This is what it's all about: young people using social media to their intellectual and professional advantage well before they're out of school – and with school helping them with that! What's the "this" I'm referring to? A USATODAY story about teachers, librarians, and media specialists helping students develop their own personal learning networks, using Twitter as the most common tool (this is … [Read more...] about Students’ PLNs: Great social media use!
education technology
My ISTE 2011: Notes from a giant conference
To me, ISTE – with some 18,000 attendees from 68 countries having converged on Philadelphia this week – is like looking out the window from a fast train through a dense urban area: mostly a blur, but your eye freeze-frames what's meaningful to you. So I always come away feeling enriched by the updates and insights I glean and the fresh dose of inspiration I get from connecting with people who love … [Read more...] about My ISTE 2011: Notes from a giant conference
How teachers Facebook & tweet for students
Facebook and Twitter are very different but social utilities just the same, so there are about as many ways teachers use them as there are teachers. And their creativity is truly inspiring. In his blog post "The Why and How of Using Facebook For Educators – No Need to be Friends At All!," Texas middle school teacher Ronnie Burt has a little graphic showing that 61% of educators have Facebook … [Read more...] about How teachers Facebook & tweet for students
‘Do no harm’: Message to educators, parents
This is interesting. University of Southern California Prof. Henry Jenkins didn't put it exactly this way, but I don't think he'd disagree: It's almost as if, at this particular point in history (the history of education, media, and technology, in any case), educators need the same first principle of practice that doctors in emergency medicine have. "Like with a physician, the first statement … [Read more...] about ‘Do no harm’: Message to educators, parents
Social media: Time to end the laments & get on with it, maybe?!
I wrote it before I read New York Times executive editor and parent Bill Keller's stylish dismissal of social media, but "Hawk drama (& human drama) in the digital age" would've been my response. It was about how we really need to think about "the observer effect" on both the experiment (red-tailed hawks, or youth in social media) and the observer (people at the viewer end of the "hawk cam," … [Read more...] about Social media: Time to end the laments & get on with it, maybe?!