Warning: Professional Development Overload

The past six weeks have been a whirlwind of learning! I have attended my first EdCamp, first iPad Institute, first Literacy Institute and first ISTE...interspersed with on campus and online classes...and capped it off yesterday by presenting my first two sessions ever!

I have also been busy networking with fellow Graphite Educators, fellow PBS Media Digital Innovators as well as my invaluable PLN Tweeps (@megcurlteach).

As a learner, I have been challenged by the daunting task of archiving all the great resources I want to use as well as deciding which resources to bring to my classroom (lab) this year. I have been taking digital notes, photographs and videos as a way to remember great ideas shared by other educators.

Now comes the real fun, planning my beginning of the year learning activities along with the rituals and routines necessary to make the whole set function!

I plan to discard last year's lesson plans in Evernote, read through the hundreds of resources I have saved to Pocket, scan my Google Drive for examples of student work to retool, and reuse.

I hope my enthusiasm spreads to my students and colleagues as we launch another brave new beginning!

I will be posting specific activities from my work with students. I would love to know about some of your successes!

To Tweet or Not To Tweet?

This post is my attempt to clarify some misconceptions about Twitter for teachers. I have had great conversations with several colleagues this past week and would like to share my insights.

First, we need to travel back in time. Stop in the year 2010. As a graduate student in a Technology licensure program, I was given the assignment to create a twitter account. I was angry. I felt that it was beyond the realm of my instructors' rights to tell me to create a social media account. When instructor Carl Anderson tried convincing us of the benefits of using Twitter with personal examples, I rudely commented that it seemed like a waste of time. (I later apologized.) He and Scott Schwister suggested educators to follow. I completed my obligatory assignments, including tweeting (which I considered ridiculous as I had my instructors and classmates as my only followers!) For the next 11 months, I never used my account.

Fast forward one year. I began some Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds challenges with teacher, author and blogger, Vicki Davis, aka Cool Cat Teacher. With her guidance, I began following teachers who shared resources and ideas. I lurked on twitter conversations much the same as I eavesdropped in restaurants. It felt a little "shadowy."

My breakthrough came when I discovered chats. People hold open conversations on Twitter by using a hashtag (# followed by letters). A user can read all the comments in a chat by searching the hashtag and viewing ALL. A moderator asks questions of the group and others answer. During this "free for all", we can also address individuals by replying to their tweets. It is a great way to get more information about a topic that is of interest. After lurking on a chat or two, I took the risk of jumping in with my own answers. I was pleasantly surprised to find others retweeting my responses and commenting on my ideas. I frequently follow many new "tweeps" after interacting with them during a chat such as #edtechchat or #tlap, both on Monday evenings (in my time zone).

As an elementary technology specialist, I have no one in my building with the same job as me. It is very different from the 22 years in which I had grade level colleagues with whom to share ideas. Now I have colleagues in my PLN (personal learning network) from many countries to learn with and from. If I have an idea or question for Vicki Davis or Dave Burgess, author of Teach Like a Pirate, I tweet them and they tweet back! It energizes me professionally. Because of my PLN, I have even created a second Twitter account as techteachtiger to use with parents. I plan to tweet with my students about our learning so parents can be informed.


Now, FINALLY, back to the present, September 2013. Many educators are being asked to join Twitter. Some are ready to jump right in and travel the fast path. But others may have some of the same frustration, hesitation and even fear that I did regarding Twitter. We have heard the news reports of individuals making extremely poor decisions that lead to their political downfalls and it is popular to denigrate celebrities and their fans for their use of this communication medium.

I am trying to balance my enthusiasm for Twitter as an excellent source of professional development with respect for those who are reluctant to use social media in their profession. If you, like me, join Twitter because you have to, please know that you will find great information if you follow other teachers and that you never even need to tweet unless you want to. On Twitter, even lurking can lead to learning!

Taking Steps Towards Digital Badges

As somewhat of a "conscientious objector" regarding the grading of students, I am very excited about badges. I loved earning them as a girl scout; the idea of having proven a set of skills or accomplishments appealed to me then and still does. When I first heard of digital badges, I knew I needed to find out more. I did some research and got advice from my Twitter PLN. I have settled on using ClassBadges at classbadges.com. ClassBadges is a free tool that allows teachers to design, describe and award badges to students.

While there are many icons provided, you can also upload your own images. I created some of my images and edited some from Creative Commons.

I am a huge fan of giving my students options. During my decades as a classroom teacher, I used Academic Choice, a Responsive Classroom component. As a new Technology Specialist, I have been rethinking and revising ways to provide meaningful choices in the computer lab. When students complete their daily assignment, they will be able to work towards badges. I am implementing this with students in grades 3-5.





I am starting out with 10 badges. I feel it will give students enough variety, while being manageable.


I created a Google document that gives students a description and the requirements for each badge.  I have also created a Symbaloo webmix for all the websites and shared documents they will need to access.


My next step is to create a screencast for each badge, introducing it and modeling some components. This way, students can jump right into the work without having to listen to me explain all the details of every badge. Each screencast will also be a link in the webmix which is color-coded.