Tag: Twitter

#tomsassembly

TwitterPublished on8 Comments on #tomsassembly

Today I took my second full Key Stage 2 assembly of the week. Yesterday I spoke to the 240 junior children about my trip to Qatar, it was great to have an opportunity to talk with them as some of the topics of WISE were itching away in my mind.

In Monday’s assembly I showed some of the national flags of people I had met, and we talked about the meaning of some of the designs. Today we connected even further with people in my Twitter network. Before the assembly I asked:

3773905213_f05ccf7d43_o_normaltombarrett For #tomsassembly 10.30am GMT pls answer Qs: Location? Weather? What food represents your country/region? pls RT

I set the question before I left for school at around 7.30am and was delighted at the massive reaction from so many of you. With all of the responses I wasn’t going to be able to include all of them in the 15 minutes, so we talked about the weather in various parts of the world and then I set some challenges. (Thinking about it, World Cuisine would be a great curriculum topic to do – connecting to other classrooms, trying food, learning about different countries, Cooking Mama…)

I asked each class to find out more about a range of different foods that were tweeted my way.

  • Y3 – Musselburgh Steak Pie (Scotland)
  • Y3 – Maple Syrup (Canada)
  • Y4 – Nasi Lemak (Malaysia)
  • Y4 – Cockles and Jellied Eels (Essex, England)
  • Y5 – Melton Mowbray Pie (Nottinghamshire, England)
  • Y5 – Haggis, Neaps and Tatties (Scotland)
  • Y6 – Dim Sum (Hong Kong)
  • Y6 – Henderson’s Relish (Yorkshire, England)

A BIG thankyou to all of those who took a minute to send me a reply, the responses about food created a Twitter Smörgåsbord and it was so much fun seeing all of the different foods mentioned. I am looking forward to seeing what the kids find out when they report back.

The title of this blog post is the hashtag I used for the responses, it allowed me to quickly get to just the replies I needed and in fact some people just tweeted without sending it to me, I was still able to pick them up with the hashtag. Great tip to keep track of conversations etc.

I have archived the hashtag using Twapper Keeper but it is not appearing yet, you can also access all of the responses in this Google Doc. I have deleted the retweets so you are just left with the information on location, weather and food. I thought it may be a useful little source of information for others too.

In the past when I have used Twitter for a classroom activity or assembly other people have found it useful when I write about where their 140 character contributions fitted into the bigger picture. The combined effort of small contributions can have a big impact.

Once again a big thanks for helping with my assembly today if you did, the children were excited and keen to learn more about the different foods and there was even a round of applause at the end.

After we had finished I spent another 5 minutes talking to at least 10 children who wanted to tell me about their personal links with different parts of the world. I think the assembly got them thinking beyond our cultural boundaries and that’s what I was aiming for.

Developing Leaders NCSL Conference: Classroom Without Walls

INSET, Twitter, VoicethreadPublished onUpdated on16 Comments on Developing Leaders NCSL Conference: Classroom Without Walls

Last Thursday the National College for School Leadership held the third of their national Developing Leaders events and I was invited to run a workshop titled Classroom Without Walls.

I approached the workshop with the idea of connections, how we as teachers can connect using Twitter and how we can connect children’s learning. You can see the presentation I used below and in the first few slides I shared my use of Tutpup and Voicethread – simple but hugely effective tools for the classroom, both of which connect children to each other’s learning.

“Classroom Without Walls” suggest looking at or beyond the horizon, however I raised the idea with the participants that we sometimes overlook the walls between our own pupils. I explained that using tools such as Voicethread we can perhaps first address how we can connect children within our own class. When was the last time your children looked at each other’s work? Peer assessment is important but often difficult to find time to do. When working with Voicethread, peer assessment is just part of the process not just an additional session you need to timetable.

I helped demonstrate the idea of a networked teacher by asking the participants to find teachers who had tweeted a clue about their location to me via Twitter. As usual my network provided some great responses and the workshop participants used Google Earth to try and find the schools and colleges that were shared. It was really engaging and rooted in a lesson that I taught last year to my year five class.

It was interesting to see that out of the two workshops around 90% of delegates had a Facebook account and only about 15% had a Twitter account. Some had both. But these young teachers, although very aware of social networking between friends, have not yet engaged with the idea to create a professional network. I hope I gave them a nudge in the right direction.

If you get a chance then also take a look at this Mastercard advert “Milton Avenue”– it resonated with me as I was thinking about how important a network is to me for information and advice. I don’t have all the answers but perhaps someone in my network does. This was underlined on Friday when a teacher at school asked my advice about domain names on behalf of the school she is a governor at. My experience of purchasing domain names is limited but a quick question on Twitter allowed me to provide her with great recommendations and advice.

It was agreat day at the NCSL and I was thrilled to get some time to catch up with Dan Sutch from Futurelab who opened the day with a thought provoking keynote on the future of schooling and leadership. John Davitt was there to wrap the day up in his unique and entertaining style, the first time I have seen him talk beyond the TeachMeet 7 minutes.

Street Child and finding Victorian Houses in Google StreetView

Literacy, TwitterPublished on1 Comment on Street Child and finding Victorian Houses in Google StreetView

This week we have been doing some writing from the point of view of Rosie Trilling, a character from the book Street Child by Berlie Doherty.

I wanted to help illustrate to the children the grand London house that Rosie was working at in the book. I thought that the StreetView layer in Google Earth would allow me some high quality imagery, I just needed a real location in London somewhere.

I sent this Tweet out:

Anyone know of a London st of grand Victorian homes, with black iron railings + 3 or 4 floors high, want to look in GE Streetview10:51 AM Apr 22nd

And was pleased to get some great suggestions and this one from @didactylos the Director of Marden City Learning Centre. I was able to pick out a road to search from Roger’s Tweet and so set to it.

Streetchild street

I did a quick search for Kensington High Street as he suggested and briefly scanned the area, I soon found a street that looked ideal.

I then switched on the StreetView layer and zoomed in and the first view was a beautiful 3 storey house identical to the one described in the book. Black iron railings and even steps down to the servants quarters and kitchen in the basement.

We turned the camera to take a look at the impressive row of housing and discussed what we could see in the image that might have been there at the turn of the century. We also discussed what we may have seen, heard and smelled if we were Rosie standing on that Victorian street.

The tweets allowed me to access exactly what I needed drawing upon experience I did not have, and StreetView in Google Earth provided the class with rich imagery to help with their diary entries that they continued with. Some of the children did some drawings of the houses we had seen and it helped to spark their imagination and provided a much better understanding of the sort of scene we were working with.

Confident, Social, Inquisitive

My class, TwitterPublished on9 Comments on Confident, Social, Inquisitive

A year ago when I was talking to my class about Twitter they all looked at me as if I was MAD! Last week I did much the same thing with a different bunch of 9 and 10 year olds and, things have changed – only about half of them looked at me as if I was totally BARMY!

So what has been the difference? What has changed so much in the last year to effect children in my class?

Simply put, I think there has been a huge increase in the number of times Twitter has been referred to in mainstream media. I have heard Radio 1 DJs discussing it and I even saw Chris Moyles’ Twitter account when he had 55 followers, later that day he had 55,000! Our local commercial radio here in Nottingham has also been on about it – on the same day I heard both the morning and drivetime show talking about Twitter.

Jump on the social media bandwagon

Photo credit to Matt Hamm

This is of course just part of the bigger picture for our kids but I think it makes a huge difference. My class are confident, social, inquisitive internet users who will happily explore new resources and sites. About 10 percent knew about Facebook and had been using Mum’s or bigger sister’s/brother’s account.

The “older sibling effect” is an interesting one. Although it may only effect a percentage of my class their awareness of these social networking sites has been raised by those in Year 7, 8 and 9 who are regular users. Combined with the fact that social media seems to be becoming less “fringe” makes our 9 year olds much more aware.

So is it up to us in primary education to teach and guide the children on how to use these appropriately? I think it is.

Not many of my class could actually explain what Twitter was, or indeed Facebook, which at best was “a place to look at pictures of your friends and class mates.” I don’t think my class is particularly different from those around the country, and so next year I can probably expect even more children knowing about these sites as I think even more mainstream space will be filled by them.

Unless the mainstream of primary education addresses this then children’s awareness and use of social media will always be (as it is now) 10, 20, 1000 steps ahead of the type of education they are entitled to. I am not talking about lessons on how to get the most from your Facebook account for 9 year olds, but time to raise their awareness. An opportunity for us to show positive examples, to build their knowledge and understanding and help them make better choices in the future.

Do you have a class of primary children? Do they know about Twitter, Facebook and social networking sites? How can our curriculum best adapt to these changing times? Can it?!

5 Things To Get Your Twitter Network Off The Ground

TwitterPublished onUpdated on38 Comments on 5 Things To Get Your Twitter Network Off The Ground
Just recently I have been advising some visiting colleagues about the benefits of using Twitter as the main protagonist in the story of my learning network. I wish I had such a resource when I was starting out into the world of educational technology or whilst I was training. After showing people how the network interacts, I recently tweeted that it makes you realise the potential expertise that you can be effortlessly connected to.

As I have recently helped a few people begin their network with Twitter I thought I would write about a few ideas to help get started and to make the most of Twitter for teachers.

  1. Profile – for me that is the first port of call for finding out about anyone. I look for involvement with education and teaching. So make sure that your profile, including a picture, is well updated as it helps others who might be looking to connect with you.
  2. Get started straight away – profile sorted, now just get started. Write about how your lessons have gone, a great website you have used today (add the link, everyone loves looking at new web resources), a good digital camera you have in school, problems with your network, revelations from your pupils. Anything really, just make a start.
  3. Follow a bunch of people – for me Twitter is all about making connections with fellow teachers and colleagues in education, so find someone you know or whose blog you may have enjoyed reading for a while and explore who they follow and who follows them. (Look at the Lists they have created too)
  4. Get someone with a big network to put a shoutout for you – give your network a kickstart by asking someone with a whole heap of followers to put in a good word for you. Piggybacking in this way will open up more networks for you to explore and teachers to follow. Just be sure to follow back those that have followed you if you are happy to.
  5. Begin replying to people – along with putting the word out about yourself and your own practice/situation engage with people directly by replying (@ before their username – everyone sees these) and direct messaging (D before their username – private). If you can help or offer advice of your own then do so where you can. It might be you askign for advice/help in the future.

One more thing to remember is that in the early days of Twitter use it can be very quiet, few replies, not much going on in terms of conversation. Do not be discouraged – try to perservere and stick it out and keep using it, as soon there will be a “tipping point” when the connections you have made reap a bountiful information harvest.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of ideas for new users, but will help to maybe get your network off the ground. What are your best pieces of advice for new users of Twitter?