Educhat discussions on twitter

Rodd Lucier (@thecleversheep) brought up the idea of having an #educhat discussion on twitter, similar to the #journchat discussions among journalists, bloggers, and PR types. Note that in each case, the hash symbol (#) in front of the name facilitates later searching of tweets. See my eariler post on hashtags for more on this. There is great power in using the hashtag and identifying trending discussions. For example, at last weekend's Learning 2.0- A Colorado Conversation conference (or "unconference"), those of us live-tweeting (perhaps 10-20 people?) drove the hashtag #colearning to the 5th highest trending topic on twitter at one point. (*A discussion of these tweets is the subject of a forthcoming blog post). 

#educhat discussions would focus on a particular topic in education which would be determined by the needs and interests of the twitter education/#educhat community. Rodd and I have described #educhats a bit in the Twitter for Teachers e-book. On this page, there is a simple Google form designed to allow folks to suggest topics, times, days, and frequencies for #educhats. Please take a moment to go to that page and enter some suggestions if you are so inclined. There are certainly a lot of topics we could chat about, and this would also be a great way to find like-minded tweeple to follow and build your PLN. 

We were thinking of having the first #educhat on Monday March 9th. The time has not been nailed down yet, but we were thinking about sometime after 8:30 EST. Of course that time is only a suggestion for starting, as I'm sure the discussion will continue and migrate westward as the Earth rotates. Please suggest a topic, join in, and track the discussion using the hashtag #educhat. 

The Twitter for Teachers e-book

Recently I came across the Twitter for Teachers e-book collaborative effort, based in a wetpaint wiki. This project was started by Rodd Lucier (@thecleversheep) and has grown to include over 100 members in its first ten days of existence. The project is aimed at developing a Twitter reference for teachers at all levels would would like to get to know Twitter, what it can offer, and how to use it in the classroom. I was very excited to hear about this project, as I've been wishing we had a sort of clearinghouse for information on uses of twitter in education. I think this site has the potential to be a leading dynamic reference on the topic, and more importantly a collaborative hub for those interested in using twitter in educational settings. 

Perhaps the coolest thing about this site (besides the important topic) is the collaborative atmosphere and nature. Within the first day of having joined, I felt welcomed to contribute to the structure of the e-book and to contribute to dialog about the project. Rodd is very active on Twitter and responsive to activity on the Twitter for Teachers site.

The best place to start exploring the site is the developing table of contents. In this space you can see the true collaborative nature of the project. Members suggest and make changes to the structure of the site, and head off to various pages linked from the table of contents to develop the actual content. Rodd has also provided some good information on how to contribute to the project, including videos on indexing yourself as a "twitterteacher" on delicious, and adding yourself to the project's Google map.

I encourage you the check out the site if you are a teacher interested in using twitter, whether you want to contribute or not. There is a quickly-growing wealth of information in this e-book.

How can web2.0 technologies facilitate classroom-based group work?

In a recent posting, I discussed how I thought the shift in use of technology in the science classroom would place the emphasis on collaboration, rather than on instrumentation (but without losing the many great data collection and analysis uses of technology we now employ). I've been thinking more about how collaborative and communicative uses of technology can enhance group work in the science classroom.

There are many types of collaborative grouping employed in science classrooms: group problem solving, group lab activities, pair-share, peer tutoring, jigsaw, and student teams/games to name a few. I'm sure there are many others. What are some ways in which web2.0 communications technologies can contribute to science classroom-based group learning? I'm thinking of technologies and specific applications such as chat, video chat, blogging, microblogging (e.g. twitter , cirip.ro, edmodo), online collaborative document/spreadsheet/presentation construction (e.g. Google Docs), and many others.

What follows is a brainstormed list- I certainly hope others will add to it though comments, etc.

• Extension of group working time: I think the most obvious enhancement has to do with "extending" the time that groups are able to physically spend working together. Continued collaboration via email or chat is not uncommon, but what other possibilities are opened up by things such as Google video chat, nearly synchronous document authoring in Google Docs, desktop sharing applications (e.g. Microsoft Shared View), etc? I'm thinking of this category of use in a synchronous way, with all (or many) group members collaborating and communicating at the same time.
• Online workspace: Related to the above but conceptualized in more of an asynchronous way is the idea of an online workspace for student groups. Within a classroom Ning or webpage, students could have their own group space in order to share ideas, documents, solutions, etc. Think of this as an online lab table or whiteboard.
  
• Working group updates, or "a-ha!" sharing: One really great potential application involves the anytime updating of the group with new ideas or breakthroughs. Because mobile devices make sharing so easy via text message or microblog post, members can notify others when they have an "a-ha!" moment or just an idea which pertains to the group work. More importantly, a record of that idea then exists in the cloud, ready to be harvested and fully documented/explicated later on (see Documentation below)..
• Sharing of group work to an outside audience: Many teachers are already using blogs as a medium for their students to share their work with a larger audience. This is a very powerful idea, and increases greatly the authenticity of the group product. But that sharing shouldn't end with the posting. The blog post/web page/document/presentation (i.e. whatever artifact gets published) should be advertised to a target audience and serve as a context for developing communication and collaboration with that audience. For example, a student group could post their solution to a complex problem and solicit a network of individuals (perhaps starting with the teacher's personal learning network, or PLN) to give feedback on their work. This would hopefully lead to network building by the students themselves. 
• Documentation: Perhaps one of the most tangible and useful aspects of using web2.0 technologies for communication and collaboration is the ability with which interactions can be documented. Online chats, tweets, posts, web pages, collaborative documents, etc all exist somewhere in the cloud. This data can later be mined and compiled if the need arises. Of course this also presents a bit of a challenge as different formats and searching methods make this a complex task. However, herein lies an opportunity to develop more 21st century skills.

I'm sure there are many more ideas and applications for using these technologies to enhance science classroom group work. Please let me know your ideas so we can develop this thread together. Post a comment or tweet me (@Bud_T) and I'l add it here, citing you of course.

AERA and NARST conference tweetup wikis

Paul Baker (@pabaker55) had the idea to create a tweetup wiki for the AERA Annual Meeting in San Diego. I think this is a great idea, and hope that association members will get involved in scheduling some tweetups. Also, I hope that everyone will use the #AERA hashtag in their related tweets so that we can all keep track of what's going on at the meeting.

I also created a tweetup wiki for the NARST annual conference in Garden Grove, CA which follows directly after AERA. Again, I encourage all to use the #NARST hashtag. 

Announcements regarding each conference tweetup wiki were posted to various listservs- please spread the word through your own channels as well. 

More uses of twitter in the classroom

Check out this collaborative Google presentation on interesting ways to use twitter in the classroom. There are some great ideas here, and the presentation is ever-growing.

Is there any single repository on the web that could best act as a clearing house for information related to uses of twitter in education? I've been building a list in diigo but it is far from complete. Please add to it if you can. 

The imminent shift in uses of technology in science education

Technology has long been a part of science teaching and learning. From using some of the first personal computers to collect and analyze data to using the latest visualization tools to help approach abstract phenomena, many of us in science education have a long history of using technology. In my first teaching job back in 1997 I tried to incorporate the use of probeware/microcomputer-based labs (MBL) into every activity I could. Obtaining and having available that kind of technology (not easy to get at that school and in that time) greatly helped me to design inquiry-based activities for my students and I to engage with. Further, graphing tools made engaging with mathematical concepts (such as integration) much more approachable and tangible for my students. More recently in my last teaching job, I made extensive use of visualization and simulation software to help the students and I think about complex and abstract phenomena such as electric and magnetic fields and the variables which affect those fields. 

Those are just a few of many possible examples from my own experience, and I'm sure they echo with some of your own. I always tried to incorporate new technologies based on what they afforded me and my students, not just because they were cool or new. My hope was that I would know when I achieved appropriate use of technology when a student walked into my classroom and didn't notice the computer and MBL apparatus, much like they don't ever notice the existence of a chalkboard as something special. Full, everyday integration was my goal. 

While data collection, data analysis, and visualization/simulation technologies are great and, I believe, will continue to be a very important part of science teaching and learning, I think there is an impending shift on the focus of technological use in science education. We now have the opportunity to move beyond just using technology for facilitation of data collection, etc. and need to embrace how technology can help us with communication and collaboration. The National Science Education Standards are clear on the necessity of communication and on the social endeavor of the scientific enterprise. It seems that we have only begun to see how new communication technologies can help us to enact these goals in the science classroom. Of course, there are some great existing collaborative or communicative projects in science education (e.g. the JASON Project, the GLOBE Project, etc) but they are very focused special projects and don't reach every classroom. What can individual teachers do on an everyday basis to utilize new communications technologies and platforms in their own teaching?

Blogging, texting, IM'ing, tweeting, or any one of a host of other digital communication forms can greatly enhance our students' understanding the importance of communication and community in the scientific endeavor, and they can be adopted and used rather easily on many levels, from one-on-one interactions to one-with-many. I know there are a lot of educators out there exploring these possibilities using mobile phones (see this wiki, Liz Kolb's blog, and my last post on formative assessment w/mobile phones to name a few). Here's a great blog post from Tom Barrett about using twitter in a science lesson about length of day. Students communicated with people all over the world in order to find out about their current length of daytime. I also just recently discovered GCast, which allows you to create podcast recordings straight from your mobile phone. This has great potential in classrooms, and some are already using it with their students. As I continue to look into this, I'm sure I'll find more existing applications in the science classroom. 

Having students write about and share their ideas and work in science class makes learning more authentic as well. We know from a host of literature that having an audience for student work beyond the teacher or classroom increases the authenticity of the task for the student. Further, use of these technologies and modes of sharing increase the learning network far beyond the walls of the classroom. A more global scientific community is within our reach as teachers and students. 

I really do think that we are on the cusp of a shift in how we use technology in science education. We will not eschew our current uses for data collection, analysis, simulation, and visualization, but we will begin to incorporate more communications technologies using the web and mobile devices. This can only help science learners and teachers to become better communicators and members of a global community of scientists and science learners. I look forward to seeing how this all takes place. 

How can we use new communication platforms to facilitate the formative assessment process?

I don't think there is a "silver bullet" in educational practice, but I do believe that good formative assessment comes pretty close to being our most powerful tool as educators. I am operationalizing formative assessment here in a commonly accepted way. Paraphrasing Sadler (1989) among others, the formative assessment process involves 1) Making explicit the standard or goal for the learner (i.e. Where are we going to go?), 2) Finding out what the students' understandings are with respect to that goal or standard (i.e. Where are we starting from?), and 3) Taking some action to close the gap between where we are and where we want to be (i.e. How are we going to get there?). This process involves both the teacher and the learner working together through these various steps, and it makes transparent not only the goals and current understandings, but also the reasons for taking a particular course of action to achieve that goal. Further, this process can be nicely linked to learning theory, especially Vygotsky's theory of concept formation (e.g. the learner's everyday conceptions approaching the "scientific" conceptions that are the target understandings). I'll leave further explication of that point for a future post, perhaps getting one of my colleagues to guest author.

So how can we take advantage of communications technologies to help us practice formative assessment? Probably the most obvious tools are related to timely communication, which can be used to announce or remind students of target goals or standards, and which can also be used for quick feedback. Email works well for this, and I'm sure it's a tool many of us (especially in post-secondary education) already use to tell students what will happen in class tomorrow, or to give feedback on assignments, or perhaps even what to do next (i.e. How are you going to get there?). But email is asynchronous and a bit clunky for quick, timely communication. 

Course websites are great for these communications as well, but how often do you students log into WebCT or Blackboard? Once a day at most? Checking these sites also requires a bit of commitment: start the browser, navigate to the page, log in, go to message forum, etc. 

Think about how you provide goal statements and feedback or prompt a student to take some action while you are teaching: usually with a short sentence, question, or note on the board. These exchanges are often on the fly, completely synchronous, brief, and efficient (especially in the interactive classroom)- very different from most email messages and course management system interactions. But why should this type of interaction be limited to face-to-face time in class?

Enter the mobile phone. Concise, timely communication via text message or instant messaging client. Learning happens outside of the classroom walls and outside of class time. Imagine texting your class with the day's objective the morning of class, giving them feedback after class or any (reasonable) time via text message, and even prompting individuals or the whole class what to do next via text message. The real advantage here is that suddenly this process is not bounded by some artificial (though real) time constraint. Of course, many students would probably be hesitant to give your their mobile number, so that is where a messaging client comes into play. The same thing could be accomplished with IM, twitter, or a host of other instant messaging/microblogging types of services. 

A recent EdWeek article on mobile devices in 21st century learning brought this idea of mine to the fore. This is all in the brainstorm stage (as are many of my ideas) but I really think that with the right kind of course environment and with a bit of cultural shift, educators could tap into the potential of mobile phone-based messaging explicitly in the service of facilitating the formative assessment process. Hopefully some are already exploring these potentials- I'll be the first to admit that I haven't done a lit review on this one. Do you know of any work related to instant messaging and formative assessment? What are your thoughts and ideas?