Yesterday I celebrated my birthday.  I am incredibly lucky that this year my birthday fell on one of the first days of summer vacation, so I was able to spend the day relaxing at home with my wife and daughter. Throughout the day, my iPad kept displaying happy birthday messages from my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram friends.  I got birthday wishes from co-workers, friends and neighbors I see almost every day, and from former colleagues and friends from school I haven't seen in years.  Each of the birthday messages I received had one thing in common:  each one made me feel appreciated.  Every year I am touched that people take the time out of their day to wish me a happy birthday.

While I consider myself to be blessed with an amazing family and many great friends, all of my students aren't that lucky.  I know that throughout my 9 years of teaching I have had students who don't have people to wish them a happy birthday or to make sure they feel loved and cared for.  Like all teachers, I do the best I can to make sure that the first thing students learn when they walk into my classroom is that I care about them, that I care about more than their score on a standardized test or if they turned in last night's homework assignment.  In order to make sure that all of my students know that I care about them as people I make a very conscious effort to do a few things:

• Find out when each student's birthday is, and tell  every student happy birthday every year.

• Figure out what type of praise students respond to.  Some kids want to be recognized in front of the class, while others would prefer a note, tweet, or a private chat after class. 

• Compliment students on new clothes and haircuts. 

• If a  student looks like they are having a bad day, ask about it - even if they don't want to talk or give the infamous "nothing" response, just asking likely made a difference in the student's day. 

• If a student doesn't turn in an assignment or has his head down, don't judge the student, talk to him about it.  

• Ask about events going on in students' lives.  Find out about last weekend's camping trip, soccer tournament, or whatever activities are important to students. 

Please continue the conversation by leaving a comment to share your best practices to make sure your students know that you care.  

Fox C-6 Technology Team Presentation

This week I have the opportunity to give a brief presentation to my school district's teacher technology team on tech tools to make teachers' lives easier. I am excited for the opportunity to speak to a new audience.  My presentation is below.  Please use the comments section to share some of your favorite tech tools.

Best practices for a class Facebook page

For the past two years, I have maintained Facebook pages for both my Language Arts 1 and Language Arts 2 classes.  While I don't have 100% participation from my student and parents, the students and parents who do use the pages have found them to be very useful communication tools.  Like any tool, it took some experimenting for me to make the most of my page, but once I got familiar with the some of the features of Facebook Pages, my class pages have become very beneficial to me as a classroom teacher.

Here are my 5 best practices for maintaining a classroom Facebook.

1.  Fan Polls

One of my favorite features of Facebook Pages is the polling options.  I like using polls to get feedback on activities and to let students vote for future projects.  Not only does this let me get student opinions and feedback, but also it increases traffic to my Facebook page and gives students an opportunity to be engaged with the page.






To use the poll feature on Facebook, click EVENT, MILESTONE + and select QUESTION.  You can add as many options as you need and can allow your page's fans to include their own answer choices as well.

2.  Facebook Office Hours

When my classes are working on projects, I always advertise office hours for when students are working at home and have questions.  During office hours, students can post on the page wall to ask a question about the project they are working on and I will answer their question in the form of a comment on the student's post.   This is good because I have noticed that many students feel more comfortable asking questions on the Facebook page than in class.  Also, the questions and answers remain available on the wall for other students to reference.

3.  Scheduled posts

Facebook Pages allows users to create posts and schedule the time and date they will appear on their page. Since starting to schedule my posts, I have posted more regularly and intentionally, making my page more valuable for its fans.

To schedule your posts, click on the clock icon at the bottom left corner of the status update box.  Make sure you have established a date founded for your page, then you will be prompted to select a date and time for your post.  Users can schedule as many posts as they would like within the current year.

You can confirm your scheduled posts by viewing the activity log under the EDIT PAGE menu of the admin panel.

4. Student guest posts

The concept behind this is very simple:  teachers have students compose posts to be shared on the class Facebook page.  I have seen this technique used mostly in elementary classrooms, but it can be modified for middle and high school classes as well. Teachers can give students some ownership of the class Facebook page by allowing them to write posts to be published.  In an elementary classroom, students can take turns writing summaries of a particular lesson. In a secondary classroom, students could post a reflection on a recent project or explain how a lesson impacted the class.  Obviously teachers would want to preview any posts that guest posters compose before posting to the Facebook page.  In a secondary school, a teacher may want to  have guest posters email or hand write a post to be reviewed and posted by the teacher pending approval.


5. Resource Curation 

While I know that there are a number resources available for the curation of resources, having students post and annotate web-based resources on a class Facebook page is a great way for students to interact with the page and continue learning and class discussions outside of the school day.  One way I do this is by asking students to post on the page wall or to post a comment with a picture, video or link that relates to or provides an example of the concept we are working on that day/week.



Before setting up a class Facebook page, be sure to familiarize yourself with your school district's social media policy.  Some districts do not allow teachers to communicate with students via social media, while other districts like mine, do not allow any private communication to take place online between teachers and students.

Use the comments section to share your best practices for using Facebook in education.

5 tech tools to increase teacher productivity

Every time I attend a tech conference I always attend a session or two during which the presenter shares his or her favorite tech tools.  As I have been reflecting on #METC13, I have been thinking about my favorite tools, the ones that make my life as a teacher so much easier.  Here is my list of 5 tech tools to increase teacher productivity.

1.  Dropbox

Dropbox is great for me because I am forgetful.  I have forgotten my flash drive in my pants pocket, in my car, in my desk, at home, at Starbucks, well, everywhere.  My trusty flash drive walked out of my life for good at the beginning of last school year.  At that point, I was forced to find a new way to take files from home to work.  Then I met Dropbox.  Dropbox looks and works just like a file folder on a Windows PC.  However, when you save a file to Dropbox it syncs to every device on which you have Dropbox installed. Dropbox gives users 2GB of free storage, but  users can amassup to 16 GB of Dropbox space by completing simple tasks like installing it on a mobile device or getting Facebook friends or Gmail contacts to install Dropbox on their devices.

2.  Screencast-o-matic

Screencasting is the process of recording what is happening on your computer screen or smart board and recording your voice as you narrate the action on your screen.  I use screencasts to explain concepts or activities when I am absent from school.  Additionally, I can use screencasting to create tutorials for both students and teachers to use as they work with new tech tools.  Screencast-o-matic is a great tool for screencasting.  It is user friendly and allows screencasts to be saved to either YouTube or your computer.  With the free version, screencasts can be up to 15 minutes (but let's be realistic: who wants to watch a screencast for more than 15 minutes?).  For $15 a year, users can upload videos to Google Drive, save screenshots, and are not burdened by the pesky 15 minute limit per screencast.

3.  QR Codes

QR stands for quick response.  QR codes can store a wide variety of data including links to web pages, contact information, map locations, Twitter feeds or Facebook profiles, and much more.  These can be used to give students with smart phones, iPod touches, or tablets access to specific destinations on the web in class. I currently use QR codes in two ways:  At parent/teacher conferences, I create a QR code of my contact information for parents to scan and save in their phones.  Additional, I have a QR code of my email address in my classroom so that when students need to email me, all they have to do is scan the code and my email address automatically shows up in the "to" field of a new email message.  Check out QRstuff.com to create QR codes to use in your classroom.

This wiki by Jenna Linskens shares everything you ever wanted to know about QR codes in education.

4. Facebook

I love my class Facebook pages.  I use them to share information with students and parents on a regular basis.  While I also keep up a class web page, I really prefer my class Facebook page.  For a number of years, we have heard the phrase we need to meet students where they are.  I think that publishing a class, school, or district Facebook page is a great way to do that.  I am able to give students reminders about due dates, share scoring guides and assignment sheets, and use the polling option to get feedback or to give students a voice on an upcoming unit of study.  The great thing about Facebook is that most students and parents have accounts and check them regularly, so I can easily share what'g going on in class with a large number of stakeholders all at once.

5.  Splashtop

Splashtop is a remote desktop sharing application.  It allows users to manipulate the screen of a device remotely from a second device.  This is great for teachers who want to run their PowerPoint presentations when they are circulating the classroom.  Additionally, Splashtop give users the option to access the desktop of their computer from home or while out of school on a conference.  The free version of Splashtop allows users access to devices that share a wireless network, but the paid version (only $8.99 in the Google Play store) allows users to access connected devices when they are on separate networks (such as accessing your work computer from your laptop or tablet at home).  I have found this to be beneficial when I forget to load a file to my Dropbox or if a sub needs my assistance working with a file or tool on my computer.

Each of these tools has helped to make my life as an educator a little easier. Use the comments to share the tech tools that help you be more productive.

Low-tech methods to teach 21st Century Learners

One of my favorite type of activities to do with students in my 9th and 10th grade language arts classes is to incorproate social media into lessons.  I like to have students make Facebook pages for characters in stories, create Twitter feeds for characters and write blog posts that allow them to compare issues in a text with issues that are faced in our society today. 

While this all sounds great in practice, I quickly learned that making my dream of seamless socian media integreation  into a reality was a little harder than I thought it would be. To combat the lack of technology and firewall issues that  have stopped me from incorporating Twitter, Facebook and blogging into my classes, I have come up with low-tech paper-and-pencil replacements. 

Below are three sample low-tech activities I do with my students in place of their web-based counterparts.  Click on the name of each project to view the handout for each project.

R+J 140

http://goo.gl/QJvlS

While reading Romeo and Juliet, I have my students break an act of the play down into tweets.  I have them select a character and compose 5 tweets for the act.  Then, students trade papers with a total of 5 other students who reply to tweets as other characters in the play.  I discuss a few things before starting this lesson:

• I use this opportunity to discuss with students what is appropriate and inappropriate to post online.  I will discuss this in the context of the play and ask students if in Act 1 Romeo would tweet about being in love with Juliet.  I then facilitate a brief discussion about what we should and should not post online. 
• I talk to my students about how hashtags have two purposes:  to categorize tweets and to add personality, or voice, to tweets.  I encourage my students to use hashtags to help convey their character's message.

In addition to touching on digital citizenship and voice in writing, R+J 140 gives students an opportunity for a form of collaboration they typically do not get at school. This always proves to be a popular activity both with students who have 15,000 tweets (true story...) and students who have never heard of the social network.

Low-tech Blogging

Low-tech blogging is a fancy name for reader's response.  I will take a text, whether it is a short story we read in class or a series of articles, and ask students write a blog post in which they quote the text and make text-to-world connections.  After writing their posts, I collect all of the blogs and randomly distribute them to students to leave comments on their classmates' blogs.  I like this activity for a few reasons:

http://goo.gl/v0tMw

• Students are required to formulate a thesis and support it with evidence from one or more texts.
• I discuss with students what makes a good blog comment.  We discuss restating the question, giving an opinion, and supporting it with evidence from both the original text and the blog post.  This prepares them for responding to a variety of writing prompts throughout my class and on standardized tests. 
• Students have the opportunity to hear/read opinions of peers outside of their social circles.  Students who are usually timid and reluctent to share are able to share their thoughts with others.

Character Facebook Pages

http://goo.gl/sj5Zy

For one novel a year, I have students create a hard copy Facebook page for one of the book's characters.  While I know there are a variety of PowerPoint templates and tools like Fakebook that would do the same job, I have, for a variety of reasons, used a write-on template for my students.   Not only does this engage students who love Facebook but dislike reading, it also gives me an opportunity to discuss a few elements of digital citizenship.

• Just like with the R+J 140 activity, we discuss what type of content is appropriate and inappropriate to post online.
• In order to have success on this type of activity, students need to have a deep understanding of the story's characters in order to create posts, likes, and ads that show up on their character's Facebook page.

Facebook Page Part 1
Facebook page Part 2

My students enjoy all of the low-tech projects that we do in class.  Student engagement is always sky-high during these activities and I am always impressed by the quality of work I get on these projects.  If you are in a situation like I am and do not have many computers or a strong wireless network in your building, I encourage you to try these activities.  

Feel free to use or modify any of my activities that fit your classroom.  

Share in the comments section what low-tech tools you use to engage your 21st century learners.