My Twitter Followers Bio’s as a Word Cloud – Part 2

I thought this would be a good time to revisit my post about “My Twitter Followers Bio’s as a Word Cloud.” I used a site called Twittersheep to create a word cloud from the bio’s of my followers. When I put this post up the first time, I had about 100 followers. I am now approaching the 250 mark (a milestone for some, a drop in the hat for others). This is great, it is hard to believe that I have so many people that are interested in what I might have to say (I am definitely interested in what they have to say). My PLN is growing and I am learning new things daily.

I was curious how my followers would fare this time. The biggest words in the cloud last time: “technology” & “teacher.” What would they be this time? To my pleasant surprise “teacher,” “technology” & “education.” Thanks for following everyone. If you are not following me, check out iteachag on Twitter.

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Do you coach to teach or just to win?

Another year of CDE’s or career development events are finished. This past Saturday (May 2) was the California State FFA Finals held at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. I have talked about CDE’s before in my posts (http://tinyurl.com/d7k8og) and I feel they are very important to our FFA programs across the state and nation. The question I have to ask is: Do you coach to teach or just to win? Don’t get me wrong; I have a strong competitive nature and I really like to win, but is that the only purpose to these contests?

I teach at a small high school of about 500 students. Of that, around 350 of the students are members of the FFA. Not all are active members. In a good year we have up to 100 actives. We are in a rural community, but most of our students live in town and we do not have a school farm. That being said, there is only a small population of students that are able to have substantial SAE’s (Supervised Agricultural Experiences or, simply, put an Ag project or job). The rest of the students that want to be active in the program are able to be involved in leadership events and/or CDE’s (or more fondly called judging teams). If I had to guess I would think that it this way for quite a few FFA Chapters and Agriculture Departments throughout the state.

CDE’s are great activities for students to be involved in and are part of the three circles of agricultural education: Classroom, FFA, and SAE’s. These contest are directly related to the FFA but we need to remember that these contest are tied to the agricultural classroom and possibly a student’s SAE. The numerous contests that our students are involved in are designed to teach them a useful skill that could possibly lead them to a career in the area they are participating. I push my students to do the best job they can at the contests; we all like to win of course. We are in the business of teaching and more importantly teaching by using Agriculture as our medium. The thing I always try to remember is that this is a learning experience for my students. If my students can do better at each contest or learn from each contest I think the students have grown. Students can have an off day, sure we are probably not happy, but think about the teachable moment that can make. Why do we coach these CDE teams? Is it to become State and possibly National Champions or is it to give our students the best learning opportunities possible. If my team is the next State Champion or if they are 25th in the State, if they have learned and grown throughout the process, I think I have succeeded in my job. And hey, there is always next year. So I ask you again: Do you coach to teach or just to win?

Use the Power of Twitter to Build Your Personal Learning Network

Last week during our school’s bi-monthly collaboration day, I introduced the teachers to the idea of PLN’s or Personal Learning Networks. To most of the staff a PLN was not something they had heard about before. The last year and a half we have been talking about building a school wide Professional Learning Community (PLC), the idea of the PLC is the entire staff would have the same goals and expectations for the school, students and learning on campus. For myself, the idea of a PLN is the building block to a better PLC. Everyone is their own individual with their own ideas and backgrounds, meaning everyone will have their own PLN (that’s why it’s a “personal” learning network). If every teacher can bring their own PLN, we make a larger, more experienced PLC.

This is were the power of Twitter comes to play. In my last post, Learning to Twitter, Tweeting to Learn I discussed how I thought Twitter could help us build a great PLN and help us to stay life-long learners. Let’s just say I did not do the power of Twitter justice. Yesterday I was part of my first educhat on Twitter. I am not sure if any one individual was the person who came up with the idea; I do know that two people from my PLN played a very big part, Rodd Lucier and Bud Talbot. What is educhat? It is a way that anyone interested in educational technology can come together and talk through Twitter. Everyone involved in the discussion uses the hash tag #educhat. A hash tag allows you to follow the discussion of all the individuals, whether or not you are officially “following” them (please see my last post if you are unsure about what it means to follow someone).

The true power of Twitter unfolded before my eyes. During educhat, there were a large number of people that all came together for a specific purpose, to talk about educational technology. The best part is everyone brought their PLN’s with them.

In a way our students are ahead of us in building PLNs. They do it all the time on social media websites like Facebook and Myspace. Now if we can leverage this power for education, just think of the learning opportunities for our students.

Learning to Twitter, Tweeting to Learn

Twitter was a little like a new toy at first, I used it a few days and then stopped. I don’t know if I got tired of it or maybe I was just frustrated with the lack of interaction. I started by following all my tech favorites: Leo Leporte, Kevin Rose, Sarah Lane, John C. Dvorak, Patrick Norton, Amber MaCarthur and Cali Lewis. Then I also followed a couple of teachers that had a podcast or Blog on the internet like Rodd Lucier and Mr.Teacher. Most of these people have so many followers that they can’t possibly follow everyone in return and so no interaction.

Lets take a step back and help some people out. First off, Twitter is a service that lets you tell people what you are doing, feeling, ask a question, or simply interact with others all in 140 characters or less. You can follow people and you will see what they “Tweet” (what you call a post on Twitter). People can follow you, and they are not necessarily the same people that you have followed. Are we thoroughly confused now? The best way to start is to follow people you think would have the same interests as you and hopefully the same type of people will follow you. Now this is the best part of Twitter in my opinion. This is where new networks and communities are formed.

So I stopped using Twitter until I found out I should search for people that would have the same interests as me. I looked for more people involved in agriculture, teaching, teachers using technology in classrooms and people involved with the FFA. I did not just search out internet superstars. You see that was my problem at first. I was following people that had great information that I could gather, but I had no interaction with. I went from about 15 people I was following to about 50. Within two days I was overwhelmed with people who started following me.

This is when Twitter came alive for me. I first started by repeating information others had Tweeted, a Retweet. It is kind of like a bibliography and a nice tweet all at the same time (The proper way to retweet - “RT @username tweet from person”) This will put you on someone’s radar that you like what they are talking about plus it helps promote the other person by allowing people following you to see someone else’s tweet. The next step was to start “replying” to people (@username - tweet). This will allow the person to see that you are saying something to them. This is a bit like instant messaging except everyone can see what you have written. The last thing you can do is Direct Message someone or DM. A DM will get a message to a person without anyone else reading it (if you do it correctly - D @username - tweet). You can only DM someone when you are both following each other. Of course you can just tweet something of your own.

OK, enough about how to use Twitter. What can it do for you? You see, when I said earlier that Twitter came alive for me, what I meant was the interaction with others had started. As I “met” new people by following them I was learning new things that people had tweeted and I was able to ask questions and find answers from several sources. I am always after new ways to bring technology into the classroom and the education process either for students, teacher, or the entire school. Twitter helped me to build a network of people that were Tweeting their ideas, Retweeting the ideas of others, or putting up links to websites that people had found useful. I consider myself a life long learner, that is I am always looking for ways to increase my abilities and Twitter has helped me to stay on top of the cutting edge of Educational Technology or Education 2.0 as some people call it.

Twitter is used by many different people in many different ways. I found out for me that as I was learning to Twitter, I was also Tweeting to Learn. Twitter has allowed me to broaden my own PLN or Personal Learning Community. I hope educators can see the power of Twitter for themselves as well as their students. They need to see that it is not just another social media site that students “waste time on.” What a great way to have students, teachers, and parents interact and share information and learning with each other.

For more information on Twitter check out these websites: mashable.com, Twitterforteachers, Once a Teacher… or search for Twitter on Google.

Here is a great presentation by Evan Williams: How Twitter’s spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses.