Here is my second blog post and I think I'm slowly starting to like blogging. I am beginning to see how multiple pieces of social media can interact together to help me learn and share with other teachers. The funny thing is I thought I was up on social media before this class..
I am a bit of a neat freak and want everything neat and orderly. So the idea of having hashtags to organize and categorize information is great! Often I would just Google something to try to find information, but then have to read through all that information to get what I want. However, the benefit with Twitter is I can search for a hashtag. I can post a question to my social network and see what they think. It’s helpful to search on Twitter for a particular topic and see what others are saying in a short explanation and if I want more information I can dig deeper. Another great benefit is I can do this from my phone. I can multi task easily with using my phone and gather information that I can use to learn.
As I was reading through chapter 2, I was really struggling with some ideas of how I can incorporate Twitter into my AP Physics and my math classes. The text has excellent suggestions of having a backchannel where students could discuss and interact with each other throughout the lesson, but I was struggling with how I could incorporate this into my classes. One area I would like to really encourage my students is to find multiple ways of how to solve the same problem. My idea is to have students solve a problem, take a picture of their solution and then post it to a back-channel or to Twitter. Then, I would have students look back at how other students answered and see how many of them answered similarly or how many of them had different Solutions. It would be great for students to see the creativity of their classmates in solving problems and expanding their repertoire of ways to solve a problem. I think it would be a great lesson to show students how many different ways there are to solve the same problem.
The textbook also explained how to use Twitter to reach out and connect to students’ homes as well as remind students about assignments. I really struggle with using Twitter to remind students about assignments because I believe students should be taking the initiative to become organized. I teach juniors and seniors and an important skill for their success is keeping up with due dates and assignments. However I could also see the great benefit of posting reminders so that both the student and the parents see what is occurring within my classroom. I know of blended families that have really struggled with keeping up with what was going on in their elementary child’s classroom. Papers would get sent home, but one parent would receive the information and not share. The parent did not blame or fault the school, a lot of the struggle was with the child being part time in two homes. However I think it would have made it much easier on that family to have more electronic communication with the school and teacher in the form of Twitter or something similar. I know many students are in this sort of situation and using Twitter or other means of communication would be extremely helpful.
I’m looking forward to connecting to other teachers throughout the US and the world on Twitter. It will be beneficial to me to learn from them and I’m also looking forward to sharing what I have used in my classroom. The crazy thing is I will be starting my tenth year in the classroom this year! I have recently realized I have a good of amount of experience and I have a lot of ideas that I can share with other teachers and Twitter gives me an opportunity to do so.
My Twitter user name: Michellelynnmlb
Richardson, W., & Mancabelli, R. (2011). Personal learning networks: Using the power of connections to transform education. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.
Michelle,
ReplyDeleteI would like to follow you on Twitter. What is your username?
Thanks,
Lindsay
Michelle,
ReplyDeleteI agree that High School level students should be keeping track of their assignments and due dates, but it never fails that I have at least one parent every year that wants me to send them list of assignments and dates. I can see using Twitter to communicate with parents about topics that the students are working on and some of the activities that they will be doing, put I also am not willing to tweet a list of assignments daily. I really like the idea of communicating with students on a social network to avoid anyone questioning the nature of messages sent, since anyone will be able to see exactly what was posted.
Michelle,
ReplyDeleteI agree that High School level students should be keeping track of their assignments and due dates, but it never fails that I have at least one parent every year that wants me to send them list of assignments and dates. I can see using Twitter to communicate with parents about topics that the students are working on and some of the activities that they will be doing, put I also am not willing to tweet a list of assignments daily. I really like the idea of communicating with students on a social network to avoid anyone questioning the nature of messages sent, since anyone will be able to see exactly what was posted.
Michelle,
ReplyDeleteI did like the idea of posting a question to Twitter, but I wonder how effective that would be at this point in our Twitter "development" since we are Twitter babies. I guess the best solution would be to direct the question @someonespecific. I'm interested to try that this year. I am also really happy that we can use all the Twitter applications and other social media for our PLN on our phone. (I also think they are much cleaner and neat in the phone app than viewing on a computer).
I wasn't sure that the backchannel was really an option I would want to use with my high school students. I could see it being very effective at the college level, but I do like the way you plan to use it. There is not a whole lot of math in Biology but if we were solving an equation, I agree that this could be a valuable way for students to see many different strategies to solve the problem. Sometimes the way I see it doesn't work for everyone.
Finally I understand your hesitancy to use Twitter for student notifications. This year, I heard many parents complain that I wasn't using Remind.com every day to remind them of the assignment for that day, but that was never my intention. I know some teachers do that, but I agree that they have to have personal responsibility. I do think #testday could be a fun one to remind students of test dates, study guides, etc.
Michelle,
ReplyDeleteI love your idea of how to use Twitter in your classroom by having students solve a problem in different ways and then post their way of solving. When I read that in your post and started thinking about it, I got the idea to do something similar for my elementary students!
I plan on using a classroom Twitter account (in addition to my Remind account) for students to communicate and share with parents and other classrooms around the country. I currently use Remind to communicate with parents, but thought of having students use our class Kindle to tweet things on our classroom account (with permission of course!). Your idea would really come in handy when we are learning multiplication and how there are many ways to solve one multiplication problem (drawing an array, skip counting, repeated addition, etc.). I want to have my students solve a multiplication problem on their whiteboard and then take a picture of their way and post it to Twitter (or even make a picture collage first) to show the different ways that different people solve multiplication problems (and get the same answer).
Thanks so much for the idea!
RE: "My idea is to have students solve a problem, take a picture of their solution and then post it to a back-channel or to Twitter. Then, I would have students look back at how other students answered and see how many of them answered similarly or how many of them had different Solutions."
ReplyDeleteMichelle,
This is great! It gives students a global audience for their solution that previously would have only been viewed by the teacher or classmates. When students know their work is going to viewed by a large audience, it increases their level of concern and the work they produce is often of higher quality.
This could easily be morphed into a global project. Spread the word to other physics teachers using your blog and Twitter. Create a hashtag that will be used solutions are posted. Post a "problem of the week" and encourage teachers to incorporate the problem into their instruction. Imagine having solutions from learners all over the world! I'm getting goosebumps! :-)
Happy learning!
Dr. Dell