Final Capstone Reflection Things 1-21

Two technological items that I was introduced to while going through 21 Things for 21st Century Educators were Evernote and Diigo. I think both of these technology applications will make me a better professional because I can learn and share with others so they can learn more as well. I can be more productive and save paper from printing by looking at my diigo highlighted articles and with Evernote I can actually clip the entire article for reading later even if the website disappears. I see Diigo and Evernote as tools that help both me and my students to better summarize and take notes so we can see the similarities and differences between the different author’s points of view. We can also take our summaries and use them to generate and test hypothesis as we extend our knowledge. I think that digital storytelling is a thing that I will be incorporating more into my classroom. I see digital storytelling as a combination of visual learning, digital images, and sometimes screencasting. Digital storytelling requires students to think through what the main message is to be shared with their audience through succinct digital images - either still or video - with a sound track or captions that will catch another person’s attention. Digital storytelling requires students to put into practice all of the NETS-S. Most specifically the student must be creative in production of an original story covering a particular topic that requires multiple types of technology to complete. Students must communicate and collaborate with their team partners as well as consider how they communicate appropriately with their audience. Students must research how to best photograph or video record their subject. Students must evaluate, synthesize, and process all of the information about their subject into the creation of their story. Managing a project like this requires deep critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making to create the best project. Students will become better digital citizens when they see how human, cultural, and societal issues converge in their story. Because of the different facets of a digital story, students will learn how to select and use technological applications to create their story. Trouble shooting these applications and transferring what they know to others will happen because projects require those skills. It will be exciting to see what happens as I use digital storytelling with my students. One thing that I will use to continue growing professionally is developing my professional learning network through Twitter. I want to give myself 15 minutes a day to log in, read the pithy thoughts of others and read through linked articles that others have found useful, and collect their tweets in my diigo library or collect the articles in my Evernote notebook. I also want to interact with the individuals I follow on twitter by commenting on their tweets and links that they share. My interaction on Twitter has been a priceless to my growth and ability to connect with others who think deeply about ideas that I care about and share what they learn with others. One aspect of digital citizenship that I want to do well and teach my students and co-workers to do well is to create a positive digital footprint. I want students to see how I interact with people on Twitter and in my blogging and for them to model that behavior in their own online presence. I want students to understand that there must be boundaries about what personal information is shared online. I want them to live a life without regret and guilt over a status update, photo or video that they have uploaded. I want to remind them of the Golden Rule - treat others as you would want to be treated. I want them to think critically about how they use digital resources and to contribute to online communities in a positive way to build up others. My views have been widened through this course because I have come to see how wide technology is and where students could get into situations where negative choices could be made. Helping students have positive experiences and helping students learn positive ways of behaving will make all the difference as I move on in the way I educate young people about technology.

How to use Twitter for Personal Growth

I am working on a story boarding exercise to create a digital story of how to use Twitter for Personal Growth. Have I missed anything in my story boarding that would be necessary to make my story better? I updated my presentation to include @ mentions as communications tools.

Thing 17 Professional Learning Networks

Wow, MACUL is free!  I had a friend who talked about attending the MACUL conference and the information he was sharing was excellent and gave me tools that I have been able to use in my classroom to improve instruction. It is awesome that the purpose of MACUL is to keep up with the ever changing world of educational technology, collaborate with people who enjoy using technology in their classroom, and learn new things from those that are members in MACUL. I can contribute to an organization like this by my excitement to use technology to improve instruction and support my students new learning.

LearnPort is great and it is how I learned about the Calhoun ISD courses. I like LearnPort because it leads me to webinars that I could watch to grow as an individual and get involved with groups of people who are doing technology based things like I do. I am glad places like LearnPort exist because it inspires me to connect with others to grow as a professional.

The purpose of Twitter, Facebook, and MACULspace is to connect with others who are excited about learning about what others are doing and how we can join others in doing things we find interesting. I see the greatest pro of Twitter is its linear nature. I can go through my tweetdeck with my multiple columns of hashtags and read what is important to me with #edtech or #edchat or #mathed. Tweetdeck helps me not be distracted by streams of information that are unimportant to me or totally off the topic I am interested in at the moment. Another pro of Twitter is that you can follow what another person tweets about without being a member on twitter and without them necessarily following you back. For people that are hesitant to use a social media platform, twitter allows an individual to see a stream of tweets without requiring a sign in. But that leads to a con for Twitter where if I want to communicate with someone on Twitter, I must be signed in to my account. A pro for Facebook is that many people use it personally so that a transition to professional use isn’t so daunting. However a con of Facebook is that you have little control over the stream of content that comes through your news feed and much of the content can be distracting from a professional viewpoint. Although MACUL looks like a great professional organization, MACULspace seems to have gone the way of Myspace, because there seemed to be little relevant new content there. Instead MACULspace seemed to point to twitter as the location to get up to date information. I know that I appreciate social networking sites that make my professional growth easier, not more complicated and distracted. For me Twitter has become my go to social media and networking site for its ease of use and linear stream of content.

Connected Educator Month

http://www.stevehargadon.com/2012/07/connected-educator-month-week-ones.html

Ideas and activities for connected educator month.

Reflections on Connectedness as a Standard

Quote from http://esheninger.blogspot.com/2012/08/connectedness-as-standard.html

"Your PLN will provide you with the seeds of change, but is up to you to plant, take care of, and cultivate them in order to witness their growth and development into transformative culture elements."

This makes me think of the key to spending time getting but then having the time making what I just received reality in my classroom.  Having a maker culture within the people that I work with is very important to me.  There are so many things to make - lessons, problem based learning activities, videos, multi-media, blogs, etc.