Twitter Startup Guides

Twitter is an amazing tool and very simple to use. However, simple doesn't always mean easy or intuitive. Overall, Twitter is one of the easier platforms to use but with anything there is always a learning curve. 

I created these 3 infographics to help guide new users as well as serve as a refresher to current tweeters.

I hope folks find them useful...

Addressing Twitter concerns...

I am often asked about social media’s role in education, Twitter in particular. These questions are often brought about by parent concerns, which often mirror the initial concerns of teachers.

When addressing parent concerns I approach it just as I do with teachers:

1. concerns are normal
2. I’m happy we are discussing concerns as opposed to flat out rejecting the concept
3. concerns are a learning process for me as much as for those bringing them to me, as they help me reflect on my practice as well as see what I do through an external lens

I have written many things in the past about social media in schools but there are always new questions that aren’t addressed by old posts.

This post looks at the two most recent concerns I’ve received:

1. There is a time stamp if you follow it. One can piece together a class schedule.
2. Why are teachers stopping instruction to take photos?

Let me address each of these one at a time…

Celebrating the tweeters @HeathcoteSchool

I think it is important to promote, and celebrate colleagues. Especially when they step out of their comfort zone and embrace new challenges.

When I joined the staff at Heathcote Elementary School in Scarsdale last year only a handful of teachers had Twitter accounts. And those that had accounts used them mostly for tweeting a picture of the whiteboard with the homework written on it.

When I interviewed for the job I expressed my passion for Twitter in schools and I was given full support by my new principal to push it as a school-wide initiative.

And my new colleagues were awesome. They jumped in full force.

Periscope the school

A few months ago the concept of live-streaming video directly to Twitter hit the market. Meerkat was the first app to launch. It rapidly gained popularity, so Twitter went out and bought its competitor Periscope.

Why does this matter? Because live streaming video of school events is awesome. And not just graduations and PTA meetings, but everyday events. Things like student presentations and project shares are natural fits. If students are practicing presenting their work to an audience, their class, why not also give them some experience presenting live to the world? No, they can't see their Periscope audience, but knowing someone could be watching is a great way to hone presentation sills.

I used it for two main purposes this year:

• Student shares
• Live performances

The Power of the Hashtag - Social Media as an Educational Imperative

I fully believe social media is a new school imperative. Yes, social media in school is absolutely necessary, required, and unavoidable

At various time throughout history schools have taken on new technology imperatives. From the slate to the pencil to the mimeograph to the fax machine. Then computers, email... the eternal stream roller that is progress and innovation.

There have always been the new "must haves."

I'm sure with all of those iterations of educational transition there have been naysayers. People who shunned the pencil. Thought the mimeo was a ridiculous expense. Saw no use for a fax machine. Tried to leave computers unplugged. Even email, in 2015, gets the occasional "I don't use that" response from the occasional staff member (yes, not a joke, last year, 2014, as a New York City Department of Education employee I was told by a colleague to communicate via handwritten notes because he "doesn't do email").

Fear is not an option when it comes to social media in schools

By Chris Casal + Lisa Nielsen

Cross posted at http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com

Innovative educators know first hand that social media like Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Instagram can be a powerful tool for teaching, learning, leading, and strengthening the home-school connection. In many cases though, others may need to be brought on board. Especially when parents are expressing concerns and unsure of how a platform can be used successfully.

It is the job of innovative educators to ensure parents, colleagues, and administrators know how to embrace the power of social media and also how to address their concerns.  

Here are suggestions for parents, teachers, and administrators in schools embracing social media.

Don't blame social media if students are distracted...

Note: This post started as a comment on “Filtering social media in schools because it’s a ‘distraction’” which appeared on Scott McLeod’s Dangerously Irrelevant blog and then first appeared as a guest post on Lisa Nielsen's blog, The Innovative Educator.

Social media is no different than pencil and paper. I doodled a lot in the margins of my physics book. It wasn’t Twitter and Facebook that made me doodle but I doodled nonetheless.

Social media can serve as the new platform for distraction but not a new cause for it. Doodles, passing notes, sleeping in class, all of the “analog” forms of distraction, have just morphed into branded platforms.

The difference? 

Why tweet in kindergaten? Ask @mariacamastro

Why tweet in kindergarten? Ask Mrs. Camastro, she'll tell you.

Why her?  She hates technology.

She loathes the fact I've put 4 computer in her room and an iPad in her hands. She gives me dirty looks every time she sees me because now I'm trying to get her to lead a Twitter professional development session.

And it's awesome.

Know your Twitter spam

Twitter has it's moments of Costco-sized spam deliveries.

We've all seen it. Or more to the point you got a Direct Message (DM) saying "wow, have you seen this post about you?" with a on-so-not-suspicious link attached. Or the ego enhancing "I've lost weight with this, and you could too!"

When this spam comes through I immediately delete it and let the sender know they most likely have been compromised. It's not always the users fault, though. Recently Pinterest was compromised and was sending out tweets to those users who had connected their Pinterest and Twitter accounts...

School as collected anthology - the single story is that of many

I've written a lot about how we use social media, Twitter in particular at my school, PS 10 in Brooklyn, NY. We tweet a lot. We love hashtags. We are trying to engage the community and showcase all the awesome things our students, teachers, and parents do to make PS 10 such a great place.

But is it really "we, the school" that is doing it, or are "we, the school" just collecting the stories of others. Creating an anthology?

We tweet @PS10Brooklyn. A lot.

This post was originally written as a resource for parents on how the staff & students use Twitter as part of the instructional day. It originally appeared on the PS10Tech blog

Tweeting @PS10Brooklyn has become a core component of many classrooms. It has been great to see teachers, students, and parents alike embrace the power of Twitter as a communication, collaboration, and connection tool.

For example, @MsKertesz in the 4th grade has used Twitter to connect with a class in Liverpool, England. They do weekly Skype sessions and our 4th graders have developed a great working partnership with their English counterparts. Without Twitter these two classes, separated by an ocean, would never have connected.

Twitter has also gotten PS10 recognition outside of New York City...

Social media in our K-5 school

This post was originally written as a primer for parents on how the staff & students use various "social media" tools as part of the instructional day. It originally appeared on the PS10Tech blog

I am often asked about how we use "social media" here at PS 10. It is a question that is both very simple & easy to answer and one that is also complex and nuanced. Let me elaborate...

Social media as defined by many people includes things like Facebook and Twitter. According to the Department of Education's social media policy for staff, social media is defined as:

My students do my tweeting...

Recently, I decided to create a Twitter account for my classroom (the computer lab @PS10Tech).

I was inspired to do this by Ms. Glembocki, a 2nd grade teacher here at PS 10. Ms. Glembocki tweets fairly regularly, sharing news and information about her class with her followers, many of whom are parents. Recently, Ms. Glembocki decided to assign a student tweeter for every day. It's a new classroom role for the students. One student a day is in charge of her twitter account, and the student uses an iPad designed specifically for classroom use to tweet the happenings of the day. Students introduce themselves and sign each tweet. In addition, she uses the hashtag #2310st to designate the tweet is coming from a "student tweeter of class 2-310." Her 2nd graders "live blog" the day. It's a fantastic idea and I wanted to do it for my lab...

Twitter @PS10Brooklyn - Our Hashtags!

This is cross-posted from http://ps10tech.blogspot.com/

In the previous post, Twitter @10, I wrote about Twitter as a platform and offered a solution for following Twitter users without actually have a Twitter account, or even a smartphone.

The previous post also listed all the teachers with Twitter accounts at PS 10.

This post is more geared toward people with a Twitter account looking to get a more streamlined PS 10 experience out of the Twitter platform...

Twitter @PS10Brooklyn

This is cross posted from http://ps10tech.blogspot.com/

Twitter is a great resource. It is no longer just Ashton Kutcher talking about what he ate for breakfast (although, I'm sure there is probably still a lot of that going on).

These days teachers are using Twitter as another method of communicating with parents. There is a PS 10 Twitter account that posts school announcements, shares classroom work, and in general acts as another way to connect the school with the community. A lot of parents have signed up for Twitter (its free) just to follow their child's classroom feed or the PS 10 feed. There are many teachers who speak highly of the home-school connecting Twitter fosters and the instructional engagement it supports.

My Latest Bookmarks 06/5/2011

What have I been reading on the web this week? Here are my latest bookmarks. 

The majority of these bookmarks have also been shared with colleagues via our shared Diigo group, PS 10 iPads

Mostly iPad related with a little Twitter sprinkled in...

The big picture...

This is something I've posted on my class blog as well.

The power of online tools becomes more and more evident every day. Astronauts up in space are taking photos and posting them online. They are publicizing this via Twitter. The power of the internet never ceases to amaze me, and this is definitely a power being used for good...

--------->

As we start a new school year I thought it would be nice to step back and look at the big picture, take in the full view so to speak...

New York City from space

NASA Astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock has been photographing the Earth from space and posting the pictures online.

This is a picture of New York City, at night.  It might be a bit confusing at first because it is backwards.  From Astronaut Wheelock's position in space Long Island appears on the left side of the picture. The very bright center of the picture if Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and parts of New Jersey.  If you look very close you can see the tiny sliver of light, surrounded by darkness, that is the island of Manhattan.

Click here http://twitpic.com/2izl9u/full and the picture will be big enough for you to see the dark area that is Central Park as well as the 2 dark areas in Brooklyn, Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetery.

Follow all of Astronaut Wheelock's pictures from space here:
http://twitter.com/Astro_Wheels

Enjoy the pictures and think about just how much is out there beyond our school, neighborhood, and city.

Welcome back to school...