Our collegial circle met for the first time this week. The day when all of our collaboration and planning came to fruition. We were checking the roster and anticipated a great class, because of the diversity of our group, representation from all levels of buildings in our district. We had a social studies teacher from the high school, ESL and Bilingual teachers from our K-4 buildings, 5th grade and 6th grade teachers from our intermediate building, and K-4 teachers from our elementary schools. We also had some administrators join us as this is the first blended learning in service our district had offered. In the air you could feel the buzz, we were all learners together. This group had the makings of a rich dialogue and what better way to build and grow our ideas than to add some digital methods to share our ideas and learning.
We had a big plan for the first class, we knew we would not get through it all. And we didn't. At first we began to worry, but then realized that once we had everyone set up on Google Drive, Twitter and Voxer we could begin our discussions around the book, "Making Social Studies Stick" by Laurel Schmidt and begin to explore how we make social studies "social" for the 21st century learner. Of course, just like a classroom we had a variety of learners, teachers with different levels of experience using Google, Twitter and Voxer. Everyone is now signed up and ready to start. In this blog we will include a brief "How-To" for our Twitter chat and our Voxer chat additional way to support learners.
Learning to Fly... I Mean Tweet
Getting started on Twitter can be confusing to say the least! We think we speak for most people when they first join Twitter.
We established the #SocSt21 for our Twitter Chats around our collegial circle. At our first class we got everyone signed up and started tweeting, then we all met at our first live Twitter Chat. As facilitators we had established questions from the book, but then decided since our class had just met the night before it might make sense to watch a Ted Talk on 21st Century Learning rather than assigning chapters to read overnight, especially on a school night when we left late from our collegial circle (responsive teaching, right?) The idea behind this was to push our thinking, perhaps acknowledge the confusion that happens when we are learning and by doing this we had a common experience to chat about on Twitter, it was connected to a very large thread of our collegial circle. We also provided some how-to do Twitter chats links to the participants and tweeted about the process before and during the chat, engaging in embedded ongoing assessment and differentiated instruction. As we engaged we tried to provide a safe, supportive environment while still acknowledging that risk taking, while it may be uncomfortable was necessary for learning and we tried to foster resilience, it will be hard, you will fall down, but you will get up and try again.
Quick How To Participate in a Twitter Chat
"Help me with vortex, I mean Voxer"
Using the Voxer app on our phones adds an additional layer of discussion and thinking to our learning for this collegial circle. Voxer is a walkie talkie app, but it means so much more to learning because you are able to you your voice, images or texts and it is not live, so you can listen and respond when it works best for you. Just like Twitter it took a while for it to make sense to us, as we expect it will for our learners. We used Voxer ourselves as we collaborated to plan the collegial circle and we continue to use it as we are responding to the needs of the learners in our class and for our ongoing planning. It is the backchannel conversation that as facilitators we engage in, but with our group we can carry over thinking from our in person meeting, our Twitter chat and our reading of the book, blogs, articles and videos that we share. It also provides a space for our fellow educators to share ideas amongst each other, reply to each other, help each other...collaborate.
Each day we have posed a question to the Voxer chat to get the discussion started. Each participant listens to the recording and then responds with their own recording. It seems like the trickiest part is just using the walkie talkie feature for the first time- once you get it, you've got it. We've also talked about how it can be a little uncomfortable knowing that others will hear your voice, especially when you may not be comfortable with what your voice sounds like on a recording. It seems like we are pushing past that, as you get used to leaving your voice and listen back to it a bit, it seems to sound better. Not sure why, but it just gets easier and more comfortable with practice, like anything else.
Quick How-To Participate in a Voxer Chat
We had a big plan for the first class, we knew we would not get through it all. And we didn't. At first we began to worry, but then realized that once we had everyone set up on Google Drive, Twitter and Voxer we could begin our discussions around the book, "Making Social Studies Stick" by Laurel Schmidt and begin to explore how we make social studies "social" for the 21st century learner. Of course, just like a classroom we had a variety of learners, teachers with different levels of experience using Google, Twitter and Voxer. Everyone is now signed up and ready to start. In this blog we will include a brief "How-To" for our Twitter chat and our Voxer chat additional way to support learners.
Learning to Fly... I Mean Tweet
Getting started on Twitter can be confusing to say the least! We think we speak for most people when they first join Twitter.
We established the #SocSt21 for our Twitter Chats around our collegial circle. At our first class we got everyone signed up and started tweeting, then we all met at our first live Twitter Chat. As facilitators we had established questions from the book, but then decided since our class had just met the night before it might make sense to watch a Ted Talk on 21st Century Learning rather than assigning chapters to read overnight, especially on a school night when we left late from our collegial circle (responsive teaching, right?) The idea behind this was to push our thinking, perhaps acknowledge the confusion that happens when we are learning and by doing this we had a common experience to chat about on Twitter, it was connected to a very large thread of our collegial circle. We also provided some how-to do Twitter chats links to the participants and tweeted about the process before and during the chat, engaging in embedded ongoing assessment and differentiated instruction. As we engaged we tried to provide a safe, supportive environment while still acknowledging that risk taking, while it may be uncomfortable was necessary for learning and we tried to foster resilience, it will be hard, you will fall down, but you will get up and try again.
Quick How To Participate in a Twitter Chat
- Go to the hashtag, in our case #SocSt21 at the pre-established time
- Introduce yourself (include the hashtag in every tweet)
- Wait for Q1: to pop up in the chat
- Read and respond to the Q1: by using A1: in a new tweet (include the hashtag at the end)
- Reply to tweets (include the hashtag)
- Favorite tweets
- Retweet
- You can include pictures or links in your reply to share with others in the chat
- If it went too fast, wait for the chat to be archived. There will be a link after that chat that the moderator posted, it will contain all tweets from that particular chat. We are using Storify to archive the #SocSt21.
- Wednesday January 14, 2015
- Tuesday January 20, 2015
- Wednesday January 21, 2015
- Tuesday January 27, 2015
"Help me with vortex, I mean Voxer"
Using the Voxer app on our phones adds an additional layer of discussion and thinking to our learning for this collegial circle. Voxer is a walkie talkie app, but it means so much more to learning because you are able to you your voice, images or texts and it is not live, so you can listen and respond when it works best for you. Just like Twitter it took a while for it to make sense to us, as we expect it will for our learners. We used Voxer ourselves as we collaborated to plan the collegial circle and we continue to use it as we are responding to the needs of the learners in our class and for our ongoing planning. It is the backchannel conversation that as facilitators we engage in, but with our group we can carry over thinking from our in person meeting, our Twitter chat and our reading of the book, blogs, articles and videos that we share. It also provides a space for our fellow educators to share ideas amongst each other, reply to each other, help each other...collaborate.
Each day we have posed a question to the Voxer chat to get the discussion started. Each participant listens to the recording and then responds with their own recording. It seems like the trickiest part is just using the walkie talkie feature for the first time- once you get it, you've got it. We've also talked about how it can be a little uncomfortable knowing that others will hear your voice, especially when you may not be comfortable with what your voice sounds like on a recording. It seems like we are pushing past that, as you get used to leaving your voice and listen back to it a bit, it seems to sound better. Not sure why, but it just gets easier and more comfortable with practice, like anything else.
Quick How-To Participate in a Voxer Chat
- Go to the app store on your phone and purchase Voxer (the free version works for the chat)
- Let the person who is the administrator for the Voxer chat know that you would like to join by giving your Voxer username
- Once you are added into the chat, when you see a voice message press the play icon for the message and you will hear the recording.
- Leave your own recordings by tapping the orange walkie talkie button, it will turn green and flash. Numbers will increase as it records your time while recording. Tap the walkie talkie green flashing button, it will stop and turn orange again (if this is not working go to Voxer settings and be sure you are set to tap to talk).
- Listen, leave messages, attach photos or even text to share your ideas on Voxer.