Why Schools Should Embrace Social Networking

Back in early 2011, I posted details and resources for creating a fictional Facebook wall for characters in S.E. Hinton's classic adolescent novel, The Outsiders. The post has become one of the most visited on my blog - statics as of this post indicate more than 43,000 views!

Tonight, the Outsiders/Facebook post received an interesting comment. My first impulse was to assume it was someone looking for a flame war and simply delete it, but on second thought, it was just too passionately written to dismiss. Instead, I choose to reply to it. I hope it encourages you to think about the value of social media in education and what fundamental skills we should be teaching students.  Mr. Wildern's comment and my reply are below. 

Dante Wildern,

I appreciate your vehement opposition to my post. Anytime someone shows that much passion, it deserves to be commended.

With that said, I must disagree with you. First, this project was only one assignment in a long series of activities, all of which required face-to-face interaction that included peer groupings, large-group discussions, and Socratic seminars, to name a few. By no means was a classic work of fiction demoralized by what you refer to as "psuedo-social interactions." Pedagogically speaking, the Facebook assignment was an excellent way for students to demonstrate an understanding of complex concepts such as characterization and analysis of plot elements.

Secondly, I disagree that this assignment "goes against everything I should be teaching." Look at any mission statement from any school district in America and you will find something regarding the importance of creating lifelong learners who leave school equipped with skills needed to be successful. Whether you like it or not, online social networking is how the world interacts. If schools don't embrace this, then they risk becoming irrelevant in an ever-increasing digital world.

Again, I appreciate your comment. Conversations like these are what make me proud to be a teacher. Regardless of whether I agree with your opinion or not, you are an articulate and intelligent person. Clearly, your teachers did a good job preparing you for the world of social interactions (which is exactly what this blog is).

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Making Connections with Blogging

Something strange has been going on around here lately. I noticed the other night that blog subscriptions through Feedburner have risen nearly 30% since the beginning of September, and the number of folks following the site has also been increasing in small increments. About a week ago, @timholt2007 posted a video he created that was inspired by one of my previous blog posts. Tonight, I was even greeted by four new comments to various blog posts when I logged in to the Blogger dashboard.

It's hard for me to describe how humbling it is when someone tells me that what I'm doing in my classroom and then sharing via my blog or Twitter feed has value to them. It's quite motivating, actually.

This is what blogging is all about - making connections, finding (and sharing) resources, and developing collegiality that extends far beyond the physical boundaries of geographical location. There is so much value in reading and writing blogs - it's a shame that more teachers don't take advantage.

Below is the video post created by Tim Holt. Watch it, enjoy it, then feel free to take a look around his blog too. And to everyone who wilfully listens to my ideas and tolerates my ramblings - thank you.

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New Year's Reflection 2009

2009 marked the birth of this blog, and it’s one of my goals to continue using it into the new decade. I didn’t want to set a quantitative resolution because a good blog has a natural ebb and flow. I don’t want to post just for the sake of posting. I’d rather have quality instead of quantity. Instead, I thought it would be a good first post of 2010 if I were to choose my favorite posts from 2009. My resolution is to do the same thing next year and hopefully have an even better crop of posts to choose from.

Classroom in the Cloud’s best blog posts of 2009

• 10 Things New Teachers Need to Know
• 9 Concessions Teachers Must Make
• Confessions of a Bad Blogger
• Damming the River
• Dear Former Teachers, I Turned out Okay
• Eat Dinner with your Family!
• Grammar Enthusiasts VS. Dunkin Donuts
• There's No Place Like Home
• Things Students say (And what they Really Mean)
• My First Typecast

New Year’s resolutions are great (and I make/break them annually), but there’s another practice that I think more people should take part in – New Year’s Reflections. It’s okay that you’re four days late; take a few minutes today to think about what you did well last year and what didn’t go exactly as planned. 2010 is your chance.

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3 Reasons Why Teachers Should Blog

A blog is better than a resume


I’ve been chosen several times to sit on a hiring committee for my school. After each applicant leaves the formal interview, the informal one begins. I Google his/her name, email address, former place of employment – anything that may bring up something that will help us make the best possible decision for our students. Most times I find a password-protected Facebook account (at least they know how to stay discreet), but occasionally I find some comments on a message board, or even a blog.

These things give us a better picture of who the candidate is. The formal interview shows us that they know how to dress nicely and can (hopefully) proofread their resume, but a blog tells the whole story. You want to know a teacher’s educational philosophy? Have them write a dozen or so posts, and it will naturally emerge. The results will be more insightful than any pre-practiced interview question response.

Practice what you preach

Teachers not writing regularly is the same as a child being scolded to eat his vegetables while his mother dumps hers into the garbage disposal.

But there’s more to it than just the obligation to write.

Ideally, every student graduating from high school with have the ability to write. They learn how to write opinion pieces, compare/contrast expositions, research papers. We teach them the skills, but we don’t make them enjoy using them. They learn writing, but rarely feel writing. Shouldn’t teachers model the idea of writing for personal enjoyment rather than how to write to a rubric or complete a graphic organizer?

Reflection

Much of the teaching experience happens after the lesson. For most, it’s during the car ride home from work when we think about what went on in our classes – what went well, what flopped, what can be done better next time, how we can build on the experience. Putting these ideas into a blog makes them more substantial.

Take, for example, this blog post right now. I’m sitting here sifting through all the reasons why I enjoy keeping a blog. By doing so, I’m getting more out of the experience than if I were to just be thinking about it to myself. Meta-reflecting, I suppose. By putting it into my blog, I am responsible for it – and responsible for holding myself to whatever conclusion I arrive at.

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iPod Touch Home Screen OCD

iTHSOCD - The uncontrollable desire to control both the functionality and the aesthetic properties of the home screen on the iPod Touch.

I am simultaneously coining a new disorder and self-diagnosing myself with it. This brand new disorder is called iPod Touch Home Screen Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (iTHSOCD).

It has been driving me nuts that default apps on the iPod Touch can't be removed. I don't own stocks – I don't need an app staring at me from the home screen to remind me of that fact. There's also an app called Voice Memos for recording reminders and messages, and my iPod (3rd generation touch) doesn't even have a microphone! I don't need this junk!

It seems that that only options to remedy this are to either jailbreak the iPod and risk getting infected by the latest rash of viruses, or to simply drag all the unwanted items onto their own home screen. I decided to play it safe and go for the latter. The apps aren't gone, but they're effectively segregated.

On to my next problem.

Safari comes with the handy option of saving favorites directly onto the home screen. I personally like this because all my frequently visited sites can be grouped on their own home screen as a visually pleasing favorites list. The only problem is that not all of these sites provide visually pleasing home screen icons.


As best as I can tell, Safari uses the default .ico file (that's the little picture that appears in the address bar of a browser) as the home screen icon for sites that are configured for mobile browsers (Bank of America, for example). For all other sites, it just takes a screen shot and uses that. These screen shots are tiny, bland, and basically useless for anything other than making my iPod look kind of unkempt. Here's where the Home Screen OCD kicked in – I figured out a way to give every site an appealing home screen icon.

It's simple but it works. The screen shot Safari uses is literally a shot of whatever is on the screen at the time the “add to home screen” button is pressed. Before pressing the button, all I do is zoom in on either a logo or interesting design element, and viola! Instant home screen icon. This works especially well for blogs or other personal websites.

Home Screen OCD satisfied.

Here is my iPod favorites list, complete with visually pleasing icons.


And if you're interested, here are the links starting at the top left:

School Email – District employee email site
My Blog – You're lookin' at it!
Merit Badge – My band's Myspace page. Not really active these days, but I like to check up on it occasionally
Cool Cat Teacher – Excellent blog by educator, Vicki Davis
2 Cents Worth – Another great education blog
BobUffalo.com – Colleague's fledgling website promoting her children's book series
M&T Bank – Amazingly, this site did not supply its own icon
The Edublogger – Blog sponsored by edublogs.org
TeachPaperless – Great ideas from progressive-thinking Latin teacher, Shelly Blake-Plock
Mike Fisher – PB Works site for my tech integrator pal
Ed Insanity - Blog site of educator, Jonathan Becker

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Using the iPod Touch to Word Process

A glimpse of Zoho on the iPod Touch

Maybe it was too much birthday cake, but last night I had a bit of a stomach ache. I called it an early night and climbed into bed to play with my new iPod Touch.

Years ago I had experimented with students writing on a Pocket PC using Pocket Word. I was hoping to find an app for my ipod that was along the lines of a pocket version of OpenOffice but as far as I can tell, that doesn't exist. Instead I turned to Zoho.com - the leading rival to Google Docs. As far as I'm concerned, the two are equal. The only reason I favor Zoho is because up until recently Google Docs was blocked for us at school.

Toying around with my iPod last night eventually turned into a blog post about the dangers of poor administrative decisions. It was a decent post, but I was more proud of the fact it was written in such an unconventional manner.

I'm proud that this post is being written the same way. Here's my quick how-to for turning the iPod Touch into a portable word processor.

Go to mobile.zoho.com. Saving a shortcut to the home screen creates a very app-like icon. Unfortunately, Google gears hasn't quite found it's way to the iPod yet, so cloud sites only work with a wireless connection. Otherwise, it functions very much as a suitable word processing app.

Notice the Zoho icon at the lower left of my home screen.

Pros

• The iPod Touch keypad allows for surprisingly speedy typing (especially when turned horizontally).

• Because Zoho is a cloud app, work started on the iPod can later be completed or edited on a laptop or desktop computer.

Cons

• Mobile Zoho is missing many of the bells and whistles that the full-scale app boasts. The one most sorely missed is probably spell check. As a Firefox user, I've grown used to a built in spell check when I type anything.

• Mobile Zoho does not support direct export to other sites. This means after I'm finished typing this post, I'll have to copy and paste it into the Blogger editor before publishing.

• Creating a new document is not a problem. Neither is adding text or saving it. There's one major glitch with using Zoho on the iPod Touch. For some reason, after the document is saved and closed, it is no longer able to be edited again on the iPod. It can still be opened and viewed, but clicking on the text field does not bring up the key lard and cursor. I sent a support request to the nice folks at Zoho - if I hear back, I'll update this post.

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Am I a Selfish Blogger?

I read a post on CopyBlogger today titled "The 3 Fatal Diseases that Kill Good Blogs." I don't know if my blog constitutes as good but I have learned a lot since I started posting to it nearly 7 months ago. I keep an eye on the guest counter so I know at least some people are visiting, and it just tickles me when one of my blog posts gets retweeted. That's why I was eager to make sure I wasn't leaving myself open to a blog-fatal infection.

The first two diseases focused on folks looking to make their blog into a profession, so that simply didn't apply to me. The third in the list made me think, however.

Here's how the post described it:

The Selfish: These bloggers just don’t see the point in networking or in spreading goodwill. They certainly don’t take the time to foster relationships that can help them reach the next level, including creating a solid relationship with their audience.

Am I guilty of being a selfish blogger? I didn't think so at first. I'm pretty active on Twitter both in tweeting my own posts, and retweeting others, but does that count as spreading goodwill? I almost always respond to comments left on my blog and I try to comment of blog posts of others that I find interesting. That counts a fostering relationships, right?

But something about the last part of the selfish blogger description left me feeling a bit guilty. I keep a list of blogs saved to my favorites, but I don't make them public. I don't have a blogroll on my blog.

I know how excited I get when I spot my blog listed on someone's site. I should give credit where credit it due to the blogs that I enjoy reading.So I've decided to add a blogroll.

Maybe I have been a little selfish.

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Blogging Challenge

Have you ever heard of Centralia, Pennsylvania?

It's is a small coal mining town similar to many other small towns across America. The one difference is that Centralia has been on fire since 1962.

There are conflicting stories as to how this happened, but the basic idea is that a fire started in the mines beneath the town and was never extinguished. Rather than live with the dangerous sink holes and toxic gases, residents fled to safer ground. Today, Centralia is a modern day ghost town.


I see blogs like Centralia all the time - sites that were once established and thriving suddenly left derelict by their owners. Do one of these blogs belong to you? If so, here's an open challenge. Log in and post something new. Let's revive some of these abandoned blogs! If you do, post your link in the comments below!

Experts predict Centralia will continue to burn for the next 100 years or so. Let's not wait that long for you to update your blog.

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My First Typecast

Typecast - The act of using a typewriter to compose blog posts. Once completed, the piece is scanned and then uploaded.

Here's my first typecast. I wanted to embed it, but I forgot to narrow the margins to fit on the page. To read, kindly click on the thumbnail below. Comments definitely welcome!

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How to Set up a Blog

I spent my free period at work today helping a colleague create a blog for a graduate class she will begin teaching in a few weeks. She was excited about the idea of having place where she could share her thoughts and ideas, as well as receive reflections from her students.

Her first post is going to be instructions for her students so they can create their own blogs, and hopeful encourage the class to establish an online community. It's such a good idea, I thought I'd include those instructions here as well.

My favorite blogging site is of course, Blogger (my least favorite, as mentioned earlier is EduBlogs), but feel free to explore other sites such as WordPress or TypePad.

1. Go to Blogger.com – This will be where you log in to your account once it is created. Before that can happen, you will need to create an account. Click on the large orange “create an account” button.
2. Enter the email you wish to associate with your blog. Enter your name, choose a password, correctly retype the captcha, and click “continue” at the bottom of the page.
3. Choose a title for your blog. This will be displayed at the top of your blog, so make it interesting. Finally, choose a url. This should be something that fits your blog topic but is easy to remember. The final url for your blog will look something like this: http://yourblogname.blogspot.com
4. Last step! Choose a blog template. This determines how your blog will look to visitors. The basic layouts consists of a header with the title of your blog, a main area where your posts will be displayed, and a sidebar for other information such as links, a bio, or a blog archive list. If you don't see one that you immediately fall in love with, no biggie. It can be further customized or changed all together at any time.

A Few Warnings:

• Blogging in the classroom can be a genuine learning experience, but only if your students buy into the concept. In order for the students' blogs to become a network, each needs to contribute regularly both to their own blog posts, and on other blogs in the form of comments. The general rule of thumb is that good blogs are updated at least every three days.

• Despite their obvious potential, some schools block access to blog sites due to the unpredictable nature of the content they may provide. Before creating your own blog, make sure your intended audience will be able to see it.

• (This warning comes with a story first, so sit tight – there's a moral to all of this.) As an undergraduate, I did not have a very good cooperating teacher at one of my placements. He did, however, leave me with an analogy that I think about all the time while teaching. He said that dealing with students is like trying to hold a clump of mud. Squeeze too tight and the mud will push through your fingers, but hold it too loosely, and the mud will drip out. It's a delicate process, holding mud. And it's a delicate process using blogs in a classroom. Give the students too much structure and direction, and their posts become static and unimaginative, but too much freedom risks lack of focus or purpose.

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Hello World!

This blog began in the Spring of 2008 on edublogs.org under the simple moniker Integrating Technology. I was always on the hunt for some new technology to use in my classroom, and I thought a blog would be a nice way to share these findings with other like-minded educators. Although I was comfortable using Blogger and even Wordpress, Edublogs seemed like the obvious choice for reaching my target audience. While this may have been the case, the service itself was utterly disappointing. Layouts were limited, formatting changed randomly and without logical reason, and the site itself often loaded at a snail's pace or not at all.

I had an intended audience, but no real focus or purpose, hence the generic blog title and sub-title (A blog for technology, Web 2.0, and general nerdery in the classroom). In establishing this new blog, I had the chance to reflect on the old, and I think the new name - Classroom in the Cloud - is much more fitting.

http://integratingtechnology.edublogs.org/ will stay up, so feel free to check out some of the old blog posts. I try to update at least once a week, but perhaps that will increase with the motivation of a site that actually works.



9.15.08 - Presenting Sliderocket

8.27.08 - Visual Definition of Web 2.0

7.18.08 - A New Approach to Grading

6.27.08 - Inspiration VS. Bubbl.us

6.22.08 - Grow Your Own Sprout

6.16.08 - May I have a Wordle With You?

6.11.08 - Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

6.03.08 - The Twittering Teacher

5.29.08 - Web Favorites

5.27.08 - Where do I Begin?

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