The Tempered Radical

Five Twitter Hashtags That Can SAVE School Leaders Time

Whenever I talk to school leaders about Twitter, their initial response is usually something like, "Twitter?  I don't have time for Twitter!"

Heck, one of my favorite Radical comments of all time expressed a similar skepticism with Twitter as a tool for educational leaders like this:

“If the principal has time to maintain Twitter or Facebook, then they have too damn much time on their hands.”

Here's the thing, though:  Twitter can be a huge TIME SAVER for school leaders who use hashtags---short, unique identifiers added to the end of messages that make searching for content in Twitter easier---to search and learn.

When you start following hashtags that are connected to topics that you care about---professional learning communities, educational leadership, technology in education, standards-based assessment and reporting, educational policy---you instantly have access to resources and ideas that have been spotted by someone else and deemed valuable enough to share.

Essentially, following hashtags in Twitter allows you to find quality content quickly simply because someone else has already found the content FOR YOU!

Interested in learning more?

Then start by watching this Commoncraft tutorial which explains just how searching and sorting in Twitter happens:

 

 

And then, spend a few minutes poking through the content being shared in these Twitter hashtag conversations that often resonate with building principals:

#atplc -- resources and ideas connected to structuring and supporting school-based PLCs.

#sbar -- resources and ideas connected to standards based assessment and reporting.

#cpchat -- resources and ideas connected to the work of building principals. 

#edleaders and #edadmin -- resources and ideas connected to educational leadership.

#edpolicy and #edreform -- resources and ideas connected to educational reform.

If you don't find something that is of real value to you in the first five minutes of searching, I'll be shocked. 

You see, I poke through those hashtags a few times each day and ALWAYS walk away with something---a resource, a provocative idea, a person who I can network with later---of great value to my professional work.

Now, I'd HOPE that someday, you'd move beyond simply searching through the content shared by others and start sharing content yourself. 

That's when Twitter becomes really powerful simply because you develop professional relationships that you can turn to with specific questions.

But AT LEAST start turning to Twitter first when you're looking for resources. 

It will save you time and give you access to great minds all at once. 

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Related Radical Reads:

Twitter Hashtags for Educators

Lathered Brilliance, Superman Underoos and Social Media Spaces

Twitter is Only One PLN Building Tool

 

 

Introducing Microlending to Students

The end of last week brought the opportunity to present a webinar on enhancing and amplifying pedagogy with digital tools to the Greater Victoria School District 61.

At the end of the webinar, I got an email from sixth grade team facilitator Aaron Maxwell, who asked about the work that I do with Kiva—a microlending website that pairs interested lenders in the developed world with needy entrepreneurs in the developing world—in the classroom.

Aaron wrote:

I am very excited to set up an opportunity for my class of grade sixes to get involved with Kiva…I would love to have your students share their experiences and maybe answer some of the questions that we generate as we approach our country study.

And if you have any other pointers, recommendations, or suggestions about introducing Kiva with kids, I would love to hear them!

As a guy who is passionate—and required by the sixth grade social studies curriculum—to help students study differences between the developed and developing world, introducing students to microlending has been a passion of mine for a long while.

Here are five of my favorite resources for turning kids on to studies of global poverty and microlending.

PLC Tip: Working Together with Wikis and Google Docs

As many of you know, I’ve written a pretty popular book about PLC implementation called Building a Professional Learning Community at Work.

My publisher—Solution Tree—sends me out on the road during the summer to present to audiences of teachers and principals on tackling the inevitable challenges of getting PLCs up and running.

One session that I deliver regularly introduces teachers to the ways that digital tools can be used to make the work of learning teams more effective and efficient.

Karen—a teacher from Orlando who came to my session in June—dropped me an email this week looking for a bit of help. Here’s what she wrote:

I enjoyed your session “Using Digital Tools” from the PLC conference in June. I now have a question: Can a WIKI be used for teams to create shared lesson plans? Meaning each teacher contributes to the plans in one location…or is there another digital tool for this?

Thanks for any help~

Thought you might be interested in my reply. You can find it below.

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Hey Karen,

Good to hear from you and I'm glad that my session in Orlando is still on your mind! Without a doubt, digital tools have made the work of my PLC more efficient and effective---and considering how hard the work of a learning team really is, anything that makes us more efficient and effective is worthwhile.

To answer your question, when my learning team is trying to create shared lesson plans, we use Google Docs (http://docs.google.com).

Google Docs is a free tool that lets users create a wide range of common documents---Word Docs, Spreadsheets, Forms, PowerPoint Presentations---online.

More importantly, Google Docs lets users share their documents with others.

Is "Racing to the Top" Even Possible, Arne?

As a North Carolina teacher, I am cursed blessed to be a part of the federal government’s newest inevitable disaster experiment in educational policy: The widely touted Race to the Top initiative.

Having sold our souls to signed on to Bam and Arne’s signature program, North Carolina will be given about $100M in extra #educabbage per year for the next four years—a sum equal to .01% of our $7 BILLION education budget.

In return, we’ve agreed to implement a series of radical and rapid changes to the way that schools do business.

Now the one thing Bam and Arne haven’t screwed up have gotten right is that schools DO need to change.

But the metaphorical notion that we can “race to the top” of anything—especially something as sophisticated and complex as change in a system that serves tens of millions of children from diverse communities and with diverse abilities—is foolish.

Need proof?

Then take a closer look at the hundreds of people who climb Mount Everest each year. Working through THAT summiting challenge is HARDLY a race.

New Slide: Innovation in Social Spaces

I don't have a ton of time to write tonight, y'all.  I'm trying to finish off a set of materials for a webinar that I'm running next week on Teaching the iGeneration. 

I did run across a great quote on innovation, though---and whipped up a slide to share:

(click to enlarge)

Download Slide_Innovationinspaces

 

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Original Image Credit: Restless Globetrotter by Jason Rogers

Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on August 15, 2011

http://www.flickr.com/photos/restlessglobetrotter/2513014001/sizes/o/

New Slide: iCreate

It's been awhile since I've whipped up a slide for all y'all---and I was feeling a bit creative tonight.

So here you go.  Hope you can use this somewhere in your work. It shares a simple message with a powerful Creative Commons image.  Doesn't get better than that, y'all.

Download CCredit_CreateKeyboard

 

Your friendly neighborhood slidemaster,

Bill

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Original Image Credit: Write Down My Name by Josef Stuefer

Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on August 15, 2011

http://www.flickr.com/photos/josefstuefer/5137407/sizes/l/in/photostream/

 

Final Thoughts on Graphic Novels

I had to chuckle a bit when a guy named Shane stopped by to lob a few digital bombs my way today. A staunch advocate of the role that graphic novels can play in teaching and learning, Shane wrote:

You are coming across as very pompous and honestly sir as quite unwilling to actually use the most important tool my greatest teachers had...their sense of hearing.

He also wrote:

You have a closed mind, in my view, when it comes to the sequential form of storytelling.

Now, I’m guessing Shane didn’t read too many of the dozens of comments that I’ve added to either of my last two posts on graphic novels (see here and here).

I mean, geez: I reflected on and responded to and interacted with and considered a TON of all y’all’s thoughts and opinions about graphic novels in the classroom.

More importantly, I set aside time this week to read two books that y’all recommended: The Pulitzer Prize Winning graphic novel series Maus and the often-described “bible” of graphic novel enthusiasts Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud.

Here are my reactions.

Lessons Learned: Graphic Novels

I’ve got to tell you, I really enjoyed our recent conversation on the role that graphic novels can/should play in the lives of middle grades students.

If you haven’t had time to poke through the comments, I really think you should.  While it will take you some time, there’s some really bright thinking going on there.

#nice

Here are some lessons that I think I learned:

ANY genre that engages middle grades readers is a good genre.  Kevin Hodgson—a mind that I respect times about 50 and a fellow sixth grade teacher wrote:

I know that the age I teach (sixth grade) is the age we often lose readers, and the more engaged I can keep them, the better.

That resonated with me simply because it’s true.  If kids haven’t embraced reading by the time that they leave middle school, they’re facing an uphill battle in life.

Wondering (Worrying?) About Graphic Novels

Blogger's Note:  The real power in this conversation rests in the comment section where we are talking all things reading.  Come and join us! 

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I’ve got a bit of a confession to make—and it’s probably going to leave a TON of people completely hacked off.

But that’s never stopped me before, right?

Here goes:  I just CAN’T buy into the mad-crazy-graphic-novel-as-a-legitimate-form-of-reading-worth-promoting love that seems to be sweeping through middle school libraries.

In fact, I reflexively cringe every time I see my students swimming through the 741.5 section of the media center.

#ducking

Before you unsheathe your digital bazookas and start lobbing intellectual bombs, listen to this quick story:  A colleague of mine who teaches drama noticed how many of her students were reading graphic novels during a recent SSR period.

Concerned, she asked a few kids why they were drawn to the genre.  Their answer:

“We don’t have to think while we’re reading them.”

#ouch

I can hear graphic novel enthusiasts everywhere groaning as I type—and I’m all-too-familiar with the argument that graphic novels require students to make meaning from pictures, drawing subtle inferences based on what they’re seeing.

But is that REALLY true?

What I Would Do with an iPad in My Classroom

An interesting email landed in my inbox this week from a good friend who has really been trying to integrate technology into her language arts class. For confidentiality sake, we'll call her Mary.

Turns out that Mary's principal recently decided to buy iPads for all of the language arts teachers in her school.  Mary--like many teachers--was excited to have an iPad coming her way, but she wasn't sure exactly what she was going to do with it. 

Her question was a simple one:

"So Bill: If you had ONE iPad in your classroom, what would YOU do with it?"

To be perfectly honest, my first reaction was to be frustrated with Mary's principal.  After all---in what appears to be an all-too-familiar pattern---she seems to have made a significant investment in devices without any careful planning or coonsensus building. 

Think about it:  Shouldn't the teachers have had plans for the iPads they were getting BEFORE the checks were written and the cash was spent? 

Technology planning doesn't have to be a difficult process, y'all.  But it shouldn't be an optional process either---or an afterthought. 

But Mary's good people----and she really does want to find a way to take advantage of the iPad she was getting.  I had to help her do a bit o' brainstorming.

Here's what I suggested.

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Hey Mary,

Glad to hear that you're working to find a way to take advantage of the iPad that you have in your classroom.  If I were you, I'd think first about the kinds of instructional practices that matter the most and THEN look for a practice that one iPad can support.

The first thing that came to my mind was formative assessment because as a language arts teacher, I'm constantly making observations of my students on the fly.