Start with a Question

Click here to see my guest post for Voxer. When it comes down to it, we humans crave real relationships. This is true within our families, with friendships, and with professional networking. When building a professional network far beyond the workplace, social media can be a powerful tool. The past few months I've been involved in a few projects meant to get the word out to teachers that social media can get them connected to like-minded positive colleagues near and far. Educators can find inspiration for innovative teaching practices, technology integration, and can even reach out to experts and authors on their students' behalf. The summer Larry Magid and I co-authored The Educator's Guide to Social Media , which was published by ConnectSafely , to help teachers and administrators understand how to navigate online communication using these powerful tools. One of the services mentioned in the guide is Voxer . This is how they describe themselves: After ...

This week I had the honor of working with my colleague, Julie Cremin , to facilitate our school's in-house summer EdTech conference. It is meant to help inspire teachers at our school to set new goals for engagement and tech integration in their classrooms. My intro to the PLN session. The thing is, although teachers know technology has the potential to change the way students learn, many do not know that it can change the way they develop as professional educators. Our teachers spend much of their time putting their students first, so Julie and I felt strongly that part of teacher EdTech training should be about the educators. After all, the students would benefit from their teachers' growth in the end, right? Near the end of our 3 day conference, the final session I facilitated was about the power of building a PLN (Professional Learning Network) through social media. First I defined PLN for the teachers who joined the conversation. The group of people a learner in...

As educators, we become accustomed to both operating as experts in solitude and collaborating with colleagues. In what is surely among the top collaborations of my career, I had the good fortune to talk and think and laugh and write with Larry Magid , CEO of ConnectSafely and established technology journalist with CBS News, Huffington Post,  San Jose Mercury News , and several others. He brought his expertise with the latest in privacy policy and the functional possibilities of the tools. I brought my experience from the classroom and how social media can connect students and teachers with the world outside their classroom like never before possible. The result is this comprehensive guide: Click to see the full text pdf of the guide. Educators can feel confident that the guide covers everything from communication with parents, to posting images and videos, to online harassment, to building a professional network. It is all in this easily-accessible document that is free. ...

Tonight I had the pleasure of chatting once again with Dr. Will .  This time we talked about the benefits of being a connected educator.   Check out the complete post on his blog .  Watch the video podcast below.

My good friend Tammy Neil , a math and tech integration teacher from Florida, challenged a few of us in the Breakfast Club , a daily educator chat on Twitter (see  #BFC530 ) and active group on Voxer , recently with a great question: "So what?" The context of the discussion surrounded the power of social media and how our students use it.   Alex from Target has gained nearly a million Twitter followers merely because a teenage girl shopping one day snapped a picture of a cute guy working the Target register and posted it.  Tammy asked us, "So what?"  What will this young man do with his now widely heard voice? Will he use it for personal gain, or will he use it to do something important? To make a difference? This prompted me to think about my own history classes and what it is like to be a student in one of those classes.  Why should they learn about history? So what? How will students' time spent in my class make a difference? I have been ...

Some educators from my amazing PLN from #BFC530 created an off-shoot group called Student Connect . We have a Voxer group that allows our students to leave messages for one another from across the country.   Lisa 's 11th and 12th graders in Pennsylvania can talk to my 9th and 10th graders in Massachusetts can talk to Scott 's 7th graders in New Jersey can talk to Sarah 's 7th and 8th graders in Georgia can talk to Becca 's K through 5 students in Texas. We come up with the question for each day and the kids talk to each other about their answers.  They LOVE listening to voices of kids from all around the country thank to Voxer.  They laughed together when eating waffles was mentioned as a fun weekend activity.  They shook their heads together when the stress of the PSATs was mentioned.  One of my sophomores said, " It's nice to know they're the same as us ." Day 1 Question: What do all kids want every teacher to know? Becca used a table as a ...