Social Media in the Classroom

After three weeks with students we are getting into ipad apps and programs like Edmodo and kidblog.org.  Next week we will be going live with a Skype call with a class in another state to add another tool to our digital learning.  I have been discussing digital citizenship a lot with students and discussing the difference between social and academic language and what is expected when we are using tools that are generally viewed as purely "social" and talking about how they need to be "academic" when used at school with peers.

I have turned to teachers that have more experience and are sharing their tools to help make the experience successful for both teachers and learners.  Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano blog, known on twitter as @langwitches,  is a great tool for all things technology and social.  I am using her as a guide for my new dive into social media with students.  I believe one reason her students are so successful is because she creates expectations that are explicit for students and she can assess them appropriately.  Her tools to guide students also make me feel more confident about implementing social media.

My next attempt with social media will be to have students write tweets on an Edmodo backchannel, review them, then post on twitter. I also wanted to create a hashtag that would be tied to our classes blogs but also one I could tie to the school so teachers, staff, and maybe parents could follow and tweet back.  My hope is the hashtag will become something teachers at National Teachers Academy use when tweeting to share ideas among staff as well.  I believe we are all learning and need to model this for students as well.  I plan to use #ntalearns to tag our class tweets and professional tweets I want to share with my school learning community.

Follow our learning on twitter @ntastudents1 and look for our upcoming blog posts!

Excitement about Blogs

Students have completed three blog posts this year and each time the work has been improving. I am trying to have students write about content with as little restriction as possible. I want them to tell about what they have learned. I find that students are sometime crippled by the freedom to "write about what you learned" and need more specifics. I often tell them they can write and tell about a lab they conducted. This often leads to describing the lab process and use of vocabulary, but does not hit the big "concept" ideas. Other students write about big ideas but don't give the details and specifics to show depth of understanding and often have shallow posts. At the same time some students are really surprising me with what they are writing about and they are amazing me with their posts! The excitement is great and I will continue to work with them to create meaningful posts.

Read more here at our blog page:

Here are some examples ranging the descriptions above:

A student writes about the lab process.

"What we did for sedimentary rock to make them form is got a small cup in a big cup.we put the smallcup in side the big cup in we put the sand in it.then we got glue in water in put it in the the cup.in let it sit for 3 days or 4 when we got back we had tear the cup off in it become a rock."


A student explaining some learning through a lab experience.

"The crust doesn’t just get magma on it’s surface.I know there’s a way to get the magma on the crust.I think that the magma erupts for some reason.and after it’s ready to come out like a volcano.it must burn through the crust and get on the crust.
So,everybody knows that lava is hot and the igneous must be broken off when the volcano erupted .and it must have made another igneous rock and the pressure makes the magma must shoot up out of the vent.
And it must have happened when the pressure went up.
And I think that the mantle magma makes waves and builds pressure to make a huge wave.and that wave must go through the vent and gets on the crust.

And the igneous rock must break off and then that’s how I think igneous rocks are formed like that.and the rock breaks of again and more igneous rocks get formed more"


Information combining new knowledge and a lab experiences.

"These two weeks we been talking about sedimentary rocks. They are formed by wather and deposits of eroded rocks. The sedimentary rock then dries and dries and is slot of pressure. Then form. The particles start to end up covering.

shale is a sedimentary rock.The color is dark gray. The size is big.It is hard. Another rock is conglomerate. The color is yellow,gray,and white.
The sand stone color is red. It feel rough. It is small.

And the last is gypsum the color is light gray.It bumpy."