The biggest advantage of using Twitter is to be able to connect with inspiring teachers worldwide. If this is your first time using Twitter I would suggest to start by reading this simple Twitter Handbook for Teachers.
Due to the all the possibilities Twitter offers it has become a wonderful tool to explore and integrate in our classrooms. Take a look a the Top 100 Tools for the Twittering Teacher and you will certainly feel overwhelmed!! Bear in mind that as teachers we need to determine when new technologies are appropriate to build a twenty-first century teaching and learning scenario. We need to remember Mark Pegrum words ” Educators need a clear sense of the social, sociopolitical and ecological embeddedness of technology in order to incorporate it effectively into their teaching”
Many teachers are using Twitter in their classrooms. Below you will find thought-provoking links to help you integrate Twitter effectively.
How would you use Twitter with your students? Unfortunately I am not allowed to use the original version of Twitter at school therefore I have to use Twiducate a social networking site for school.
Which are the literacies we need to learn in order to prepare our students for the 21st century?
Digital literacies is “the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers
Literacy has not become technological, but there has been a shift from print to digital technologies, and with this, the emergence of new families of literate practice. On the basis of this, theorists of digital literacies argue that the revolution in communication and information technologies has created new types of textual surface and hence, new literacies (Bigum & Lankshear, 1997; Durrant & Green, 2000).
Mark Pegrum arrays a spectrum of literacy skills into four “literacy groups”.
1- Language literacies Check this online journal http://www.langandlit.ualberta.ca/ full of interesting examples on how teachers used Language literacies in the classroom
“hyperlinks are a new type of punctuation, but instead of telling you where to stop, they tell you where to start” —David Weinberger
Hypertext changes the way we read and write. Hypertext is text which is not constrained to be linear.
Hypertext is text which contains links to other texts. The term was coined by Ted Nelson around 1965
HyperMedia is a term used for hypertext which is not constrained to be text: it can include graphics, video and sound , for example.
M. Wesch created a very clear video explaining the concept of Hypertext
Mark Pegrum reports that the New London Group has been talking for a long time about Multiliteracies . We need to educate students in video, audio etc literacies. We are moving to the Web 3.0 a web that will look more to a virtual world.
2-Information literacies
Once we start navigating the ocean of possibilities Internet offers we feel overwhelmed by the information overload we are exposed to. Currently in the Multiliteracies Evo session we are dealing with Tagging, Rss, Aggregation and Mash-ups all are new concepts for most participants.
Mark says the way “we access and assess information has changed . You need to have a good understand of how search engines work, you have to learn how to tag information and how to filter information. Information needs to be evaluated.”
Information filtering or filtering literacy is a key concept we have to teach our students. Below you will find several definitions of this concept:
“a field of study designed for creating a systematic approach to extracting information that a particular person finds important from a larger stream of information” (Canavese 1994, p.2).
“tools … which try to filter out irrelevant material” (Khan & Card 1997, p.305)
´a process of selecting things from a larger set of possibilities, then presenting them in a prioritized order (Malone et al. 1987).Filtering literacy
We can use different filters as for example a technological filter as Rss or personal /human filters. We need to know how where to find the experts says Mark Pergum
We must understand the concept of Continuous partial attention. “It is a state most of us enter when we’re in front of a computer screen, or trying to check out at the grocery store with a cellphone pressed to an ear — or blogging the proceedings of a conference while it’s underway. We’re aware of several things at once, shifting our attention to whatever’s most urgent — perhaps the chime of incoming e-mail, or the beep that indicates the cellphone is low on juice. It’s not a reflective state.
—Scott Kirsner, “Are your feeds turning into too many long tails? Filter!.” The Boston Globe, June 27, 2005´
3-Connection literacies
It is important how to hook into networks, how can you contribute and influence those networks. Jenkins talks about Particapatory literacies. The following video clearly explains this concept
We need to teach our students what are the consequences of Participatory Literacy . Which are the advantages and disadvantages according to Mark Pergum. Personally I think we have to show students different examples on how Participatory Literarcy has been used.
4-Remix literacies
We are surrounded by this culture. Digital natives are constantly creating new content and sharing it with the world. I found this long video by Connie Yowel a nice example of what is happening in our educational system. The seemingly simple nature of online access to information requires that we give students concrete tools to critically assess the information they find there. How can we make sure that we are engaging students both in the classroom and on their own. As teachers we have a big challenge ahead that can only be achieve successfully if we learn how to network together.
After reading Chapter 1 of Mark Pegrum’s book From Blogs to Bombs I thought it was a good idea to test my digital native students to see if they were able to understand the txtspk in the book.
To my surprise most of them found this activity quite challenging. Out of 25 students not only one was able to understand the whole text.
They couldn`t believe that this was an essay a student sent to their teacher. We had a very interesting debate on text messaging. Next year before doing this activity I will make them read a webpage on Text Messaging and Chat abbreviation.
I would like to test you this time. Have you ever read Romeo and Juliet in Text messaging? Let´s see how much you understand.
Romeo and Juliet – Text Messaging Version by cartoonist Roz Chast, first published in the New Yorker
Act 1
Login: Romeo : R u awake? Want 2 chat?
Juliet: O Rom. Where4 art thou?
Romeo: Outside yr window.
Juliet: Stalker!
Romeo: Had 2 come. feeling jiggy.
Juliet: B careful. My family h8 u.
Romeo: Tell me about it. What about u?
Juliet: ‘m up for marriage f u are.. Is tht a bit fwd?
Romeo: No. Yes. No. Oh, dsnt mat-r, 2moro @ 9?
Juliet: Luv U xxxx
Romeo: CU then xxxx
Act 2
Friar: Do u?
Juliet: I do
Romeo: I do
Act 3
Juliet: Come bck 2 bed. It’s the nightingale not the lark.
Romeo: OK
Juliet: !!! I ws wrong !!!. It’s the lark. U gotta go. Or die.
Romeo: Damn. I shouldn’t hv wasted Tybalt & gt banished.
Juliet: When CU again?
Romeo: Soon. Promise. Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu.
Juliet: Miss u big time.
Act 4
Nurse: Yr mum says u have 2 marry Paris!!
Juliet: No way. Yuk yuk yuk. n-e-way, am mard 2 Rom.
Act 5
Friar: Really? O no. U wl have 2 take potion that makes u look ded.
Juliet: Gr8
Act 6
Romeo: J-why r u not returning my texts?
Romeo: RUOK? Am abroad but phone still works.
Romeo: TEXT ME!
Batty: Bad news. J dead. Sorry l8
Act 7
Romeo: J-wish u wr able 2 read this…am now poisoning & and climbing in yr grave. LUV U Ju xxxx
Act 8
Juliet: R-got yr text! Am alive! Ws faking it! Whr RU? Oh…
Friar: Vry bad situation.
Juliet: Nightmare. LUVU2. Always. Dagger. Ow!!! Logout
How would you use text messaging in your classroom? Would you use this activity? Would you allow your students to submit this kind of text?
I created this short power point presentation 2 years ago. The idea was to show teachers the importance of becoming a networked teacher. This is a paradigm shift for many teachers. We feel comfortable in our four wall classroom. If we are planning to motivate students we have to look beyond these walls and prepare them for the 21st century. Social networks are key elements in todays learning environments. How many teachers are using them to motivate students? Last year I used Ning platforms with my students and the results were really good.
What have you learned in one day thanks to your PLN? A clear example would be Mariel´s blog a participant in Multiliteracies Evo session.
Luckily with the advent of Web 2.0 tools drawing is a very simple task for teachers. In less than 5 minutes I was able to draw a Picasso head.
Sketchfu allows you to create very colourful sketches in seconds. Take a look at a sketchfu I created for one of my Wikis.
Crayola offers a beautiful online drawing and painting site for young learners. You will have to use your imagination and choose the best Crayola product for your piece of Art.
VocabAhead is a very interesting website because learning vocabulary can be FUN.
We help students in building and expanding their vocabulary. We help and support educators in teaching vocabulary. We eat, drink and breathe vocabulary! So our team decided that the name of our website should portray what we enjoy doing most and that is of course, helping everyone with their vocabulary. So, that is the reason we are changing the name of the website from WordAhead to VocabAhead.
English Central is an ideal website to learn vocabulary and at the same time enhance your listening skills. First login to be able to choose from the wide range of categories. There are different levels therefore choose the video that best fits your English level. Listen to the videos with the subtitles and then record your voice.
Spin and Spell is a very visual website ideal for young learners to improve their vocabulary skills. There is a basic set of words you can choose from Transport, Clothes, Food, House and Animals. The wheel will spin if you are able to write correctly the picture you clicked on.
How can students learn all these new words? You can use a cool tool called The Spelling Wizard
Students have to type in 10 new words and they can choose between these two games on how they want to practice the spelling of the new vocabulary they learned.
Currently I am giving an ICT Teacher Training course for Teachers of English. Most of the them use Google as their favourite search engine. As a google fan I really find google to be an excellent tool for teachers but the web is becoming image and video based. Therefore I would to show different ways of searching for information through Visual Search Engines. Below you will find a list of the most common ones.
Kartoo: You can create visual map where related results are linked between them.
Oskope: is a visual search assistant that lets you browse and organize items from Amazon, Ebay, Flickr, Fotolia, Yahoo!Image
Amazon, Ebay, Flickr, Fotolia, Yahoo!Image Search and YouTube in an intuitive way
Viewzi: With Viewzi, you can get results from Google, Yahoo!, and dozens of other great places–all arranged into unique “Views”, each custom-tailored for that content.
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Eyeplorer: It is still in beta. Aims at radically improving the way users interact with knowledge and information online.
TouchGraph:is more precisely a visualization tool (Java-based) for exploring connections between related websites.
Currently I am working in two different schools in the Northern area of Buenos Aires. I feel blessed to be able to teach using the Smartboard in one of the schools. This smartboard was a donation made by one of the parents 4 years ago and I was the first one to use it in the classroom.
As you all know I love technology not only because I consider it a never ending learning process but I have learned throughout the years that it is not the technology what is important but what you do with it.
When the class finished the students left saying:
Miss thank you very much for this class.
We had a great time.
I will tell everybody about this class.
It was great to listen to songs in the classroom and learn so many new words visually.
Bottom line. They were happy. I haven´t felt a class so happy for such a long time.
What are educators missing? What is happening to the traditional classroom? What will happen when these girls have to face other classes were this technology is not being used? What happens if they don´t want to continue learning in the traditional way?
Thanks Nina, Actually I thought at first it was a clever ploy to call that much more attention to the fact that we have MICHAEL COGHLAN joining us at noon GMT
Sorry, my bad. I did not check the Events Calendar. I have deleted that event and added Mike's "Changing Literacies" for tomorrow at 12 gmt. I may even be
Hi Nina, These are two issues. First, John's suggestion that creating the folksonomy in the first place is the first step in "human aggregation" yes indeed,
Hi everyone, I have been spending a number of commutes lately listening to podcasts from the K12 online conference. Several of them address multiliteracies
The biggest advantage of using Twitter is to be able to connect with inspiring teachers worldwide. If this is your first time using Twitter I would suggest to start by reading this simple Twitter Handbook for Teachers.
