What i Learn from twitter & hashtaGs
This week, my mission was to check out some fabulous teachers on twitter, explore resources they recommend, and find a resource through simply a hashtag. As anyone who has explored twitter knows, the platform is full of awesome educators and fantastic resources, so this was no simple task. These are my results including three educators and one hashtag that lead me to useful resources for my classroom. Hopefully, more educators get on the bandwagon and embrace twitter not only as a communication platform, but as a resource for teaching and learning.
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The first educator I found who offered plenty of great resources was Jennifer Gonzalez. Not only a teacher and mother, Jennifer is an author and successful blogger. Her twitter, blog, and other platforms are full of resources teachers can use in their planning, instruction, and even daily interactions with students. The most beneficial resource I found for 5th though 12th grade is CommonLit. CommonLit is an online library of free literary and informational text. They add new titles daily, and these titles are not only handpicked for students in grades 5-12, but also able to be searched by grade level or topic. I am not the sort of teacher who wants to spend days finding the right age appropriate, well written, easy to distribute, text that I can use in class. With this incredible resource, students and teachers can access the texts quickly and easily. This resource could even be used to flip your classroom! CommonLit comes with many features including parent guides, text dependent questions, and printable texts. Overall, I believe teachers in all older grades can benefit immensely from CommonLit.
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The next educator I discovered was Jeff Charbonneau, a former National Teacher of the Year. From the first tweet I read, "Stop writing your lesson plans. Start writing their lesson plans. Big difference.", I knew he was a great teacher. He teaches chemistry, physics, and engineering with a passion for student centered learning. His twitter feed is full of ideas like students running the classroom, how they deserve the best we can give them, and how we can improve their learning every day.
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The greatest resource I found through Jeff's twitter page, other than the endless inspiration to be better for my students, was my introduction to Education Week, a nonprofit publication centered around education news.
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Education Week is available online or in print form and is a fantastic resource for teachers who want to stay up to date on the latest news surrounding our great profession. From the latest legislation to the newest trends in education, Education Week is full of information which is updated regularly and serves as a one stop shop for anything relating to education news. This publication discusses all topics big and small, public and private education, and even how elections effect teachers across the nation. This is a fabulous resource to help teachers stay informed about the national goings on in their profession. I highly recommend checking it out for yourself.
The final educator I researched was Bill Ferriter. An author, noted edublogger, and senior fellow of the Teacher Leaders Network, Bill has lots to offer teachers both new and veteran. He is a 6th grade teacher with a passion for edtech. He knows that technology can be used to create a richer learning environment, but does not believe that adding technology to a boring lesson will make it better, beliefs I certainly agree with. There have been many lessons in my career as a student where a teacher has tried to appeal to my generation's love of technology only to be bewildered when we didn't enjoy the lesson more, in fact, many of us enjoyed it even less. Adding technology to an already rough lesson doesn't increase engagement or meaningful learning. Adding technology to strengthen a great lesson however, will work wonders in the classroom.
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Bill Ferriter shares tons of excellent resources through his various media platforms, but the one I found most helpful after exploring his twitter feed had to be the Noun Project. The Noun Project is committed to building an online resource of a symbol for every word. They want to create a nonverbal, visual representation to ease communication all over the world. For example, even though chien and dog mean the same thing, unless you speak French, you would not make the connection. If a French speaker and an English speaker saw a simple image of a dog however, both speakers would understand. This resource can provide images to help teachers bring lessons to ELL students, nonverbal students, or visual learners in a way that will make more meaningful learning. It could help students communicate ideas better in the early grades when they may not have the vocabulary mastered, or just make the visual learner more engaged in your class. For whatever purpose, this resource is extremely valuable to educators of all levels of education.
For the final step in my exploration, I had to find a hashtag that would offer various useful resources. When searching through #ditchbook, I knew I had found it. The #ditchbook is a hashtag for "ditching textbooks" in favor of more interactive, learner centered classrooms and instruction. My belief is the more students can do rather than write about doing, the more meaningful their instruction. This hashtag seems to agree.
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The first resource I found here was the hyperdoc. What on earth is a hyperdoc, I asked myself. After doing some research, I discovered that hyperdocs are Google Docs that are self-contained lessons or even units. Developed by Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton, and Sarah Landis, hyperdocs have quickly become a phenomenal resource in the modern classroom. They can contain videos, questions, links to info graphics or other websites, and even tasks for students to complete. Hyperdocs allow teachers to give immediate feedback while students are working through them and allow students to go through material at their own paces. This is, hopefully, the direction we are headed; we want to rely less on the textbooks and more on student directed learning. With endless lessons available and the ability to make your own, hyperdocs are truly a wonderful resource.
The second resource I found in #ditchbook is a site with 100 educational virtual tours. These tours vary from distant museums to historic cities and even to how things are made. With these virtual tours, teachers from elementary can teach about space and teachers from secondary can teach about cardiovascular disease, students can tour college campuses, and teachers can show students what life was like in ancient Rome or what life is like is modern day San Francisco. With less funding than ever and field trips becoming more of a pipe dream than a real possibility, virtual tours are the way of the future. For Kansas students, or students who are interested in learning about life on a farm, the Kansas Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom has begun virtual tours of pig farms through webcam use. Virtual tours are a great way for students to experience and explore places and things they could not actually get to in person and can be a great learning experience when done well. This resource offers tours that can benefit students from early elementary up through the end of secondary so I think it is a fantastic resource to share with other educators and one I'm sure I'll be using in my classroom.
My final resource from #ditchbook is the concept of a Mystery Skype. After seeing several teachers mention it on this hashtag, i just had to check it out for myself. I am enchanted. A Mystery Skype is a 45-60 minute critical thinking challenge that your class takes part in while Skyping with another class somewhere else in the world. Your students' goal is to guess the other school's location (country, state, city, school name) before they guess yours. This is accomplished through asking and answering yes or no questions. Needless to say, I love this idea. It gets students thinking about what kinds of questions they need to ask, it involves their creativity, brings out some competition while simultaneously bringing out the most cooperative behaviors because your class is now a team who wants to guess the right answer first. This concept could even tie in with lessons about the continents of the world, different cultures, even a lesson about time zones would tie in well. There are a million possibilities brought about through this activity and there are many resources if the ones provided aren't enough for what you're looking to accomplish. I love this concept and I'm so glad I stumbled upon it in #ditchbook; what a great way to get your students involved in a way that engages them in critical thinking and requires no textbook!
Overall, I have to say I learned a lot from my twitter exploration. I found some incredible educators to follow, some fun hashtags to keep track of, and even a couple of communities I would like to be a part of. Twitter may have started as a new social media platform, but it can now be an essential piece of your professional development as well.