TechTalk

Teachers in Idaho and elsewhere have been in revolt over policy makers thrusting technology into classrooms and shifting money to unproven teaching methods.

From Yahoo!:

Experts Ask: Are Kids Meaner or Do They Lack Education to Use Technology Tools?

Do a quick search on YouTube and find dozens of videos of teachers "flipping out" to the jeering laughter of students -- a music teacher smashes a violin, another spits on a student in full classroom meltdown.

21% of teachers

Recently the cyber security company Norton reported that 21 percent of teachers worldwide either experienced cyberbaiting themselves or knew a colleague who was cyberbaited. Many lose their jobs after their outbursts, even though students were the provocateurs.

So far, according the Norton study, only 51 percent of teachers said their schools had guidelines for social media communication.

Bullying

In this form of bullying, known as cyberbaiting, students provoke the teacher to the breaking point, then secretly record the tantrum on a cell phone, then post it online. Not only is it humiliating, demolishing a teacher's morale, but it can cost them their job.

Are you ready to bring social networking to your classroom? If you’re looking to make your classroom more relevant, connected, and meaningful to your students, it’s the best place to start. Study after study has confirmed the benefits of networking.

Twitter – If you have a personal account, create a second one for connecting with your students. They want to follow classroom updates not what you’re having for dinner or what time the revolution begins (if you’re leading one of those in your personal time). Twitter will be your social media workhorse. Use it to push out calendar notices, classroom tips, celebrations, links, polls, and the occasional personal message to remind followers you’re a human and not a bot. Encourage parents to follow, too. Twitter is also great in the classroom, and I mean, literally, in the classroom. Use if for quick formative assessments. Students who use Twitter to contribute to class discussion more than double their class contributions. Lastly, create a unique Twitter hashtag just for your classroom. Get input on the hashtag creation from your new social media army that’s following you.

If we want to encourage our teachers to become paperless and use the copier less, then as school leaders we need to take the lead and engage in becoming paperless too.

1. Google Docs

2. Email

3. Dropbox

4. Evernote

5. Diigo

6. Skype / Google Talk

7. Blogger

Social media sites are blocked in Springfield IL schools. For now. Thanks to a progressive new approach to social media, the district is consulting with teachers and administrators to figure out the best way to use social media.

The Document Camera

This guy has gone the way of the overhead machine. With the iPad2 and the Apple TV, there is nothing the Document Camera brings to the table. He sits at my desk with his head hanging down in disgrace. His stationary existence just doesn’t fit in with this mobile world. He was the most popular kid in my class for a couple of years, but now he is just another obsolete tool. I’m sure I can find a home for DC. Hopefully.

The Disney Mobile Cell and Tell survey of more than 1,500 10-17 year-old cell phone users found that teens and tweens like their cell phones perhaps more than other luxuries in their lives.
“If they had to choose between their phone or something else:
● One-third would give up listening to the radio, playing video games or going to the mall.
● Nearly one-fourth would give up their MP3 players.
● One in five would give up TV” (2007)

Willyn Webb brings you 12 Most Useful Ways Kids Can Learn With Cell Phones...

I will...

1. link to others generously,
2. retweet great ideas and give credit to original thinkers,
3. mention people by name when they give me ideas, whatever the source may be,
4. work to promote the work of others who support the cause of teaching, reaching, (and loving) every child,
5. respect each person as an original,
6. extend my hand of fellowship and friendship,
7. be the Internet I want my children to inherit,
8. be kind to others even when they don't deserve it,
9. stand up for the right thing even when it means I will be ridiculed for it, (All it takes is for good people to be quiet for horrible things to happen.)
10. discover and share new voices with the spotlight gifted to me by readers and friends,
11. be passionate to speak for those who do not have a voice: those in slavery, the poor, those separated by the digital divide, and
12. listen to you when you speak and seek discernment about what to do with what you say.

While Twitter doesn't have a written set of social guidelines (excepting its Terms of Service, of course), it does have a pretty well established set of unwritten guidelines that users should observe. Here's a few things you might want to consider when tweeting.

Don't DM Me, I'll DM You

School districts across the country are imposing strict new guidelines that ban private conversations between teachers and their students on cellphones and online platforms.

Most Use Social Media Appropriately

School administrators acknowledge that the vast majority of teachers use social media appropriately. But they also say they are increasingly finding compelling reasons to limit teacher-student contact.

12 States Have Updated Social Media Policies

School boards in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia have updated or are revising their social media policies this fall.

A Middle Ground

“My concern is that it makes it very easy for teachers to form intimate and boundary-crossing relationships with students,” said Charol Shakeshaft, chairwoman of the Department of Educational Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University, who has studied sexual misconduct by teachers for 15 years. “I am all for using this technology. Some school districts have tried to ban it entirely. I am against that. But I think there’s a middle ground that would allow teachers to take advantage of the electronic technology and keep kids safe.”

Teacher Perspective

“I think the reason why I use social media is the same reason everyone else uses it: it works,” said Jennifer Pust, head of the English department at Santa Monica High School, where a nonfraternization policy governs both online and offline relationships with students. “I am glad that it is not more restrictive. I understand we need to keep kids safe. I think that we would do more good keeping kids safe by teaching them how to use these tools and navigate this online world rather than locking it down and pretending that it is not in our realm.”

Nicholas Provenzano, 32, who has been teaching English for 10 years at Grosse Point High School in Michigan, acknowledged that “all of us using social media in a positive way with kids have to take 15 steps back whenever there is an incident.” But he said the benefits were many and that he communicated regularly with his students in an open forum, mostly through Twitter, responding to their questions about assignments. He has even shared a photo of his 6-month-old son. On occasion, he said, he will exchange private messages about an assignment or school-related task. He said that in addition to modeling best practices on social media use, he has been able to engage some students on Twitter who would not raise their hand in class.

He also said social media networks allowed him to collaborate on projects in other parts of the country. Facebook offers guidance for teachers and recommends they communicate on a public page.

At the same time that school filters prevent access to social media sites, high schools are beginning to offer courses in social media marketing.

Salt Lake City, UT (PRWEB) December 15, 2011

The views some high school and college students have of social media may be changing as they break this month for the holidays. Before Davis High School junior Breanna Barton took Jeff McCauley's new social media marketing class, Facebook and YouTube were merely means for wasting time. Now Barton sees things a little differently.

SEO.com is hiring some of these graduates as growth rates in social media marketing are expected to increase about 33 percent each year, from $400 million in 2010 to $2.3 billion in 2015, according to a forecast by BIA/Kelsey.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/12/15/prweb9034712.DTL#ixzz1gcjKlNej

To produce a stimulating 21st-century learning environment, school leaders see educational technology as a no-brainer.

New guidelines for vendors and educators aim to solve this comparison conundrum.

The report, titled “Conducting and Reporting Product Evaluation Research: Guidelines and Considerations for Educational Technology Publishers and Developers,” is authored by Denis Newman, CEO of Empirical Education Inc., and produced by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).

It’s based on Empirical Education’s many years of conducting this kind of research, both for publishers and for the U.S. Department of Education (ED). A working group of industry experts also was established for evaluation, and it met monthly for more than a year to sort through the issues and draft a set of considerations.

The guidelines, available free of charge on SIIA’s website, are timely for educators and ed-tech providers because of the growing demand from schools for “evidence of effectiveness of products, especially as the resources for spending on program materials decreases and administrators have to make harder decisions about what will best solve the problems facing their districts,” said Newman in an interview with eSchool News.

He added that ED, through programs such as Investing in Innovation (i3), is showing a growing interest in gathering evidence of effectiveness, and this is also reflected in the draft reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which talks consistently of evidence-based programs.

Evidenced-Based 

“By evidence-based, they mean having evidence of the sort the guidelines help publishers and school district administrators obtain,” said Newman. “The guidelines are written in a style that can be understood by executives, whether they work for publishers or for school districts. District executives will find them useful not only to get clear on what they can and should expect from publishers, but because it can help them see how their own data can be used to evaluate programs they’ve already put in place and are considering expanding.”