Choice, Collaboration, and Gratitude!

This week was transformational for me as a social networker! I attended my first #EdCampOmaha and grew as a Tweeter!

I followed the Twitter feed prior to the event. I could tell there was an energy from great people with great ideas involved in this event! When I Tweeted that I was excited to attend my first Ed Camp, four people replied to me with messages of welcome. As I arrived at the event people helped helped me include my Twitter handle on my nametag and understand how the Ed Camp worked. It was great to see so many teachers I work with attending the event so we could learn together. I found sessions to focus as much on collaboration between educators as on content. Everyone was up and moving, learning and sharing ideas. In addition to meeting amazing teachers, I also met a new human robot named Nau and learned how it helps special ed students learn needed skills. By the time I left I had added many people to my Twitter PLN, and many now followed me also. And when I got home I was able to access session notes via the website, and I Tweeted and emailed ideas I shared to teachers I met. It was a growing time for me and I look forward to the next Ed Camp!

Since returning, my Twitter Professional Learning Network has continued to grow! Following the proposed stages of a Twitter User I describe my growth during this week as going from AHA! to Obsession and now it is a Part of Life for me!

Ten highlights I share that made a difference for me in this Twitter growth process:
1. Attend professional events where you collaborate and share your Twitter handle.
2. Follow up with educators you meet at conferences and with whom you may want to collaborate.
3. Share your Tweets widely. I used #edchat in addition to #nebedchat to connect with a wider audience.
4. #Follow and Learn from these Educators. My name was listed in a group of amazing educators and distributed by an amazing collaborator @ShiftParadigm who connected me with many, and I followed up!
5. It's important to thank people for following you! Connect on a personal level.
6. When you see something of interest reply to a Tweet. I got invited to join a book discussion!
7. Write a blog to share original ideas, in addition to retweets, and Tweet the link.
8. Enjoy meeting leaders from around the world! I connected with #aussieED and was wished a "G'Day" to start my morning!
9. Download Tweetdeck.Twitter.com to view your #follows in neat columns.
10. Have fun!

Immediacy of New Literacies Integration

Today I was inspired by our literacy preservice teachers! Just yesterday Kelsey and Ashley, preservice teachers whom I coached in new literacies integration last semester, came in to the current Literacy Methods class to present with me. Our goal was to share a variety of apps, websites, and technology tools that these practicum students could integrate into their Literacy Research Unit.

Using an effective Prezi format, Kelsey Schuettler broke down her new literacies integration by subject area to show how she used various apps and websites on her iPad during Literacy Practicum. Timing was perfect as she demonstrated how she used Popplet Lite and Inspiration Maps in guided reading to record ideas and foster comprehension. This week the current practicum students are creating online graphic organizers and using them in their practicum classrooms so now they have even more classroom examples. Kelsey showed how she used iMovie to create teaching videos on topics such as similies. And for review, Jeopardylabs.com proved to be a successful teaching and learning tool.

After creating a digital story herself in the TEAC 259B technology course Kelsey had her students create ebooks using Little Story Creator to change the ending of a current story. Kelsey honestly told about some apps she tried to use with students that did not work exactly as she had hoped they would. One example occurred as students created a Padlet.com board as a whole class. With everyone posting at the same time students had a difficult time reading because the screen kept moving down. A highlight included in the thematic unit she created and taught was empowering students to publish and share animal research and poems on Google docs. Current students were very interested in how long the process took of checking out laptop carts and publishing. And at just the appropriate time Kelsey introduced students to GoNoodle.Com for a movement brain break!

Ashley Rocke created an Educreations screencast demonstrating how to set up a KidBlog classroom. These step by step directions clearly showed each step in the process using screenshots. She shared ideas of how she had students blog at KidBlog.com to publish their friendly letters in her Thematic Unit. The amazing statistic that every student was successful in blogging during one writing period motivated current preservice teachers to consider blogging as a way of documenting research in their units. Noting that they would have the ability to approve all posts before they are added to the blog lessened the concerns of these preservice teachers. They could teach important social media skills in addition to publishing writing through blogging.

Motivated by these presentations and filled with technology ideas, within 24 hours our current practicum students implemented these ideas in their teaching. One preservice teacher created a KidBlog for her classroom and today she taught students and her CT how to blog! They will be documenting their research learning and process in the coming weeks!

Another preservice teacher created a Prezi to teach vocabulary to Kindergartners today! She effectively created one slide per vocabulary word demonstrating word, picture, sentence. Then she taught children actions to learn the words with meanings.

Yet another practicum teacher created an Educreations screencast to teach the concept of Goods and Services in Unit Studies. She showed the video to teach the concepts, stopping it after questions to encourage student discussion.

And in another classroom a practicum teacher teamed with his cooperating teacher to teach 2nd graders how to create Haiku Deck presentations. After conducting research using print and digital sources, these children created a storyboard to organize their findings. Today they turned their paper planners into very professional presentations where they searched for images to convey learning.

Many ideas are now being considered for the Literacy Research Units from those ideas presented. I continue to be amazed at how quickly teachers can implement technology ideas when they participate in hands-on sessions where teaching ideas are included with use of the apps/websites. I am excited to watch even more new literacies skills taught to children as they demonstrate their learning using multimedia. I would love to know how you integrate new literacies in your classroom!

What I Learned from a 4th Grader

This week I coached as a literacy practicum preservice teacher taught a creative vocabulary lesson. Students worked in groups of three using Trading Cards from ReadWriteThink.org to create vocabulary flash cards. The preservice teacher modeled how to locate the site, create the card, search for and save an image to insert, and email the Trading Card to their classroom teacher. It was amazing at how many of these new literacies skills these 4th graders were already proficient.

When selecting and saving an image one boy explained to me why he wanted to save the image as a PNG while his group members wanted to save as JPG. To explain why, he taught me a new word: "lossy" (los-ee). As this child explained, JPG's save pictures using "lossy" to compress the image making
it smaller to store but changing the look of the image. This process is permanent and can blurr the edges of a picture and make it appear pixilated. Although PNG's take up more space, they are an excellent file for Internet photos. They are "non-lossy" files that compress the image without changing the quality. I was impressed with this child's knowledge not only of how to save an image, but in what format the image should be saved and for what purpose. To make sure that I completely understood this new word "lossy" I did a little online research of my own.

Dictionary.com: "A term describing a data compression algorithm which actually reduces the amount of information in the data, rather than just the number of bits used to represent that information. MPEG and JPEG are examples of lossy compression techniques."

Wikipedia.org: "'Lossy' compression is the class of data encoding methods that uses inexact approximations (or partial data discarding) for representing the content that has been encoded. Such compression techniques are used to reduce the amount of data that would otherwise be needed to store, handle, and/or transmit the represented content."

In addition to the new vocabulary word I learned from this 4th grade technology expert, I was also impressed with the process and products created by the 4th graders in a relatively short class period. Not only did they learn new vocabulary, but they worked with words deeply as they located a picture to express the word, defined it, located a synonym, used it in a sentence, and accomplished all of this using online tools.

This preservice teacher was a risk-taker in the most positive sense of the word. She modeled the process of creating one vocabulary Trading Card. Then she empowered students to collaborate to create their own, while she and I walked around the room assisting as needed. We saw students helping each other and thinking critically as they collaboratively decided which websites, which images, which format to use. Now she would take their emailed Trading Cards and post them at Edmodo so students can access them to review vocabulary in class as well as at home. She expanded the classroom beyond the walls, and all this during a lesson where she was being formally observed by her cooperating teacher.

This preservice teacher understands the necessity of teaching new literacies and knows that students are capable of accomplishing much in a short time when provided with laptops/iPads/devices connected to the Internet. Everyone was a winner in this situation: preservice teacher taught a great lesson, cooperating teacher learned a new Trading Card website, coach learned a new vocabulary word, and students learned vocabulary words plus new literacies skills. Be a risk-taker for your students!