Sunday, April 5, 2015

Educational Uses for Facebook, Twitter, iPad Features and Much More

Is Facebook the New School Web Page?
Colleen Dickmann, superintendent for Wisconsin Rapids Public Schools, sees clear advantages to using Facebook for school-to-home communication. “Using social media allows us, as a school district, to tell our story in the manner we want it told. We can publish stories that otherwise might not make it into the local media’s hands.”

Ten Ways Teachers Can Make the Best of Twitter
For us in education, the potential of Twitter exceeds all expectations. In a relatively short span of time, Twitter evolved into one of the best educational social networking platform of choice for educators and teachers. It has also become an essential element in teachers life-long learning and a key driver of professional development. As such, I deemed it necessary that I create this short introductory guide to help those of you who are new to Twitter make the best of this tool. There are also tips and resources for advanced users as well. Enjoy

http://i0.wp.com/www.justonesandzeros.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/educational-hashtags.jpg?resize=660%2C264
The Top 10 iPad Features That Schools Forget
9. AirDrop – . . .if you have a newer iPad you can take advantage of a great feature called AirDrop. With AirDrop enabled, you can send photos, videos and other files to another iPad or Mac wirelessly and without email. Students could use this to share photos or video clips with each other while working on a group iMovie project, or to turn in assignments to a teacher’s Macbook.

A Comprehensive Guide to The Use of Edmodo with Students
Edmodo is a powerful web-based platform that has a huge potential for us in education.  The features and functionalities  provided by Edmodo for teachers and students are invaluable and hence the importance of having access to a handy guide.

New [University of Michigan] program seeks to promote use of technology in classroom
“The purpose of the Digital Innovation Greenhouse is to take things from innovators and grow them up to maturity, to provide the support that’s needed to do that, to have the right kind of interaction between developers and users to make sure that as they develop it, it gets better,” he said. . . . “Will students be involved?” he said. “Yes, as developers, as interns, as personalization fellows to support the kinds of projects the greenhouse is focusing on initially.”
http://tinyurl.com/m952hh6

28 Apps for Challenge Based Learning Projects
From Challenge to Solution
Research: InstaPaper ($3.99) saves webpages for offline viewing; Wikipedia Mobile can be invaluable on-the-go.
Polling/SurveyingPolls Online, PollDaddy, and Socrative might help gather responses.

2 comments:

Doug Cohen said...

In the "Top 10 Uses for twitter" article under #3 in "twitter etiquette" the author states "As teachers and educators, the purpose behind using Twitter is to primarily connect with other teachers, and engage in mutual learning experiences."

Says who? I'm curious your opinion on this Larry. While there should definitely be a line, if teachers don't cross it and act appropriately online who says they can't engage with students there? I'm sure if twitter were around when I had Jerry Maxwell for history in high school I would have loved to follow him and engage in discussions about history, or read his blog for example.

Anonymous said...

I agree with you, Doug. The great majority of my professional development comes through Twitter networking with other professionals. That said, I also regularly support student Twitter sites and some students follow me. When an activity includes a hashtag, of course one would expect anyone in the community to Tweet. On the other hand, I try to keep personal correspondence with students to my professional email account. I advise our coaches to send group text messages rather than 1:1 since nuance, sarcasm is often lost in text and Twitter. I also don't "friend" students on Facebook until they graduate (again, I have made exceptions for foreign students who are thousands of miles away from fam and friends).
Some teachers and admins try to solve this issue by creating separate social media accounts for professional and personal. That would drive me crazy. I just say common sense is the best guide and remember once you hit post or send, it's out there! -- Larry

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