work independently, collaborate and problem solve. If I am lucky, I can also have a few minutes to insert parent codes into letters to go home that day.

My first year of working with students and Edmodo, I did not really make use of assignments or Edmodo apps. I focused solely on posting prompts to students and having them reply. I was just learning how to use Edmodo as a teacher and I wasn't really aware of its capabilities. I also wanted to gain better understanding of promises and pitfalls of using the social media platform with 8-10 year olds. The biggest thing I learned during year 1 was to do more upfront work about keeping posts RAME= Relevant, Appropriate, Meaningful, and Edited.  Because I was hyper vigilant, I was getting notifications at all hours from students typing random messages just because they could...seriously random, one kid, I swear, had his cat walk on the keyboard and he posted that at about 10:00 pm!  So I learned that I really needed to get control of their posting etiquette. I wanted to be sure, and still do, that my students had the freedom to express themselves.  But they also needed a better understanding of the fact that everyone (in our group) was reading what they were posting.  We did a lot of practice on paper and many times I reminded them, "I get an email EVERY time you post anything!"

One of my class jobs quickly became homework poster.  Since I rarely teach the same thing two years in a row, it is not always easy for me to predict homework enough to be able to post it on a webpage a week in advance.  Daily, while we are filling out our paper planners, one student posts the homework to our class group on Edmodo.  That afternoon, I will copy and share that post again to the group as well as to their parents.  Often a student will forget a homework page or be absent, and Edmodo comes to the rescue.  My students have taken pictures of a math page and posted it to Edmodo so that another student could complete her own homework.  They will also ask for help or clarification. More often than not, they clear up any confusion before I even have a chance to respond.  And if they can't, then I have pretty good feedback that a certain assignment was confusing or difficult.

I did start using the assignment feature simply to manually record who did and didn't finish certain assignments, just to give students and parents an idea of progress and where intervention might be needed.

For classroom use that first year, I often used Edmodo posts for response to literature and to gauge understanding of a concept or prompt discussions in science, social studies or math.  Students also quickly learned how to share their work including +Google  docs, videos made with +Educreations and more. About a third of the way through the year, we received our iPads, as part of an initial rollout of the Cambrian iPad Academy.  This was a game changer in many ways.  As it relates to Edmodo, it meant that students had instant access to their accounts, rather than having to wait for the C.O.W. (computer on wheels) to roll in, or for our old, slow desktop PCs to boot.I played around a little bit more with assignments, quizzes and polls and my students were incredibly patient and forgiving.


Edmodo has incredible and vast capabilities and potential, however my advice for year one implementation is to start small. Stick with just a few key areas and learn what works for you and what doesn't.  The summer after my first year of Edmodo+students, I virtually attended #edmodocon... who doesn't love PD that starts in my jammies and ends with a glass of wine! This year, Edmodocon2014 is being held August 6th and I strongly recommend you reserve your spot today!  My head about exploded with all of the ideas and I couldn't wait to get back to school to try them out.

Coming up soon - Using Edmodo: Year Two and Beyond!

Why I love teaching #9 - Out of My Mind

Honestly, I don't know where it fits in the ranking, but this one is pretty high up there.  A little background is helpful.  My sister +Sharon Buehler is a school librarian in Oregon. She often gives me book recommendations and she knew of my inclusive education practices, so she suggested I read Out of My Mind, by Sharon Draper (OOMM). I bought it over a year ago but didn't get around to reading it, so I brought it to school to add to my classroom library.  Last year, one of my most reflective and deep readers asked what she should read, so I suggested OOMM. She came in the following Monday and said, "Oh Mrs. McConnell, you HAVE to read this book, and read it to the class, too!"  I dutifully took it home and added it to my summer reading stack.

Fast forward a bit to this past summer, and I read the book. In a day.  It was, to say the least, compelling. OOMM is an incredible story of inclusion and acceptance told from the eyes of a child.  I knew I would start my year reading it aloud to our kids.  About a week later, I stumbled across a tweet by +Pernille Ripp about something called The Global Read aloud (GRA), which she started a few years back. This year, the one book to connect the world, at least for my grade level, is OOMM! I knew we had to participate.  It is an incredible opportunity to share and discuss this powerful book with a wider group of students. Since I am super lucky to be a part of our 1:1 iPad program, I knew the kids would be able to easily collaborate and communicate with their 'colleagues' in other parts of the world using technologies such as +Edmodo , +Skype, +Kidblog  and even Twitter (with a teacher, of course).

I set about acquiring enough copies of the book for all 35 of our inclusive ed. kids to read. I co-teach +sheila monger who provides services to students with special needs.  Our kids are together every day for at least part of each day.

I ordered 5 copies with a B&N gift card I'd received at the end of the last school year. Then I went to my trusted fundraiser, Adopt-a-Classroom, and raised money to buy more books there. I put the word out via Facebook and my class web page.  One of my friends shipped me 12 books, just because she cares about public education and inclusion.  One of the parents of a student bought her daughter a copy and 2 extra copies for our classroom.  Gratefully, I should have enough books for each child to read their own copy.

Since we are participating in GRA13, I asked my kids not to read the book ahead of time (if they hadn't already) since we'd be making predictions with our global classmates.  Today, the child of the parent who bought the books for us came in and slipped this note on my desk.

 And this, my friends, is on of the many reasons I love teaching.

4 Essential Apps for 1:1 classroom

Today I attended  #AppyHour with Graphite and   +Common Sense Educators  A team from Graphite presented 4 essential apps for 1:1 classrooms.

 +Kelly Mendoza moderated two teachers:

•  Lisa Butler- middle school teacher, PA, 6th social studies teacher, their school is 50% 1:1 and 50% BYOT 
• Jennifer  – Pittsburg, PA Her hot tip? check out google vine

1. +Animoto  Educator Pro paid version or a scaled down but completely functional free version for classroom use. I have used this for years and love it. It is easy to use for me and my students. Only problem I have is that with preview, you cannot hear the whole song or all of the lyrics. So I only let students use instrumental versions of songs OR I have to preview their product before they can watch it. Great idea from Lisa Bulter (@srtalisa) to use animoto for kids to produce tutorials on other tools (ex symbaloo)!
2. Google Earth – be sure you have clear learning goals for students to follow in geography, math, science, writing and reading (google lit trips) 
3. Google art – Amazing source for all things art. Can be used for story starters, use with art vista/docent program, view world wonders. You can take virtual field trips! Check out lesson plans and ideas under educator tab! 
4. Schmoop – free paid, 0-12 grade  Tools and resources to help make learning fun. It can be used as homework help, to introduce topics or to support classroom teaching.

An investment in our future!

The message is plain and simple: This is not a technology expense, it’s an investment in our students and their future!

Hooked on Innovation

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