As teachers we often spend time reflecting on what works and what doesn't work. This series of posts titled "Today in Class" is an attempt to reflect on what sticks, what smells, and what ever! My students are encouraged to read and comment on and about their own shared experience. In my Teaching and Technology Course these students are typically younger, new to education courses, and consumers of technology. My goal is to make them collaborators, integrators, and producers of everything when it comes to education and tech.
Today in class was a reintroduction to Twitter. Our current text is Will Richardson's and Rob Mancabelli's Personal Learning Networks: Using the Power of Connections to Transform Education. Chapter 2 opens with 5 tools they suggest educators and learners use to develop a PLN and one is Twitter. The video series Author Speak through the publishers Solution Tree the authors describe their philosophy behind PLN's and their book.
After reading the chapter for homework and focusing on the tool in class, I found my students more annoyed and disinterested in using Twitter. They said it was just another thing to manage, what's the big deal, who cares what a movie or sports star is doing. By the end of class, I saw students who were visibily frustrated at the day's exploration and discovery. So I knew coming back after a long weekend, I would have to readdress how and why I wanted them to use Twitter.
I started and ended the class with a modified KWL-WeL and the topic was Twitter in Education.
I added a "We Learn" section to promote our sense of community and to expand the knowledge base on Twitter in Education. I had the students work independently to document what the already know and then what they want to know. I set the limit at 5 items. Then I sent them to two websites and asked them to explore in the What I learned phase. I gave them this caveat - explore deep and look for the obscure because the next part to this activity was sharing what they learned with someone else who could only add that learning if it was different from what they already learned. During the We Learn portion students were instructed to collect 10 new and different understanding about Twitter in Education. Throughout the lesson, I used Pandora "Jason Mraz Channel" to play music. This allowed me to control and negotiate time by warning when a song was ending or if we need one more song before we moved on to the next activity.
After the first section ended, I noticed that I didn't get the conversations I really wanted. Students simply exchanged and shopped each other lists. During the second section, I changed the We Learn part by demanding that students could only collect one understanding from another and they had do document on the paper the other student's name. This not only promoted deeper conversations but it got them to share their names.
As a class at the end of the lesson, we removed the student participation filter, and I asked them what I was doing as a teacher to promote the days objectives. The conversation was rich.
Nice post Mr. Smith!
ReplyDeleteThis is a very well written post! It covers everything including the lesson's objectives, the lesson itself, and the results of the lesson. I really enjoyed the lesson because it expaned my view on twitter and gave me a better appreciation for the website. I really liked the KWL-WeL chart because it actually got us to focus on what we learned instead of why we learned it.
ReplyDeleteI really didn't learn a lot from the KWL-WeL chart. The links on the websites you gave us really weren't very useful and some didn't even work.
ReplyDeleteThe subject matter was interesting, but I still don't know how to use twitter in the classroom. I see how it can build a PLN but not how it can be used in for teachers and their students.
P.S you have a typo balddaddieteach it's Mraz not Miraz :)
Thank you for your honesty and help. Check these sites out to help with Twitter in Education: http://tinyurl.com/64kh98c and http://tinyurl.com/4nj4mb9
DeleteI liked the lesson because I learned alot of things about Twitter that I never knew exsisted. I learned that Twitter has a lot of differnt add-ons and that it has an atlas. I also found interesting that students who use Twitter have a higer GPA than those who don't use Twittter. I liked KWL-WeL chart because it got the class involved in learning about Twitter and we got to interact with our fellow classmates. This is a good way to get to know other students in the classroom. By the way Mr. Smith this is an excellent blog post.
ReplyDeleteI too was surprised by what was discovered by the class. I think we are just peeking into the opportunities.
DeleteI was in the first section where we just how you said "shopped each others lists". Honestly I didn't learn much. I know how to use twitter only because I'm already a twitter user. However, I now understand how it can be used in education but don't think I would ever use it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment, I hope you keep an open mind to the possibilities.
ReplyDeleteI thought this lesson was great! Even though i've had twitter for a while now I still learn a lot of new things about it that I never knew it had! :)
ReplyDeleteI thought that the class was fun, I mean what I walked away learning was how to add a widget to my blog that connects to twitter, and hopefully i'll be able to use it for a long time as well as in my future goals. The class was 'relaxing' as well, there wasn't a real pressure to get done with anything by the end, and it was nice to know that I could take time to do my own thing, such as the widget's page.
ReplyDeleteClass was very interesting. Although Im still not sold on twitter i did learn a few things about it. Im still however trying to work it. Its not very user friendly. I am trying tho, I may not tweet but i do read others and educational tweets. Class was a wonderful discussion and you brought the lesson in well.
ReplyDeleteYou are right on the usability of it. I started out just the way you are - reading - but when you find something worthy, share it, tweet it!
DeleteI thought class was great because I was able to learn a lot about Twitter in a short amount of time. I think the “WeL” is a great addition to the KWL charts because it increases your learning. By sharing what we learned with each other, I acquired a great deal of information about Twitter.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your response. I thought the WeL section was the real payoff for your class. It seemed to really push your discovery deeper.
Delete