This week's topic: Top Tech Apps

Erika Eich summarized an ICE 2011 presentation called Top Ten Tech Applications for Education by Jason Janczak from Grayslake Central High School. Her handout included links to his recommendations and some possible ways that the tool could be used.

Several of the applications which Erika covered were also included in the recent Edublog Teacher challenge http://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org The challenge link is also noted below. We plan to spend our next meeting experimenting further with some of these ideas.

• Wallwisher
www.wallwisher.com
teachers have editorial power; 140 characters or less about WHATEVER!
great for: book reviews, exit slips, summarize a reading (brevity), questions at the beginning of a class
• Lino – An option instead of wallwisher:
www.en.linoit.com
not as much control as to what students post
• Online map making
www.bubbl.us
more collaborative
great for: mapping out chapters; mapping out books
• Google Search Stories Video Creator
http://www.youtube.com/user/SearchStories

• Edmodo: http://www.edmodo.com/ - we would be likely to use Blackboard, but if you have colleagues who need a free option, here is more info from the Edublogs Teacher Challenge for Edmodo.
• My Fakewall
www.myfakewall.com
create Facebook accounts for historical characters
• Tagxedo: “Wordle on steroids.”
www.tagxedo.com
• Xtranormal: Students write the storyline, and the program puts the video together for them.
www.xtranormal.com

• Jaycut: online movie maker; will work at home or at school; not real-time
www.jaycut.com
• Glogster: great tool for getting to know others at the beginning of the year
http://www.glogster.com/

Our next meeting is Tuesday morning, May 3rd at 7:30am in Jim Foster’s office. We will use our meeting time to experiment with one or more of the tools discussed above.

In attendance: Raquelle Brennan, Ian Duell, Erika Eich, Jim Foster, Judy Gressel, Andy Horne, Linda Straube and Matt Stuczynski.

This week's topic: twitter

Judy Gressel presented on Twitter. She began with a brief review of a previous presentation and stressed the ease of using Twitter and the importance of certain symbols like RT (retweet) , DM (directly messaging another person, # (for a keyword session) and @(to reply to someone). We talked briefly about using an image or icon and then more extensively about whom to follow. Separately we forwarded some KW/Phys Ed ideas to Andy. Mashable published suggestions on finding people to follow this week.

Judy also showed an example of a tweetdeck as a way to help organize your tweets. We looked at paper.li, too, especially the edchat version. That provides a “newspaper” look with an aggregation of tweets on a subject. Today’s has a link to a slideshare on 25 ways to use Twitter in the classroom. You can create your own personal paper.li, also, based on tweets from those people you are following.

Another aspect of our talk was how powerful and how “viral” this type of communication can be. Judy is still excited about watching the tweets fly by so fast that they could not be read on the day that Mubarak was removed from office.

In fact, I turned to paper.li after the meeting and saw this Video from the ASCD 2011 conference (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development). I am embedding it here since it discusses the “Best Practices in Social Networking for Educators”:

Our next meeting is Tuesday morning, April 19th at 7:30am in Jim Foster’s office. We will review several free tools which Erika Eich learned about at the ICE Conference.

In attendance: Raquelle Brennan, Erika Eich, Jim Foster, Judy Gressel, Andy Horne, Linda Straube and Matt Stuczynski.

Sharing Some Resources on How Educators Connect from Steve Anderson

At today's AM Exchange I will demonstrate the use of Twitter to help colleagues understand that one of the great things about it is to get professional development on a continual basis, any hour of the day. 

Two Popular Starting Points For Building A Personal Learning Network

The Educators PLN Ning (moderated by Tom Whitby hosting the thoughts of 7,000 educators)

Twitter  (#edchat on Twitter)

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Resources recently shared by Steve W. Anderson

Articles From Professional Journals

• Blogs: Webs of Connected Learning by Miguel Guhlin Tech and Learning July 2006.
• Twitter 101: Are You Tweeting?   Journal: T&D August 2009, 24-5.
• Rosenfeld, E. Expanding Your Professional Network with Nings. Teacher Librarian February 2008, 60.
• Professional Development for Transforming Education by Anita McAnear Learning and Leading With Technology June/July 2008,  5.
• Trial by Twitter: The Rise and Slide of the Year's Most Viral Microblogging Platform by Vance Stevens Teaching English As A Second Or Foreign Language Journal, June 2008.
• Grow Your Personal Learning Network by David Warlick Leading and Learning with Technology March/April 2009, 12-16.

Wikis 

• Twitter4Teachers  -- Wiki for teachers who are looking to build their PLN.
• Nings for Educators  A collection of Nings for educators.
• 21CLC-Personal Learning Networks- Suggested Resources and Tools For Building a PLN
• Personal Learning Networks:The Power of the Human Network- More Resources and Tips For Building a PLN

Blog Posts

• Classroom 2.0- Ten Reasons to Join in 2009  (http://thumannresources.com/2009/01/01/classroom-20-ten-reasons-to-join-in-2009/) by Lisa Thumann 
• Stages of PLN Adoption   (http://www.thethinkingstick.com/stages-of-pln-adoption) by Jeff Utecht
• Ten Tips for Growing Your Learning Network (http://edtechpower.blogspot.com/2008/10/ten-tips-for-growing-your-learning.html by Liz Davis
• Twenty-one Ed Tech Leaders You Just Have to Meet  (http://thumannresources.com/2008/10/13/21-ed-tech-leaders-you-just-have-to-meet/) by Lisa Thumann
• Seven Ways To Find Teachers On Twitter   (http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/03/seven-ways-to-find-teachers-on-twitter.html) by Richard Byrne
• Personal Thoughts on Twitter  (http://oswego98.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/personal-thoughts-on-twitter/) by Jason Schrage
• Digitial Footprint-Your Online Data Trail  (http://langwitches.org/blog/2009/09/13/digital-footprint-your-online-data-trail/) by Silvia Tolisano
• Some Things I Learned About Building Effective Social Networks  (http://www.stevehargadon.com/2009/01/some-things-ive-learned-about-building.html)  by Steve Hargadon
• How to Become a Twitter Teacher in 23 Steps or Less? (http://www.kapilbhatia.com/2009/03/07/how-to-become-twitter-teachertt-in-23-steps-or-less/) by Kapil Bhatia
• The World's Largest English Department (http://www.teachersourcebook.org/tsb/articles/2009/10/01/01ning.h03.html) by Elizabeth Rich