My Favorite Part of Edcamp

Connecting at edcamp is half the fun!

This past weekend I was able to go to my first edcamp with an instructional coach from my district. (Find her on blogger here, and follower here on twitter here.)  The goal was to learn more about the format, meet some awesome people, and learn.  We were able to accomplish all of our goals.  It was an awesome experience and I loved every moment.  I wanted to blog about the experience but I needed some time to reflect on the experience.  What I came up with was this, connecting with other educators was awesome!
The best part of edcamp was the opportunity to connect, reflect and share with others who were passionate about education.  Heck, we were all there for a full day of learning on a Saturday!  The instructional coach and I reached out and shared in conversation with others and edcamp is a great platform to do this.  We were sure to provide a google form for our session so that we could all stay connected after the day was over.
Half of the learning of professional development is the learning that will continue after the conference is over and that's what I got out of edcamp.   When you attend a session of professional development do you extend your learning?  Set up a follow up session with your district's professional development providers, connect with teachers at your grade level to carry on what you've learned, be sure to meet new people at each session you attend.  When you connect and continue that's when real learning happens.
And if you get the oppurtunity to go to an edcamp, GO!

Managing Your Learning on Twitter

This past Thursday my school district hosted a day long learning event for all school staff called Summer Splash.  From my perspective it was a very successful event.  Teachers were able to register and sign up for sessions hosted by coaches in our district.  Sessions included everything from how to differentiate your classroom, how to be a reflective teacher, to integrating technology.  I lead three sessions, Twitter for the Classroom, The SAMR Model, and Small Groups with the iPad.
I received a lot of great feedback especially in my Twitter session.  One question I was asked was how do you manage and "file" everything that you learn on Twitter.  There is a lot to learn on Twitter and it can be overwhelming.  So I began to think, how do I organize and store my learning from Twitter. Here is what I came up with.

Create bundles to organize saved links

Bitly
When I find a link to a blog post I like, I will retweet it or share it out.  Twitter saves all of your tweets but it's in a timeline and can be to remember where that great blog was.  I use bitly to shorten all of my links.  Bitly will store your links and save them.  You can also bundle together links that are similar.  If you create bundles its easier to find those links again.

Save Blogs in Feedly

Feedly
Another way I save and organize my Twitter Learning is with Feedly.  When I find a blog that I like I add it to my Feedly account.  You can also organize by groups here.  It makes it easier to sift through the blogs you like to read.  Kinda like a digital magazine of all my favorite reads.

Lists
One last way to organize your Twitter Learning would be through creating lists in Twitter.  I have not played with this a lot yet but it's something that has been added to my to do list.  When you gain more people to follow your timeline can become overwhelming.  If you have a lot of time to sit and sift through that's fine, but what about when school comes and free time gets more and more scarce?  Creating lists can sift through your feed and highlight people's Tweets that are in that list.  Timesaver for sure!  You can also follow other people's lists and they can follow yours as well.  Great way to organize and build your PLN.

So there we are, my two cents on organizing Twitter.   Happy learning!

Click to follow me on Twitter!

My PD with #edchat

After my post of professional development I decided to it my money where my mouth was.  I participated in a chat on twitter.  I knew of the twitter chat labeled #edchat.  When I saw it pop up on my twitter feed I went for it!  I went to the search tab and typed in "#edchat". Edchat are various conversations set up around different questions. Today's conversation was about the role of Direct Instruction and lecture in the classroom. 

It was awesome.  I read others' perspectives, comments when I had a thought or opinion on a tweet and people responded to me.  It really got the wheels turning, validation on some of my opinions, and I even found some people to follow.   I strongly recommend you to try out an edchat too. They are at noon and 7pm daily.  See you on the next edchat!

Summer Learning: Twitter

If you're like me, you have just begun your summer vacation.  To my friends still with a month to go, have no fear your time will come!  This means time to relax, refresh, and spend time on things you do not have time for during the school year.  Why not make a goal to develop yourself professionally a little bit each week. There are many easy, user friendly, accessible, FREE resources to develop yourself as an educator.  My next few blog posts will give you a variety of resources for professional development, and the best way to use them. 

Twitter

Twitter is an excellent place to connect with educators from around the world.   "Tweets" can be anything from a thought, to a website, a photo, really anything under 140 characters.  One of the best ways to connect is to follow people.  When you follow someone, you can see what they post, who follows them, and who they follow.  You can choose to follow their people and so on.  "Following" someone allows you to see what they tweet.  

If you follow people who are interested in education, like me (WARNING here's the shameless plug, follow me @chrissie62573), you have access to anything they have learned or found to be interesting.  I find my time on twitter reading blogs and websites, just skimming through things other people have found to be interesting.  The great thing about Twitter is that each tweet can only be 140 characters so its easy to get the gist of an article quickly.  You don't spend a lot of time reading through half an article to find out that its not what you were looking for.  

Another way to find interesting information onTwitter is to search by hashtag. A "hashtag" (this symbol #) followed by a word, phrase or acronym that groups together similar themed tweets.  For example, #edchat is a hashtag devoted to a conversation surrounding a selected topic for the week.  If you wanted to find the conversation, and participate you would search for #edchat and follow the conversation.  

When you are ready to share you can link blogs that you find, or mark your tweets with hashtags. 

I hope that you find that twitter is an engaging, exciting, influential tool that kick starts your summer PD.  Check back soon to find the next tool to continue your summers's professional development.