I’ve designed a set of projects to enable us to explore how all students can connect with others, be creative, and communicate with authentic audiences. All projects are required.
Readings are to be completed by the beginning of class time on the day they appear on the syllabus. In other word, have all readings on the January 16 class session page should be done by the start of that class.
See the grading rubric at the link above.
A note on Privacy/ Confidentiality.
Some of the work you’re required to do in this class will be on public platforms. You are not required to identify yourself as a member of this class or to use your real name in any of this work. If you choose to use a pseudonym in your public work, please use the same name across platforms. Email me your user name. I’ll create a password protected page on this site to list these so that we know whose work we’re reading.
1. SPEED GEEKING: (sign up for your week here) (Potential Tools HERE)
Now: Choose three tools to play around with and using the guideline below, write a blog post on each at some point in the quarter, thinking about the potential for supporting your work or supporting students’ access to knowledge and connections.
I think you’ll enjoy Book Creator and encourage you each to create something with it as one of your tools.
Present one platform or tool for teaching and learning in a quick, focused presentation. In your “speed geek” talk, demonstrate the potential of the tool, addressing the questions below, in no more than 15 minutes. You may work with a partner or alone.
Guidelines:
Frame your presentation within the perspective of specific students who might benefit from access to this tool (and why). The idea here is to think about how more students have access to learning/ showing what they’ve learned with intentional use of digital tools.
How can learners get to her higher levels of the SAMR model with this tool? In other words, what are the advantages over paper?
How would this tool enable diverse learners to better access information or demonstrate what they know and can do?
What do you know about privacy/ data collection/safety?
What are some downsides to the tool?
2. CURATION: (due Thursday at midnight after you’ve done your Speed Geeking in Class) DROPPED
Add the platform/tool that you Speed Geeked to our class Curation Site.
In your post, include:
At least one image (can be a screen shot)
An embedded video if available (could be a screen capture in which you narrate a feature). Screen capture tools for
You can also search for more recent screen casting apps. Screen casting is built into IOS 11 on iphones and ipads.
Your evaluation of the tool/platform, addressing SAMR and diverse learners.
Three links to examples of use, reviews, helpful tutorials. Two (among many)sources of tutorials and reviews:
Tag your entries by grade levels, content areas, media type. Work toward consistent tagging.
3. BLOGGING. Due Mondays and Wednesdays at Midnight.
You’ll write an individual blog to reflect, review resources, collaborate with your small group project members, and track your growth.
Email the URL ( the web address when viewers are looking at your blog, not your editing pages) to Jane by Tuesday January 16 at noon with at least a test post.
You have a minimum of two posts due each week:
a. Write one post as your weekly response to what we’re learning together. Reflect on the readings, class sessions, connections between these and your work or home life.
b. In the first half of the quarter, also write one additional weekly post on the book you’re reading for your book circle. In the second part of the quarter, write one weekly post on work going on in your Inquiry group: Share resources, pose questions, make connections between your own research and course content.
Commenting on others’ blogs: Make at least two comments on others’ blogs each week. Ask questions, make connections, affirm while nudging the blogger forward.
This is not a discussion board on Canvas — this is actual communication with peers and colleagues, so make your comments substantive, supportive, and interesting.
Other educators are doing a 28 day blogging challenge this month. There are good ideas for you here are making blogging a habit, not a course assignment.
. Resources for learning to make good comments.
4. TWEETING
This is now encouraged, not required. I encourage you to find at least ten individuals or professional groups to follow, and from there, to follow conversations to find others from whom you might learn. Lurking is fine. The goal is to tap the vast professional resources that are being generously shared in corners of this platform.
You can usually find authors of our course readings on Twitter, and see who they retweet, for example.
I encourage you to read some of the resources below to get the bigger context.
I mentioned the #cleartheair conversations happening in which people are reading books together and having synchronous and asynchronous conversations about race and teaching.
This is a two part assignment. Use the class hashtag: #beduc566 for all course Tweets.
A good introduction to Twitter.
More resources on Twitter in and outside of classrooms
- Tweet at least once per each assigned course readings (each item under “readings”, whether text or video). Pose questions, reference key points, link to external resources that deepen our understanding of the readings. Be selective about your links — send things that you yourself have learned from. No more than 25% of your quarterly reading Tweets can be retweets. Due Mondays at midnight.
2. Twitter conversations in your small groups. Tweet at least twice a week with course and group hashtags:
Find and follow the author of your Book Circle book if they are on Twitter (or search for their name and follow other people writing about this author’s work.
Retweet something from the author’s Twitter Feed or discussion about their work at least once per week during Book Circle weeks.
For your Inquiry Group Project, Tweet resources, questions, recommended follows –bring your research to the rest of us via your tweets.
Embed your twitter timeline in a widget on your blog.
5. BOOK CIRCLES
In small groups, you’ll read a book about technology and education, blog about the book each week of the reading cycle (approximately one blog post a week for three weeks), retweet tweets from the book’s authors, find blog posts and other conversations about the book in digital media.
Choices of books and a sign up sheet to form groups are on the menu above.
Book circles will run from January 9 – February 13. These dates are flexible, but it’s unlikely that you’ll be less busy later in the quarter!
Multimedia Presentation: Encouraged by not required. Play around with a different way to represent what you have learned ? I’m happy to help with any video format you might want to experiment with.
You’ll represent what you’ve learned from your book in multimedia format. We’ll do in-class production of these projects on February 6.
Your 5-7 minute multimedia project can be in the form of a movie composed with images and voiceover (created in iMovie, Movie Maker, or We Video), an RSS video, ShadowPuppet app on the ipad, Green Screen (I have equipment). No conventional PPT with bulleted slides and live talking.
We’ll divvy up techniques early in the quarter so that we have demonstration of a variety of techniques.
Embed your project to your own blogs.
Guidelines for Blog entries on Book Circles
- Reflect upon (don’t just summarize) on your own reading and interact with your group members by linking to their blogs, responding to their thoughts, synthesizing in your post what others are talking about.
- Link to other public writing of the authors — tweets, blog posts, digital essays.
- Find out what others are saying about the author(s). Try Google Blog Search to find others outside of class reading what you’re reading.
If you’re reading a Kindle version of your book, check out the public annotations on your book to see what others are say, and perhaps blog about this.
See blogging assignment above for scheduling.
6. INQUIRY PROJECT:
Here are the groups we started to form
In a small group (at least 3), choose one of the topics in the menu on our resources site. On these pages you’ll find links to tools, examples of use, reviews, and tutorials.
Beginning February 20, work with this group to create a website with your recommendations of how technology in this area can support diverse learners to learn in deep and authentic ways.
Why? What problems might technology help to solve that can’t be solved in more conventional/ cheaper ways? (and why not: What are limitations of addressing these issues via tech).
Who? Specifically discuss how resources you curate would serve particular sorts of learners.
What? Recommend at least 8 tools or platforms within your inquiry area. Be clear and critical about why you recommend these.
How to keep learning about this? Identify intentionally chosen Twitter feeds, blogs, professional organizations, books, newsletters where readers can keep up with the ever-changing tech in this area.
What does it look like on Tuesdays? Give at least two examples of actual lessons/ units/ projects in which these tools could be integrated in a particular classroom.
What you’ll create:
Compile all of your work in a public website that other educators can access. Send the URL to Jane by noon on March 6. I’ll create a Meta class website where all our work will be shared.
Choices for websites: Wordpress, Wikispaces, Weebly, Google Sites. Feel free to suggest others.
Presentations: Create a 20 minute presentation summarizing your work for class on March 6. You may use any media except PPT because PPT has been already been done, over and over, everywhere :).
Guidelines for presentations:
We’ll have access to your website, so you don’t need to spend time just clicking through it. Instead:
For at least ten minutes of your presentation, engage the class as if we were students benefitting from the resources that you’ve compiled. Teach us a mini-lesson, show us how your resources make our schooling more rich and our access to higher-order thinking more common. This isn’t another speed-geeking showing us tools, this is showing us how that tech can be seamlessly integrated into lessons/ independent work.
Compare and contrast resources you’ve found.
7. ANNOTATION AND CLASS CONTRIBUTIONS
We’ll all learn more when everyone shares their thinking and draws out the thinking of others. In our class meetings, share generously and judiciously. Listen and expand on others’ thoughts and ask good questions. Your perspectives as educators, students, and community members is essential.
As you read, annotate on-line and PDF readings with hypothes.is. You can use hypothes.is as a Chrome browser extension or by using special URL. Sign up for our course group here. Some guides to using Hypothes.is can be found here.
The point is to learn from one another as you think out loud as you read or as you share related resources, not to fulfill a class quota. To get into the habit of annotated, aim to post at least three annotations per reading.
8. FINAL REFLECTION
Create a Sway, Adobe Spark (the Web Stories Option) or Fold to represent your final reflections on your learning this quarter.
In your project, address your current thinking about:
- Why support learning with digital tools? Why not?
- When does tech help us to serve diverse learners? When does it not?
- What are your thoughts on the potential for Connecting, Creating, Collaborating for teachers and learners?
- What perspectives from the ISTE Standards and/or National Technology Plan have most informed your thinking? What other readings have nudged your thinking?
Include at least:
5 images
5 links
1 video
The equivalent of 4 pages of writing
Embed/link your project on your blog.
Connected Teaching and Learning 