Principal who used to block, now offers guidance to skeptical admins in social media use

With barely a handful of other principals participating in social media environments principal Eric Sheninger feels rather lonely and is extending an offer to lead others into the digital age of interactivity. In his latest post Building Momentum, Mr. Sheninger puts out a call to action to educational leaders to join him in online environments or, as I like to say, become a part of his personal learning network.

Administrators who are skeptical about utilizing social media have a lot to learn from Eric or NMHS_Principal as he’s known in the Twitosphere. He was in the same boat just a little over a year ago, and his ship was sinking. He blocked sites and banned mobile devices to an extreme all in an effort to do what he thought was best for his students and staff. Today he says, “Boy was I wrong!” and realizes the error of his ways.

Sheninger now advocates to empower educators to effectively integrate technology combined with best instructional practices and takes any chance he gets to discuss his transformation with skeptical administrators. His motivation is simple. He says, “I now have the confidence to clearly articulate how social media has enabled me to become a more effective and efficient administrator in many areas.” He adds that, “I stress the fact that this phenomenon is not going away and is a major component in the lives of today’s society.”

Sheninger’s advice to educational leaders is that we should be modeling, supporting, and collaborating with our respective staffs to create a vibrant school culture that fosters risk-taking and innovation. Learning environments that are structured in such a way will not only help students think critically, problem solve, and master the content, but also teach them how to be digitally responsible.

He explains that his motivations are partly selfish too. He needs other administrators to join him saying that he finds it depressing as he looks around his own state of New Jersey as well as the country and globe in general and notices the lack of an administrative presence in the world of social media and other areas of educational technology leadership.

I understand Eric’s frustration. We each have personal learning networks numbering in the thousands, yet there are only a handful of principals participating. We pretty much know the same five guys who I also mentioned recently in my post Want to help a principal start a blog? These 5 principals can provide inspiration. He adds a name new to me Deron Durflinger to the list as well. So there are six guys. As a female, I can’t help but notice they’re all men and add, that not only do we need more school leader voices, but some females would be great too!

In his post Eric cries out to his five principal buds who are all working hard to do their parts to lead in the digital age, but he asks for their help to build momentum pleading, “Can ya help me out with this one?” We need leaders to step up and into these worlds for the sake of our students. As Eric points out, he’s learned a lot, but there is so much more to learn about educational leadership and facilitating sustainable change. He knows from his participation in online networks that the best way for learning to occur is when it happens with other experienced leaders in the trenches that can share their knowledge, strategies, successes, and failures. Like most, this is how he learns best and he confesses that he needs their help, support, ideas, and advice on all aspects of educational leadership, not educational technology. He knows that when educational leaders move together they can all collaborate to grow, lead more effectively, and move towards substantive reform.

To entice his peers, Sheninger offers five facets of social media that truly assist educational leaders to become more effective and efficient. They are 1) Communication, 2) Branding, 3. Professional Development/Growth, 4) Opportunity 5) Collaboration

You can find out how social media plays a part in each of these in his post Building Momentum.

Thank you to Eric Sheninger and the fabulous five George Couros, Patrick Larkin, Chris Lehmann begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting, Deron Durflinger, Dave Meister for being the pioneering voices of school leaders today.

Innovative Ideas for Getting Teachers Excited About Building Their Personal Learning Networks Real Time from Hunterdon Central Regional High School

Virtual Introductions for a More Powerful PLN

Guest post by Cathy Stutzman

This summer, my school is expanding its 1:1 computing program, and we "veterans" from last year’s pilot are helping to prepare the new group for a school year with student netbooks. The participants have been working really hard on redesigning unit plans and rethinking their practices to include things like project-based learning, formative assessment, guided inquiry, web 2.0 tools, and community outreach opportunities. They have been signing up for social networking sites like crazy and learning from educators in every subject area from all over the world. However, as many of us in the original cohort remember, it's tough to put yourself out there. It's easy to lurk around on Twitter and soak up information from the fascinating people out there in the Twittosphere, but you often wonder, "who cares what I have to say?"

With only a few, courageous exceptions, most of the group hadn’t started to participate in online conversations about their ideas. Because we really want the teachers to understand just how powerful a PLN can be and because we know they have awesome ideas to contribute to the online conversation, we came up with some ways to combine what Lisa calls 1.0 and 2.0 PLNs. The teachers shared with the large group their ideas for unit and course redesigns while fellow instructor, Keith Dennison, and I took notes in a Google Doc about their plans and the tools they were thinking of using to achieve those goals. The group as well as our special guest for the day, Will Richardson, provided incredible feedback. They asked questions, suggested other tools, voiced concerns, and encouraged each other.

Meanwhile, Heather Hersey (another original member of the pilot) and I were simultaneously discussing the incredible ideas via Twitter with the hashtag, #hctweet. After about 5 teachers had presented and received some insight from the group in the room, we asked the group’s permission to tweet the Google Doc URL so that we could invite members of our extended PLNs to check out the innovative ideas that these teachers were sharing. Additionally, we asked that everyone in the group login to the document so that they could contribute any additional ideas or questions they had as the conversation continued.

We displayed on an LCD screen the Twitter dialogue emerging around their ideas, and that’s when something really powerful started happening. Many of the group members began contributing to the online dialogue as well as participating in the discussion that was happening in the room. Teachers who had put their ideas online for the first time were receiving feedback from teachers all over the world. Will was getting tweets asking about the projects and the teachers who were presenting. Individual teachers were getting direct messages and “at” tweets with suggestions and compliments. By the end of those few hours, we had a packed Google Doc that is still being viewed as I write this, and a whole slew of teachers from every discipline who were now part of the conversation and actively seeking feedback and connections.

It was truly an energizing day! And it certainly demonstrates the power of a PLN, but I think this was also a lesson in how important it is to be able to lean on others around you to help you ease into the sometimes scary world of social networking. I still need my critical friends to hold my hand when I’m reaching out of my online comfort zone, and I think that having a group of trustworthy people is invaluable as you learn anything new. If you’re new to social media, don’t be afraid to ask your educator friends to try out some of these tools with you; you can potentially double your networks if you combine forces. If you’re a vet, don’t forget how scary this can be: offer to virtually introduce new friends, ask them questions to get them involved in online conversations, and provide encouragement as often as possible. Risk-taking is always easier when you have a support system out there with you.

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Cathy Stutzman, teaches English at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Flemington, NJ and tweets at Stutz01.

Don’t Silence Students. A Resource to Support Students In Developing Their 2.0 Voice

I recently engaged in a mini debate over whether or not students should have the ability to authentically comment in social media. The company I was talking to said their site didn't allow this. Instead students pick approved (aka canned and boring) comments from a drop down menu. This was the decision made because they felt educators and administrators believed students might write comments that were inappropriate.

Well how on earth will that ever change if students aren't commenting in the presence of teachers who can guide and support them on appropriate interaction when engaging in social media. That’s the big deal when it comes to social media. Commenting allows students and readers/viewers to make meaning. Have a conversation. Use their voice. Furthermore, what about the outside world of experts and others who share an interest and passion in student’s work. But, nope, this site was safe which meant one and all is relegated to being Stepford commenters. A further concern was that teachers might not know how to support students in appropriate commenting or have time to teach them. Aaaarrrgh! This is an essential 21st century literacy. Engaging appropriately in social media is exactly the type of real teaching we need to be doing.

So, with this conversation fresh in my mind, fortunately a smile was brought to my face by this tweetweb20classroom The Educational Blogging Wiki: http://bit.ly/cTXLt5

Phew a breath of fresh air. The link takes you to the wiki of Mrs. Yollis a third grade teacher who, among other things, provides commenting lessons for those interested in having students engage in authentic social media platforms. The heart of the wiki is helping teachers who want to start a blog with their class. The site is a treasure trove of smart information that I've often verbally shared with other educators, but never captured in writing.

Here are some links to the nuggets she shares:

• Why Have a Class Blog?
• What Do Students Write About?
• How To Teach Commenting Skills
• How Do Your Third Graders Know How to Type?
• Curriculum Examples
• Things to Consider

In addition to her great commenting lesson and ideas I just love her advice about Things to Consider. There, she articulates nicely thoughts I agree with (and was just discussing with a group of teachers) about having a class blog rather than student blogs.

From the site...

A class blog? Individual student blogs? What is right for you? I decided that giving every child a blog was not something I wanted to tackle at this point. First of all, I wanted to teach directed lessons about posting, creating images, and composing quality comments. Having a class blog allowed me to direct all my lessons at one site. Controlling the lessons and the publishing allowed me to work at my own pace. If I wanted to publish once a week, I did. If I felt like I wanted to publish more, I felt free to do so. Having several individual blogs to proofread and moderate would have been overwhelming for me.

To me this seemed smart. Before a student should even consider blogging, they need to read and participate in blogging and Mrs. Yollis does a smart job of ensuring students are taking a hard look at this interactive writing format.

Next, she shares an idea I just love! She requires interested students to earn their own blog. How great. I always had an issue with teacher-assigned blogs. What happens after the class? I feel blogs should be student driven. It brings me back to Alan November’s question of “Who Owns the Learning? Here’s What Mrs. Yollis does.

Currently, I allow students to earn their own blog. They can earn their own blog by contributing ideas/writing to groups posts and by demonstrating consistently good commenting skills. Once a child is ready, I let his/her parents set up the Blogger account at home, and I will link the child's blog to our classroom site. The parents must be the administrator and comments must be moderated. If problems arise, I remove the link from our class blog. Allowing children to earn their way to a blog is powerful. They want to be linked to our class blog to increase their readership. In addition, it encourages parents to take an active online role with their child.

Wow. How smart! She just addressed so many issues here. Students own their learning. Parents as partners. Self/parental ownership for moderation. Fantastic!

Thank you to Mrs. Yollis and all the others like her who are helping prepare our children with voices to use them in important ways in school and in life.

Who Owns the Learning and Assessment?

Personalization is the big buzz word in my world this year.

Personalized learning. Personalized learning environments. Personalized assessments.
Personally, I'm thrilled!

But what is this? What does it mean? And, as Alan November asked numerous times at his conference #BLC10 last month, "Who owns the learning???" Well, the students of course? Though when you look in a typical classroom frequently that is not evident.

Digital Ethnographer Michael Wesch recently shared an idea I loved. Students enroll in his class knowing upfront what the learning goals are. He has a blank slate for the class syllabus on a wiki. Together he and his students determine how they will meet their learning goals and in many cases that is different for different students.

Here is what I've heard lately about these concepts.

Personal Learning Environments
Thanks to Celine Azoulay for sharing with me this video of a student who gives a tour of her personal learning environment in a 7th grade life science class.


Personalized Assessment
"We can't ask students to move to personal learning and then have us as their teachers own the assessment." - Dean Shareski

This insightful quote is from the inspiration behind these next two pieces I recently read.

Students Must Own Learning & Assessment | Dean Shareski
Personalized Assessment | Dean Shareski

Here we get an overview on Personalized Assessment from Dean Shareski as he considers what personalized assessment and evaluation might look in personalized learning environments. He also shares two forms of personalized learning environments- putting learning in the context of student passions and interests, and giving students "unprojects" as described by middle school math teacher Chris Harbeck.

This is certainly an important topic that I plan on putting a lot more focus on this year, including, hopefully, some student perspective as well. Stay tuned.

Create Video Playlists to Enrich Learning with Embedr.com

Innovative educators know that for many video has edged ahead of other platforms as the number 1 tool.or learning, creating, and showing evidence of learning. Want to know how to do something? Simply go to Google and do a video search. You'll instantly have a plethora of videos showing you how to do that "thing" and in most cases you'll even have the ability to write to the video's author. Or, you can make a video asking people how to do a thing, like this student does here.

Many educators have even finally succeeded in getting video sites unblocked in their schools, bringing to the attention of those who were blocking that doing so was depriving students from meaningful learning opportunities.

As an educator fortunate to work in an environment where YouTube and other video sites are not blocked, I was trying to find an easy way to share videos relating to a particular topic, a playlist of videos if you will. In this case I was compiling this list of videos because I wanted to share with teachers some ways their students might make video projects for a class I was creating called “Flip My Class.” Some other reasons I might want to create such a playlist include because I want to:

1. Create a collection of videos to support a particular unit of study
2. Create a collection of videos for professional development where I wanted to share samples of videos on a topic created by other students.
3. Have students put a collection of videos together about a topic they are studying.
4. Have teachers put together a collection of videos to share with parents.
5. Put your favorite music videos in one place.

While there are a number of less-than-elegant ways to put such a collection together i.e. A bunch of videos on a blog post or website or wiki page that the viewer has to scroll through, not only is that not visually appealing, it is also not the easiest of methods if I wanted to encourage others to contribute to the playlist.

So, I turned to my personal learning network and thanks to the below tweet by bjackermann found Embedr.

bjackermann @InnovativeEdu Is this what you mean?? http://embedr.com/ Create video playlists & embed them anywhere

Embedr was everything I had hoped for. A terrific, elegant, and simple way to share a video playlist and a tool to which others could easily contribute. I wanted to create a way for teachers in an upcoming class to create videos and store them on one playlist regardless of their preferred video upload site. I also wanted to put a sample collection of videos together to use during the professional development to inspire them. I was able to collect the videos in Embedr and here’s how they look.

Build your own custom video playlist at embedr.com

I was also wondering what kind of collections @bjackmann had so I asked her. Here’s what she tweeted:bjackermann @InnovativeEdu Here's one that I use for inservice for teachers - Web 2.0 Videos Playlist http://embedr.com/playlist/web-2-0_6

Wow. A terrific playlist to inspire participants prior to innovative PD. Here’s what it looks like:

Build your own custom video playlist at embedr.com

Embedr.com has great potential and I’m excited to begin incorporating it into my professional development. How might you use this tool?

Read and Personalize Books for Free with MeeGenius

The Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness blog shared this great site called MeeGenius which has a collection of familar books meant for younger students. What’s really cool is that you can personalize the books, meaning you can input other names for the characters. So for instance in the book "Jack and the Beanstalk" I was able to put my boyfriend's name in place of Jack and other friends of ours in the place of other characters. There are currently 27 books available for your reading pleasure.

The site will highlight each word and read the book aloud to the students in your classroom. Read more at MeeGenius - Great Tool for Elementary Teachers.