Final Session of Virtual Book Club - How will you "Rock the World?"

Our final session of Virtual Book Club discussing Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis is already this Monday, March 18th at 7:30pm EST (that’s Tuesday, March 19th at 12:30am GMT)! For your time zone, click here. We will be discussing Chapter Twelve - Rock the World!

Use this link (https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2007066&password=M.065891D192F8072208BF5756999CE0) to log onto the live session or watch this space for a posting of the recording afterwards.

I can't believe it is our final session. This Virtual Book Club has been a wonderful space to connect with educators from all levels that are passionate about their work, are life-long learners, and are willing to share all they know as well as question what they are still learning about.

As I plan for the final session, I am looking for any remaining questions that we haven't addressed yet. Please take a moment to leave a comment on this blog with topics you would like to see covered in the last session. Whether it is a question you have about how global projects work, ideas about how to set up rubrics for collaborative projects, challenges using wikis or blogs, or comments about the value of connected learning, let me know so that we can take some time on this last day to chat and reflect on the subjects that are important to you.

If you missed the session last week, listen to the most recent recording here: Virtual Book Club March 4th/5th and please share your thoughts on this blog: Virtual Book Club. Our focus was Chapter Nine - Celebration and Chapter Ten Designing and Managing a Global Collaborative Project.
I think the big themes of the session were these:

• Find as many opportunities as possible to give students feedback about their work, whether it is an awards ceremony gala, a carefully written note or just pulling chairs into a circle to talk. Kids are starved for feedback - feed them!
• Be creative when thinking about time and space - using Skype, VoiceThread or Blackboard Collaborate might allow experts, parents or other teachers to be a part of your celebration.
• Take time to reflect and celebrate projects as a professional. Whether it is privately, publicly, online or face-to-face, take a breath and consider what worked well and what you want to repeat.
• Start somewhere with a global project - join one that already exists, start with a teacher you know in another place, plan your own, but START.

And if you are just finding us in time for this last session, please feel free to drop in! We welcome all educators that want to learn more about global projects or share what they have already learned.
Hope to "see" you there!

Meeting #5 of Virtual Book Club - How do you celebrate?

I can't believe our 5th meeting of the Virtual Book Club discussing Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis is already this Monday, March 4th at 7:30pm EST (that’s Tuesday, March 5th at 12:30am GMT)! For your time zone, click here. We will be discussing Chapters Nine and Ten – Celebrating, Designing, and Managing Global Collaborative Projects.
Add your voice to our group! Use this link (https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2007066&password=M.065891D192F8072208BF5756999CE0) to log onto the live session or watch this space for a posting of the recording afterwards.

I am really looking forward to sharing ideas about how to best celebrate student projects. This is a weak point of mine so I'm excited to review the ideas in Chapter Nine with teachers. And I'm already thinking about how we can celebrate the closing of Virtual Book Club at the following meeting. Ideas welcome!

Chapter Ten also has so much rich material for discussion. This chapter really walks you through how to design and manage a global project. It will be so meaningful for our network of teachers to share what they have done that works, what new ideas they got from the book and what questions they still have.

Join us and add your expert or novice voice!

Ways to offer students choices was the theme of Session #4 of the Virtual Book Club! If you weren’t able to join us, listen to the recording here: Virtual Book Club Feb 18th/19th and please share your thoughts on this blog: Virtual Book Club. We have been reading and discussing Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis  and our focus this time was Chapter Seven (Choice) and Chapter Eight (Creation).

We began with some great comments:

http://mrg.bz/Bo0JPI

• @Durff shared that she tells students on 1st day that they are all intelligent (Gardner), it is her job to find out how to make them shine
• Jim shared that he believes teachers should be helping students learn, not giving them the answers
• Laurel mentioned that some students need content delivered directly from teachers before they are able to make choices in the classroom (and shared an interesting book: Why Students Don't Like School?)
• Monica added that she likes to model how she learns so that students feel comfortable making mistakes in her classroom

We also struggled with considering how teachers can create choices in the classroom in a time of standardization and high-stakes testing (at least in the United States).

• Paul shared that part of personalizing the classroom is establishing relationships with students - it isn't just about content, it is about connecting
• Michelle talked about the need to let teachers have choice as well - when something is working, having the freedom to pursue it, not have to stay lock-step with a scripted program
• Elena introduced the idea "of individual teachers being 'experts' with specific tools and working collaboratively with their peers is a more manageable and realistic approach for interdisciplinary teams."

https://saveourrhinos.wikispaces.com/

We also shared our own struggles and challenges with creating and maintaining electronic spaces for learning with choice in mind. We all agreed that monitoring electronic spaces are difficult to maintain and that we would love to have ongoing eportfolios that follow students through their years of learning in a school (Google Sites, KidBlog, Evernote, Weebly and even PhotoStory were shared as ideas). We debated a bit about how to choose new tools - what is trendy, and what is trendy with a purpose? Paul raised a great point about involving students in planning electronic spaces and many shared stories about ways they've done this.  As part of this, we also wondered how to make sure more students have access to technology beyond the classroom.

From there, we talked about how to structure learning experience that offer students ways to make meaning. Rocky shared the idea of students meeting with teachers to create useful materials for them and Robyn shared a bit about a project her students are doing to save rhinos! Interestingly, we found we have less experience offering students chances to invent or build. It would be fun to talk more about how we could build these concepts into our teaching more.

We ended by trying out the break-out room feature in Blackboard Collaborate. I guess I modeled the idea of the "teacher" not being perfect but willing to take risks since I had no idea how it would work! :) Thanks to everyone who was there for humoring me and experimenting along with me.  I think we'll try these small groups again next time with a focus question. Big virtual hugs to @Durff for telling me more about how to use this effectively at future sessions. And my apologies for those of you listening to the recording since there will be a long pause when you are listening (another important aspect of this tool for me to understand!).

Thank you again for everyone that participated. I'm reminded of the quote by C. S. Lewis cited on page 34 of this book:

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.

Thank you for being in my circle and adding to my wisdom! And to Mara for agreeing to co-moderate. If anyone is interested in co-moderating next time, please leave a comment or send me an email, I'd love your help!

Our next meeting will be Monday, March 4th at 7:30pm EST (that’s Tuesday, March 5th at 12:30am GMT). For your time zone, click here. We will be discussing Chapters Nine and Ten - Celebrating, Designing, and Managing Global Collaborative Projects. Hope to “see” you there!

Meeting #4 Virtual Book Club - Add Your Voice!

Looking forward to our fourth meeting of the Virtual Book Club discussing Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis Monday, February 18th at 7:30pm EST (that’s Tuesday, February 19th at 12:30am GMT). For your time zone, click here. We will be discussing Chapters Seven and Eight.

Add your voice to our group! Use this link (https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2007066&password=M.065891D192F8072208BF5756999CE0) to log onto the live session or watch this space for a posting of the recording afterwards.

We have had some powerful conversations so far about digital citizenship (see The Making of Digital Citizens), building and maintaining a Personal Learning Network (see Launching into a River of Information), and starting and joining global project (see The Virtual Book Club Has Launched).

This is a community of teachers sharing with teachers: reflecting, listening, sharing, questioning. Join us!

The Making of Digital Citizens

What a rich discussion we had last night during Session #3 of the Virtual Book Club! If you weren’t able to join us, listen to the recording here: Virtual Book Club Feb 4th/5th and please share your thoughts on this blog: Virtual Book Club. We have been reading and discussing Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis  and our focus this time was Chapter Five (Digital Citizenship) and Chapter Six (Contributing and Collaborating).

We confessed, bragged, questioned, shared tips and traded resources on the topic of Digital Citizenship. It seems there is always more to consider from using images in our presentations to setting our privacy settings but we all agreed that we need to model strong digital citizenship for our students and explicitly teach them how to be a thoughtful contributor in the digital world.

• Connie shared "Just as we model and teach ways to effectively present and collaborate in face to face groups, digital citizenship is just another layer."
• Joseph agreed and asked, "Students need to understand that there are differences in communicating on facebook, twitter with friends versus using this type of media in school...but how to teach?"
• Elena commented, "It[digital communications] also provides an opportunity to evaluate how we interact with each other face to face. Sometimes in the middle school environment, speaking to others with a certain tone or attitude can become the norm."
• Amy agreed, "Not only do we need to relate to our students using technology but we need to teach them how to communicate in positive ways using technology"

Some of the great resources that were shared to help with teaching digital citizenship were:

• For images: Creative Commons, Pic4Learning, MorgueFile
• For music: Royalty Free Music, Free Play Music, Sound Bible
• For teaching about Digital Citizenship: Common Sense Media, Digital ID, Read. Write. Think.

Some tips given about getting students to care about digital citizenship:

• Use real-life examples (read Chris' story here) and facts (thanks to Laurel for sharing that 70% of employers look at digital footprints)
• Have students create Digital Citizenship materials (Digiteen and Digital ID are examples)
• Provide an authentic audience (when students see that others are actually reading/listening/watching their work, they care more)
• Make it easy for students - provide them with music and images that they can use
• Model by adding the URL for photos within classroom presentations
• Use your librarians! They often have lessons ready to go on this topic
• Start with a private wiki or an Edmodo class where you can monitor and give feedback to students before collaborating with another classroom.
• As Rocky has done, actually contact authors and artists to request permission to use their materials. (Read more about what Rocky has done here)

We wrapped up by sharing a bit of advice about getting started with global projects and we all got really excited about trying Mystery Skype. And, as usual, the time flew by. I never knew an hour could pass so quickly!

A huge thank you to Vicki Davis for joining us in between prom planning and Flat Certified teacher training. Your professional generosity is unending. Another thank you to Jim for picking up as co-moderator. It is so helpful to know someone else is listening, reading, typing and talking as fast as I am! And a thank you to all the busy educators who took time out to share, question, and connect.

I'm looking forward to our next meeting on Monday, February 18th at 7:30pm EST (that’s Tuesday, February 19th at 3:30am GMT). For your time zone, click here. We will be discussing Chapters Six (Choice) and Seven (Creation).

Session #3 - Virtual Book Club - Join the conversation!

Our next meeting of the Virtual Book Club, discussing Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis, will be Monday, February 4th at 7:30pm EST (that’s Tuesday, February 5th at 3:30am GMT). For your time zone, click here. We will be discussing Chapters Five and Six.
Join the conversation! Use this link (https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2007066&password=M.065891D192F8072208BF5756999CE0) to log onto the live session or watch this space for a posting of the recording afterwards.

Launching into a River of Information

We had a wonderful second session of the Virtual Book Club discussing Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis,.  Our focus this time was Chapter Three and Four which discuss ways teachers and students can connect and communicate with a global audience. If you weren't able to join us, listen to the recording here: Virtual Book Club Jan 22nd/23rd and please share your thoughts on this blog: Virtual Book Club.
We had fun exploring different social media tools that we each use to broaden our PLNs. Some of the tools that were highlighted were: Google Reader, Flipboard, Zite, Diigo, Twitter, LiveBinders, Scoop.It, Storify and two that were new to me: Paper.li and Feedly. We all agreed that these tools helped us curate the web and share what we are learning with others. However, we also discussed the feeling that as we reach out to take a drink from these nourishing waters, we are sometimes met with a firehose blasting back at us with an overload of information!
Suggestions for dealing with this "River of Information"

• from Michael in Australia - "Follow Quality, Get Quality, Quality Beats Quantity." That might mean only following 4-5 blogs in your Google Reader or using hashtags to search in Twitter instead of following 1,000 people. (#globalclassroom, #flatclass, #sschat, #2ndchat were all mentioned)
• from Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis - designate two times a week where you read through posts and links for 15 minutes. Think of it as a PLN workout.
• many thought that starting with Diigo was a good plan. Here two groups to follow: Flat Class Educator's Group and EdTechTalk.
• from Sharon in Mumbai - don't suffer from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). You can't read everything.  It is okay.
• from Theresa in IL - sometimes you need to "Mark as Read" and move on. See above point about FOMO.

After sharing what the term "teacherpreneur" meant to us, we engaged in some thoughtful conversation about how to work with Standards, Administrators, Colleagues and Hardware limitations. There was definite collective agreement on the following:

• "teacherpreneurs" can and should embrace state or national standards for their curriculum and expertly weave these in with innovative, collaborative projects.
• reaching out to administration and colleagues is important and necessary for long-term sustainability of projects but it is hard and takes resilience
• hardware might  not be exactly what you want, but make it what you need
• connecting with other "teacherpreneurs" keeps you motivated and inspired. As Michael said:

when you are part of a community, you will surprise yourself. this is not something you need to do alone

Finally we talked about getting started with global projects. Here are some of the resources and projects mentioned. We will definitely talk more about these as the weeks go on. And remember to check out the numerous projects mentioned in the book!

• Flat Class Project
• Global Classroom Project
• Quadblogging
• Student Blogging Challenge
• 100 Word Challenge

Thank you to everyone who joined us or who has been posting on the blog. It is wonderful to hear and read the insights, doubts, mantras and beliefs of teachers who care about the work they do with students. Your students are lucky to have you!
Our next meeting with be Monday, February 4th at 7:30pm EST (that's Tuesday, February 5th at 3:30am GMT). For your time zone, click here. We will be discussing Chapters Five and Six. Hope to "see" you there!

Join us for Session #2 of Virtual Book Club!

I am looking forward to our next meeting IN A FEW HOURS, Tuesday, January 22nd at 7:30pm EST (Wednesday, January 23rd at 3:00AM GMT), for your time zone, click here. We had a great session two weeks ago and I am excited to hear thoughts from teachers about connecting and communicating with teachers around the world, being a "teacherpreneur," and advancing "technopersonal" skills of our students and ourselves.

To join us and discuss Chapter Three of Four of Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis, please use this link: https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2007066&password=M.065891D192F8072208BF5756999CE0

If you missed the first session, no worries, the recording can be accessed here: Virtual Book Club January 7th

If you can't make the live event, share your thoughts with us on this blog! Click on the chapter you want to comment on and add your ideas, questions, connections and thought grenades!

Virtual Book Club has Launched!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/horrigans/7562926268/

What an exciting start to the Virtual Book Club! If you couldn't attend live, here is the recording to the event: Virtual Book Club January 7th. Our next meeting will be Tuesday, January 22nd at 7:30pm EST (Wednesday, January 23rd at 3:00AM GMT), for your time zone, click here. Please note, this is a change from the original schedule.
We had over 30 teachers participating live from five countries and four continents and "a whole mess" of states across the United States. It was lively with a very active chat, loads of folks taking a turn at the microphone and more than a couple of technical glitches. Here are some highlights:

• A huge thanks to Theresa Allen for co-moderating with me. She kept things rolling when my computer decided to challenge me and supported new-comers with Blackboard Collaborate tips and tricks.
• Another big shout-out to Lisa Durff for setting up the Blackboard Collaborate room and checking in on us to make sure things were working, and for spreading the word about the club.
• Big virtual hugs to Michael Graffin and other Global Classroom Project teachers for jumping in and sharing ideas and inspiration about how global projects can be tackled by anyone, anywhere.
• Deep and heartfelt thinks to author Julie Lindsay for being a part of our first discussion. Your presence added depth and meaning to the conversation.
• ACPS super-teachers that reached beyond their own comfort zone to try out new technology, shared their challenges, asked their questions, and connected easily and powerfully with educators around the world
• Each educator that took time out of their busy lives to spend an hour sharing stories, connecting and lending their digital support to the concept and work of global projects. As we said last night "We might all be crazy, but this way we can be crazy together." *smile*

Highlights of the discussion:

• Finding ways to show that all students, all ages can be empowered by and be powerful through global projects
• Being creative with the technology that is available and maximizing what you have
• Learning about successful projects that are already running and available to join
• Thoughts about how to have global project running in many grades so that students have repeated exposure to the opportunities to collaborate across classrooms
• Stages of global projects, from exchanging information between classrooms to have students co-creating with classrooms around the world
• The challenges of researching global projects, specifically what needs to be measures in education and where higher ed is vs. K12 teachers
• How global projects will continue to evolve with new technology

If you couldn't join us, we hope you can make it next time or leave some comments on this blog!

5 Great Educational Technology Blogs

http://www.flickr.com/photos/twentysevenphotos/5437365845/

Let me start by saying I love "top" lists. I'm the first to click on "11 ways to use Twitter in the classroom" or "15 rules to live by." Now that it is time for me to try to make a top 5 list of great educational technology blogs, I am feeling very inadequate and shy. But teachers and colleagues often ask me which blogs I read and so I'm feeling like it would be a good idea to post some of my favorites here. I cover everything from tech tools, to teacher reflections to posts that challenge the status quo. I find I need all of these popping up in my Google Reader to keep me thinking about my work and working on my thinking. And really, there are so many wonderful blogs out there, this is really just a starting point:

Cool Cat Teacher - Vicki Davis's blog is everything I appreciate: current, humorous, sincere, authentic, inspiring. Her blog is filled with great resources and great tools. A first stop for teachers wanting to learn more about what technology to use, how to use it and why to use it!

Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything -  Kathy Schrock is legendary in the Ed Tech realm. She finds great tools, communicates them well, and keeps current on what is shifting and changing in education. This is a great spot to find just about anything you are looking for in terms of best practices and educational technology.

The Global Classroom Project Blog - I am partial to this blog because I have had the chance to guest blog on it (full disclosure). But what I love about it is just that, it is filled with different teachers from around the world sharing what they have tried in their classrooms, what is working, and what challenges they still face. While not strictly and educational technology blog, most of these projects that are described, use technology in some innovative way - getting students to connect, learn and work together across time zones, borders and oceans.

Free Technology for Teachers - Richard Byrne's blog is chock-full of reviews of all kinds of apps, software, web 2.0 tools and more. This is a great stop-off if you want to learn 5 new storytelling apps or the best video-editing software.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leehaywood/4295780055/

Okay, so maybe I'll do my top six.... *smile* These last two are my reality check blogs. These two thought leaders consider the big picture and ask what learning should really be about.

Dangerously Irrelevant - This is one of the first blogs I began subscribing to and Scott McLeod was one of the first people I began following on Twitter. His posts make me think. They challenge the traditional way of teaching and learning many of us experienced and asks powerful questions that make me reconsider what classrooms should look like. I don't always agree and sometimes it shakes my thinking too deeply, but I know I need these ideas to shape what I do and what I believe.

The Innovative Educator - It took me longer to find Lisa Nielsen but her posts serve a similar place in my professional learning and growth as do Scott McLeod's. She really pushes the envelope in terms of questioning what schooling is about and how it relates or doesn't relate to learning and education. I encourage you to check her out.