Final Reflection 543

As we come to a close on this course we have been asked to reflect on our learning. The first thing that comes to mind is the fact I can’t believe we’re done already. I feel like we just started. It doesn’t seem possible that the semester is about over. This being said, I have really enjoyed myself or I wouldn’t be so surprised that our time together is over. When I signed up for this course last summer I was excited but wasn’t sure what to expect. I have used Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram for quite some time but hadn’t ever thought to use them as a resource or tool for my practice. This has been a great course.

What I’ve spent some time pondering is if my current district is ever going to jump on the social media for schools bandwagon. Right now there is a strict no social media allowed attitude going on. When I mentioned to both my building principal and the superintendent I was taking this course there was no excitement. All employees have been told to take down anything on Facebook that says we work for the school district just in case something is posted that might be questionable. Which makes me sad I can’t implement some of the great things I’ve learned in this course.

One of the best things I did this semester in regards to this course is the self-driven professional development. I loved the groups I found on Twitter that I have since connected with amazing educators all over the world. And this is something that will continue way past the culmination of this course. I love that we had the flexibility to find PD that was a fit for us. This is such an issue when dealing with district-level PD, which has been a hot-button issue in my building the last couple of weeks. These Twitter PD groups are such a great resource that I will totally continue to utilize and expand upon moving forward.

Another tool I gained from this course was curation tools. I’ve used Pinterest for quite a few years but hasn’t thought of it as a tool to use with my students. This really opened my eyes to ways students can curate and share with each other. I can see using some sort of curation tools with my middle schoolers in the near future.

Blog

I have rather enjoyed the blogging structure of this course. I always think I would love to blog but it’s one of those things that gets pushed to the backburner, so it’s been nice to have a blogging requirement for this course. I think it’s been great to reflect on the coursework as we have gone through the modules. It’s also been nice to read through the blogs of fellow learners. I have learned so much from others in this course. This is the last course I am taking before Portfolio and I feel it has been a great experience take this course at this time in my MET program.
That being said I think I would give myself a 75/75 on the blog posts.

Social Media Policy

As a student at Payette Lakes Middle School, you are expected to: Be Safe, Respectful and Responsible. These three tenents extend into all aspects of being a student, which includes social media and other online resources.

Be Safe

• Do not share your passwords with anyone, this includes your best friends. If you ever want to change your password contact Mrs. Sinclair in the library. She controls your PowerSchool, Schoology, and school network passwords. If you want to change any other passwords contact your teacher.
• Log out of all school devices when you are done using them. You do not want others to have access to your accounts or to be able to post as you. This is especially important on tablets and iPads. They will not log you out of apps just by shutting off the device, you must log out of the individual apps and websites.
• Don’t give out personal information online. This includes your address, phone number, social security number, or birthdate. This information should be kept confidential.

Be Respectful

• Use school appropriate language in all posting on discussion boards and school social media posts. If you wouldn’t say it in the classroom, don’t say it online either.
• Cite your sources. Make sure you give credit where credit is due. If you didn’t create the article don’t post it under your name without giving the author credit.
• Respect any brands or trademarks that you may use the image of. Also, it is not respectful to post images of your classmates without their consent. Some students, or their parents. choose not to have their pictures used online. You need respect their choice.
• Cyberbullying will be taken very seriously. Cyberbullying, including, but not limited to, using any electronic communication device to convey a message in any format (audio or video, text, graphics, photographs, or any combination thereof) that intimidates, harasses or is otherwise intended to harm another individual.
  • If you are being cyberbullied report it to the principal ASAP. If you see any cyberbullying you are required to report it to the principal. If you are uncomfortable reporting the cyberbullying by yourself either another student or a staff member may accompany you to the principal.
  • If needed, the authorities will be notified of the cyberbullying incident.

Be Responsible 

• You are responsible for using the school districts network appropriately. You are to use the network for school-related educational purposes only.  See the District’s Policy 8410.
• You are personally responsible for the content you publish online. Remember, the internet never forgets. This means everything you publish will be visible to the world for a very, very long time. Use your common sense. If you have any questions about the nature of your post ask your teacher first.
• Social Media is another resource in your toolbox. If you are not responsible you will not be permitted to continue the use of that resource.
• Read any article or link before you share/retweet it. It might have inappropriate material within that you wouldn’t normally want to share.

Lastly, you are a Payette Lakes Middle School Viking while at school and when in the community, which includes our online communities. We live in a small community and we want the people in this community thinking our students are wonderful because they are! Keep this in mind when you are posting anything online.

 

 

References 

Adidas Group (Ed.). (n.d.). Adidas group social media guidelines. Retrieved November 5, 2017, from http://blog.adidas-group.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/adidas-Group-Social-Media-Guidelines1.pdf

Dunn, B. (2015, January 10). An editable social media policy for schools that works. Retrieved November 5, 2017, from http://dailygenius.com/editable-social-media-policy-for-schools/

McCall-Donnelly School District (Ed.). (2012). District-Provided Access to Electronic Information, Services and Networks. Retrieved November 5, 2017, from https://www.mdsd.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=603&dataid=1228&FileName=8410%20District-Provided_Access_to_Electronic_Information_Services_and_Networks.pdf

Russell, J. (2017, September 29). How to Write a Social Media Policy for Your Company. Retrieved November 5, 2017, from https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-policy-for-employees/

 

Social Media in Learning Case Studies

I had originally intended to use Scoop.it again to complete this curation assignment, but as other people have noted it wasn’t free to make another curation list.  I decided to use Padlet. I’ve seen it used and I’ve used other people’s Padlet lists but this is the first time I created a Padlet. It was quite easy, very intuitive to use. I was happy that was the case since I hadn’t intended to use it from the beginning.

Padlet List

This assignment took some digging. There are SO many resources out there that are just lists of ideas for teachers to try but finding information on an actual teacher using those ideas was much harder. Or I was finding quite a few examples at the university level and not in the K-12 setting.

One item that I found interesting was using social media to talk about social justice issues. The example was from the Ferguson protests last year and how hashtags drove that protests. At my middle school level that seems too advanced but I could see using it at a more developmentally appropriate topic.

I was pleasantly surprised to read about how students were taking the reins on the use of social media. One of the articles I found was how students worked with a marketing company to promote their school instead of having the marketing company making their own video. This seems like such a great idea! Have the students drive what is happening instead of the other way around.  What was great about that is the students shared their final product and they have the right friends or followers on social media sites so they were hitting the correct market segment.

PLE Diagram

I had a hard time nailing down an idea for what I should do for my diagram. I’m not an artistic person by nature. Then I saw so many creative ways other people were posting, which made me even more confused.

While I was driving yesterday it came to me that it’s like a shoe rack. When I get ready to leave the house every day I have to chose what shoes to wear. I have so many options available to me, depending on many different variables I will choose the right shoes for the day. This is the same when I thought of Personal Learning Environments. When I need to create something I have choices and depending on the variables I will choose the right tool for that job.  Sometimes the resource could be used to communicate, create, or collect information and I might not need it to do all three but it’s available to me. I am also much more apt to chose some options over others because I’m more comfortable with them. This class has forced me to expand my horizons, in a good way.

When I had an opportunity to look at my classmate’s diagrams. I was blown away at how creative they were. It’s so awesome to see so many different representations and in so many forms. I was really amazed at Tiffany’s hand-drawn diagram! Wow, that’s a talent that I am jealous of. When looking at everyone’s diagrams there are similar resources used on quite a few, like Twitter, Google Apps, and Facebook.  Then there were resources I am still unfamiliar with because it’s not in the teaching area, like Jennifer’s Real Appeal and MHE HealthyU.   This reminded me that there are so many more resources out there that I haven’t used yet that could be a valuable resource to me. Plus, as we know, technology resources are changing all the time and if you don’t keep up it’s easy to miss out on great resources!

 

 

Live PD

Twitter Chats 

I’m so glad I used Tweetdeck for these chats! I think I would have had a really hard time keeping up otherwise.

#whatisschool
I really like that this chat had their questions on a website prior to the chat. This was super helpful so I knew what to expect beforehand. I was surprised that the moderator said hello to every person who was participated, or at least it seemed that way. He also encouraged people to follow each other. I was surprised by the fact that many of the educators seemed to already know each other. The topic for today was Embracing Student Interests. This was really interesting, I don’t think much time is dedicated to talking about this. It seems like a large share of time is focused on standards and testing and achievement and the list goes on. It was refreshing to talk about students interests and how others incorporate it into their classroom.

#mschat
This group is designed for Middle School teachers. The chat was focused on hand on learning and how technology can be integrated into that learning method. Joy Kirr joined this chat.  I have been using resources from her in my classroom, I felt like there was a celebrity on my Twitter feed!  After participating with #whatisschool I had a hard time finding the questions when they would quickly pass, I really did appreciate having the questions on a separate page.  It’s so great to share resources with educators all over the world. I’ve been frustrated with teachers in my district stealing my projects. I am in the process of changing a project I loved doing because now the students are doing a similar project in 5th grade. The teacher’s daughter was in my class and she took the idea, which would be fine if our district was larger. I teach every 7th graders in the district. This way we can share, steal and use without danger of this happening. I also appreciated the focus was on middle school, it wasn’t as broad of an audience as the previous chat which was helpful.  

#21stedchat
This chat focused on Digital Learning. I was pleasantly surprised to see some people from other chats also involved in this chat as well. There was also another member of our class in this chat. I’m less apprehensive to add my opinion then I was at first. It’s so nice to have people give resources they’re using in their classrooms/schools. I also feel supported participating in these chats. It is encouraging interacting with dedicated educators. The fact they are on Twitter on a Sunday night conversing with other educators says a lot of who they are on Monday morning.

#caringclassroom
This was a much smaller group, which was easier to keep up with the chat. The moderator did a good job of responding to most of the comments made by the participants. This one was also scheduled for only 30 minutes so it was half the time of the other chats I have done.   Since it was only 30 minutes the time seemed to fly by, but since the group was smaller there was less collaboration. The topic was on student engagement/student interests. I didn’t feel as I gleaned as much new information from this group, but I liked being able to share with the other educators present.  

 

Webinars 

10/5 LWML Committee Meeting

I have taken a volunteer position with the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League and since we are all over the country we had our first meeting via WebEx. There were six people on the meeting including myself. Most people did not have any problems logging on and participating. However, the pastor who is our counselor for this committee kept having audio issues. He kept moving from phone to computer to talk. It was somewhat amusing. This meeting allowed all the committee members to ask any questions since we are new to this committee and will be meeting in St. Louis in two weeks for an all-committees meeting at the National headquarters. We will be meeting via WebEx quite regularly so we will not have to travel for our work.

10/14 Hack the Classroom- via Facebook

I’ve never been a fan of Facebook Live, but this was an interesting medium to take a webinar. The speakers were excellent and inspiring. The main speakers were Alan November, Tammy Dunbar, Erikk Hood, and Toney Jackson. The webinar was almost two hours so there was so much to learn from these amazing educators. I haven’t been super excited about Microsoft in my classroom, especially since we were a Google school prior to the move to Office 365 a few years back. This webinar showed me some great ways other educators are using Microsoft in their classrooms. I am excited to try using Sway and OneNote in my classroom. I would like to spend some time learning OneNote. I’ve not used it in the past.
Some other great ideas I loved were: Have the kids make a video for Back to School Night instead of the teacher talking at the parents, Tech Buddies- working with a lower level class, Skype in the classroom, and a Global Project. 

10/14 Getting Started with Genius Hour

This webinar was hosted by AJ Juliani via Webinar Jam. This was software I’ve never used before, but it worked similarly like other webinar tools. Since I am trying Genius Hour in my classroom this year this Webinar was awesome! I want my students to be lifelong learners, which is one of the goals of Genius Hour. I took copious notes during this webinar.  I loved hearing from the person who has been credited for starting this project and another teacher who has been using Genius Hour in the class and had some great ideas. I loved the idea of a Shark Tank Pitch- bring in other teachers, parents, peers, etc to have the students present their idea to. Also, having an Epic Failure Wall to show students its okay to fail and the ideas of Failing forward means you are moving forward. There was so much to glean from this webinar! I screenshot quite a few screens so I could keep some of the slides. However, I was annoyed that it turned into a advertisement for the Genius Hour Master class.  I also wasn’t able to ask any questions because my chat feature was disabled. 

10/15 4T Virtual Conference on Digital Writing: The Rhetorical Triangle in Cyberspace

This webinar was taken on Blackboard Connect. There were 42 people present for this course. The content was on moving writing to the online world and what challenges that created for both the student and teacher. This was a really interesting topic I hadn’t really put much thought into beforehand. The speaker shared his use of Tumblr in his AP Lit class, I’m not sure this would be the best fit for middle school but I hadn’t thought of using this media source before. His point was that students can find community with others outside of their physical community. They are reaching a much more broad audience than in a traditional classroom setting. I really liked how he referred to a digital footprint as a digital tattoo, that seems much more fitting. Both of the speakers talked about how the 5-paragraph essay is very limited, as is literary analysis. They do not prepare students for life outside of school. Using technology, now the audience has the ability to respond- perhaps immediately. They are able to communicate with other classmates which creates a different dynamic than within a physical classroom discussion. Since other students know each other there is a difference in the content they create online with each other and they also know the teacher is watching. This is something worth pondering: Does this make it artificial or not?
Another idea they presented was our online identity. The different personas we create on different platforms. Are we the same person in all of them or are we different? Questions to consider: Who are you? How do I want to be perceived? These can be complicated for both students and teachers.

Working Together from Afar

This assignment made me nervous. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but it gave me anxiety. This anxiety had nothing to do with my team members, it had to do with not wanting to let me team members down. I pride myself on being a great team member, but I felt like I was not as helpful as I could have been. I missed a Facebook message which, once I was made aware, gave me anxiety. Hopefully, my group doesn’t want to strangle me. Sorry ladies! I think what was giving me the largest amount of anxiety is that I know some of my team lives on the East Coast so I didn’t want to cause them stress when I was working late in Moutain Time.

I think what my group came up with turned out quite nice. Using Google Docs worked quite well, we could comment and communicate quite easily that way. I think we were able to voice our opinions on what should or shouldn’t be included in the checklist without any issue. All in all, I shouldn’t have had so much anxiety about it. Maybe next time I’ll just take a deep breath and check Facebook one more time.

Digital Footprint

It is quite interesting to Google myself. I was surprised what I found. At first, I just put my name in the search box and I didn’t find much accurate information. It pulled up my Facebook and LinkedIn pages, as well as a few photos I had posted on Facebook. Most of the other information it found wasn’t about me. Apparently, there are quite a few other Tina Bentley’s out there! But then I started putting in my name with some names of locations of places I’ve lived as an adult and it was quite easy to find better information.  I found my name on a list of committee members for a church organization, I found my grandfather’s obituary with my name in it, my school web page, the school district’s coach information page, and more. What was interesting was that some of the information that was on some of the websites was not accurate, like who I’m related to.

Below I created an infographic on Digital Footprint tips.

References

Anderson, Steven. (n.d.). Teachers, take care of your digital footprint. Retrieved from http://www.teachhub.com/teachers-digital-identity.

Erskine, M. (2014, December 9). Why you should be aware of your digital footprint. Retrieved from  http://blog.online.saintleo.edu/career-advice/Why-You-Should-Be-Aware-Of-Your-Digital-Footprint.

How to Clean Up Your Online Digital Footprint. (2017). Retrieved from https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-privacy-clean-up-online-digital-footprint.html

Staff, T. (2016, April 14). 11 Tips For Students To Manage Their Digital Footprints. Retrieved from http://www.teachthought.com/technology/11-tips-for-students-tomanage-their-digital-footprints/

Taub, A. (2012, June 7). 5 things needed to improve your digital identity. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/alextaub/2012/06/07/5-key-things-needed-to-improve-your-digital-identity/#4be6db24932b.

 

#TweetforPD

I have recently embraced Twitter for finding and sharing some really cool educational ideas/techniques. I have a colleague tell me they were so glad I was posting and retweeting some of the resources I was finding on Twitter because it was helpful to her as well. I know that if I am in a bind and need some ideas for use in my classroom all I have to do is do a Twitter search to see what other teachers are doing in their classrooms.

With this assignment, I set up my TweetDeck to follow the following hashtags: #WhyITeach, #geniushour, #middleschool, #PBL, #growthmidset, #worldgeochat, and #flexibleseating.

This year I am starting Genius Hour in my classroom. Following this hashtag, I hope to find some new tools to use in my class as well as seeing what other awesome educators are doing with Genius Hour in other places.  I am new to Genius Hour so I am learning how to better use Genius Hour in my ELA classroom. I am so incredibly glad to have Twitter as another resource for me, as I am the only one doing this in my school.

This year I have also implemented some flexible seating into my classroom. I purchased some cushions for sitting on the floor and a standing desk. I also have a built-in countertop where students may choose to sit at, which is on a platform so they are sitting a little higher than the students at the other tables.  Following this hashtag, I have seen some other examples of what other teachers are doing in their classrooms. Much of the classrooms using flexible seating seem to be in the elementary setting so it will be nice to see what other middle-level teachers are doing to make flexible seating work in their classrooms as well. I have had success with it so far, hopefully it keeps working well throughout this year!

My teaching partner and I are focusing on growth mindset this year. We are having students do growth mindset bellringers in both of our ELA classes. This hashtag has a lot of great resources for growth mindset, but not all are in the classroom. I am also a coach so seeing other coaches posting about growth mindset is helpful to me with my volleyball athletes outside of the classroom as well. I know I can always become a better teacher and coach than I was before and following this hashtag is incredibly encouraging.

Module 2: Creative Expression

 

This assignment took me a while to land on a format for my creative expression. I thought quite a bit about what I wanted to include, especially after reading about personal learning communities. I ended up choosing Canva. I use Canva quite often in my classroom and it is easy to navigate.

My image shows Communities of Practice (CoPs), Personal Learning Networks (PLN), and Connectivism. All three of these have their own identity but at the same time relate to one another. That is why I chose to have circular arrows going from each group to the other.

Connectivism Learning Theory is called the learning theory for the digital age. People learn through networking and learning from others. I think YouTube is a great example of that. When someone doesn’t know how to do something they can find a video on YouTube. People are interconnected, they use Google to find answers and they collaborate with other using tools like Office 365.

In the Communities of Practice section, I chose to have images of groupings of people interacting. I see that as more of a structured environment, like formal professional development.  The people involved in them share some sort of identity (Smith, 2003). The images here are sharing and connected to each other.

In Personal Learning Networks there are some social media outlets, such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and Google Hangouts. These are more personalized and user directed. These kinds of outlets help the user to form a community with other users in a more informal way. This can be a group resource for teachers, “I believe the strong community feeling comes from being able to chat with likeminded educators about things you find important in education” (Dober, 2012).

Learning is not one dimensional and takes place in varying places. Through the use of digital space, learning is different than in the classroom. There are so many resources available in the digital world, and this expands into building communities. It’s amazing, and perhaps overwhelming to many, that they don’t need to be directed to learn that they can learn from people all over the world.  I feel blessed to be living in this day and age where I can collaborate with colleagues all over the world through digital spaces like Facebook and Twitter.

 

Refrences

Connectivism. (n.d.). Retrieved September 11, 2017, from http://education-2020.wikispaces.com/Connectivism

Dobler, E. (2012). Professional learning networks: Driving discussions through Twitter. Reading Today, 29(6), 16-17. Retrieved from http://libproxy.boisestate.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=77747575&site=ehost-live

Smith, M. K. (2003). Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger and communities of practice. The encyclopedia of informal education. Retrieved from http://www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm

Social Media Beginings

This is my second to last semester in the Ed TEch Master’s program! On one hand I feel like I’ve just started and on the other hand, I feel like I’ve been working for FOREVER. I’ve been looking forward to taking this course. I am a social media user. I use Facebook regularly, I’m on Twitter and Instagram sporadically, and rarely use Snapchat.  I’m old enough that when I originally joined Facebook I had to have a college email address.

I haven’t used much social media for my own PD. Recently I have started following other educators on Twitter. I haven’t been an active participant other than reading articles or watching videos that have been posted. This summer I attended a conference where one of the presenters showed how she uses Twitter in her elementary class. This was really interesting, especially since my district seems scared by social media.  We don’t even have a district Facebook page. I mentioned to our superintendent that I was taking this class and he wants to chat with me about it later into the semester, so that sounds like a step in the right direction.

My only real expectation is to learn how to take what I already know about social media and figure out how to transfer those skills into my classroom. Also, my sister is a small business owner so she wants me to learn skills I can share with her to use in her business.