Collaboration via Twitter and blogs.

On a Monday after Winter break I came back to my 8th grade algebra with the topic of multiplying binomials. We had spent about two weeks on the topic before break. Most of the time was devoted to creating specific rectangles using Algebra Tiles, but also we moved onto to the use of "generic rectangles", which in our CPM course, are simple graphic organizers to multiply polynomials.


Before re-visiting the topic, though, I wanted to know when such a skill is actually used. I conducted a quick Google search: why multiply binomials. The only results I got were "how to multiply binomials". So I posted my query on Twitter. Gary Davis (@republicofmath) took up my question and started to write about it based on an email I sent him with my initial thoughts. Later, I read what he wrote and responded. 


Several great things happened for me. First, I got to think deeply about a topic with someone who knows so much about it. Secondly, I got to bounce my ideas off of his expertise. Finally, we collaborated on a blog post. The collaboration via Twitter and blogs was fantastic. Thanks, Gary.


This is the blog post:

http://republicofmath.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/why-multiply-binomials/




a

I will be @ UC Berkeley all day

In a California Writing Project event celebrated 35 years and reading research.

A small snippet of Twitter last night, though, left me wondering:

My response:

The "no Friday Night Life" is purely by choice. I'd rather be watching a movie with my 9 year old son and, when he sleeps, I slip onto the Internet for a while.

I love teaching. I love writing. Hence, I love to write about teaching. At any rate, I should have plenty of data for my professional inquiry project.

Visitors to this part of the blogosphere

Thanks to Blogger and to Twitter, I feel I have joined the teaching/thinking/doing staff of my dreams.

I enjoy thinking and writing and adding to the lovely cacophany around me.

One does wonder, though, if anyone else is really reading what I write. So few comments are left, that at times I may just be singing joyfully in a huge sound tunnel, reveling in the sound of my own voice (not a pretty picture, perhaps).

These are the stats of my site for the past several weeks. I am not entirely sure how to interpret them, but I am happy to know (I think) that at least 40 or so regular visitors are dropping by. That probably matches my own blog reading practices.

I wish I had a good cup of coffee, some brownies and a comfy chair to offer you when you drop in.

Thanks, it is all wonderful, isn't it.

These are the topics I Tweeted a lot about this past month

Not a bad list. Sarah Palin features more prominently than I originally thought. I guess I still can't believe she is on a national scene Still education focussed, though. With a little Glee thrown in for good, simple fun!

I found perusing the main words from my Tweets very interesting. While I want to hear from a range of people and ideas, I do want to keep my own contributions to topics of particular professional and personal interests. My Twitter personality reflects much of who I am that could be of some use to people.

In order of importance find:

1.  Math in general, algebra in particular
2.  Role of education in society
3.  President Obama and the world
4.  Healthcare
5.  Gay youth in school, gay life in general and gay marriage in particular
6.  Sarah Palin, Republican Party's obstructive politics, poor people and excess.

Above all, I see life positively, try to live it that way and try to leave the space around me a little better than I found it.

from:

http://tweetcloud.icodeforlove.com/index.php

I think this a very good list of words in my Tweets:

math school students teachers teacher thanks

love time people class obama schools grade marriage 

education writing algebra teaching learning thinking 

life read feel question agree true public project health

karate help hope believe change book california 

country world care tell families ideas remember

parents system president practice lesson college

healthcare gays  rights sorry mind reform wish

social classroom

My Twitter Birthday

I say this once and I've said in 100's of times: Twitter has revolutionized my professional engagement. It has allowed me to experiment with ideas, share thoughts, collaborate, debate, nit pic thoughts, expand ideas and much more.

It has allowed me to distill what I think is important and it has also allowed me to step out of my limited professional circles in this small (albeit nice) private school.

I had a sense that my Twitter birthday was coming up and then found a site that would actually tell me how long I've been twittering.

Much like parenting, I barely remember being without Twitter and might have thought my Twitter time line was longer than it really is.

My Virtual Staff Lounge

     If we accept the notion that schools function, in large part, as transmitters of knowledge to subsequent generations, then let’s also recognize that this transmission is in the throes of evolutionary change. I feel the change all around me. Computers are fast replacing textbooks; interactive whiteboards are supplanting static ones; email overtaking paper memos and on-demand Web-based video pushing aside those VHS tapes or DVDs.

Like many educators, I used to think I could choose what roll these new technologies would play in my professional life and classroom. Recently I decided that this was a false choice. I cannot selectively ignore technological change. I can isolate  myself, true, but I must always remember that I am not educating my students for today’s world, but rather, for a future world in which these technologies will dominate. Do I over romanticizing the paper past and under appreciating the digital future? I did not become a teacher to blindly support status quo 20 years ago and I summarily reject letting myself become one today. 

So how do I keep up? The answer is simple:  stay passionately involved with educators around the world on a daily basis. Thanks to technology, this is now a reality. I am convinced that I am the most effective teacher I can possibly be when accompanied by a diverse group of educational thinkers and practitioners. This article is the story of how my professional circles have evolved over the years and where I hope they will go in the future.

If you have not yet heard of this acronym: PLN, I will explain. It stands for Personal Learning Network. While the term might be new, the idea is not. Teachers have always had learning networks–people we learn from and share with. Teachers are information maniacs at our core. We are also intensely social beings. Put these two characteristics together and you have defined PLN.

The nature of my PLN has changed since I first started teaching in 1987. This evolution is part developmental and part technological. I tend to divide my career into three episodes that are characterized by what I was collecting at the time: paper, computer files or web links. Let’s start with paper.

In 1987 the Internet only existed for people I did not know yet. I was a new teacher, by far the youngest staff member at my school and the only man except for the janitor. I shared a kindergarten room with a veteran teacher who was polite but cautious about the new ideas I brought about literacy and numeracy. I was not quite sure if teaching was going to be my profession for the long term. Few staff members went out of their way to change my mind about this.

My personal learning network at the time consisted of the “New Teacher Project”, a teacher mentoring consortium run by the local university. They provided mentors and workshops for a cohort of 20 first and second year teachers. This cohort of teachers, along with our mentors, formed the core of my PLN. We met face to face in weekly meetings. Most professional information we shared came from articles or books we had read as well conference or workshops we had attended. We bought books in bookstores and the conference handouts came back in suitcases. Anything we thought was valuable was photocopied and filed for future reference. Our goal was to fill the file cabinet with enough interesting material to cover the school year. I spent many hours coloring handmade books, glueing together math kits and drawing little student versions of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Where The Wild Things Are.

By the mid 1990’s I decided that I loved teaching. My PLN had expanded considerably. I had a bursting file cabinet, overflowing collection of books for my classroom library and I was on my 3rd personal computer. I was intricately involved in District curriculum committees. I worked as staff trainer for a textbook company and I was studying for my masters degree. I regularly met with fascinating teachers from all circles. Perhaps it was 1996 when I sent my first email to a colleague at my school. We shared little secrets from our classroom experiences. We also share information about books we read, though we still had to buy them in a store. I saved bookmarks for website I liked, but still printed out pages for my files. However, no matter how large my PLN had grown, it was still comprised of educators I met in person.

This started to change just about the time I realized how important the personal computer had become to my entire teaching style. No longer was I struggling to figure out how to “teach technology. Rather, I was writing lesson plans, developing materials for my students and colleagues, creating elaborate graphic organizers and publishing student work. The computer had stopped being an exotic toy. It was now my tireless work horse. I was reading web pages like I used to read magazines in a library.  I stopped filling my file cabinet with paper and instead collected computer files, first on floppy disk and later on hard drives. It was my purchase of a laptop in the late 90’s that spelled the eventual end of my two file cabinets and the reams of paper held within. 

My PLN started to evolve in unexpected ways. Emails would arrive to my inbox from people who had heard of me through word of mouth. I worked for a different textbook publisher, but never actually met my contact until the very end our working relationship. I completed my National Board Certification with the support chat rooms and web-based bulletin board forums. I started noticing teacher created websites, called blogs, where a huge variety of opinions   were being expressed. On occasion, these same blog postings had commentaries written by other people, not always teachers. Sometimes the debate was trivial, but at other times, it was heated, intelligent and enlightening. I was honored to even be able to read them, much less comment myself.

In many ways this new world of teacher written blogs became my therapy for my growing frustration with the intense professional pressure to “teach to the tests”. I could identify where similarities existed not only across the country, but the whole world as well. I could also identify important differences that allowed me a greater perspective on the state of education. 

Interestingly, when I moved over to an independent school, the possibilities for creative instruction and project based learned exploded for me, but my physical PLN shrunk dramatically. I was no longer a part of a large school district, which while often much maligned, always guaranteed me a large, vibrant community of dedicated educators. My current colleagues are also a vibrant group of educators, but I am the sole 7th and 8th grade math teacher. I continually run the risk of becoming an insular, out-of-touch teacher.

Lucky for me, this has not been the case.  These past couple of years have seen a tremendous international expansion of my PLN amazing. While I still share and collaborate with my school colleagues, I am also sharing ideas with amazing teachers from all over the world.  Information is waiting for me each morning in my inbox from discussion groups.  To be honest, the sheer volume of information available can be overwhelming at times. But technology has give me the tools to be selective with this information.

One of the most important evolutionary changes in my PLN has been how I meet and communicate with people. This is where the technological advances of the modern Internet, sometimes referred to as Web 2.0, come into play in ways that are controversial to many teachers. I attended a workshop called Math 2.0 in which the presenter informed the (mostly) over 30 crowd that “email is so last century, now it’s about Facebook and Twitter.” It was thanks to that presenter that I finally took Twitter seriously and it has been a saving grace of my career.

Twitter is like some huge, noisy teacher’s lounge, like the type I always imagined  I would find in one my schools some day. Everyone is talking at once. I might be talking with one or two teachers in the lounge, while catching bits and pieces of other conversations around me. People come in and out of focus in this lounge. Every once in a while I share a good piece of info, perhaps a website I visited, or a lesson that went particularly well, or a posting on some bulletin board (virtual) I saw. If I have a question or doubt, I put that out as well and often receive responses very quickly.

I have control over who I allow to enter my virtual lounge because unlike chat rooms, I choose to follow (or if the offend, to unfollow) people. Twitter is a web based social networking site, like Facebook, but I use a program called Tweetdeck because of special features such as lists that allow me to create an elite group of contributors I find particularly enriching. I sometimes think of Twitter as a huge magazine rack in some international book store. I can browse around the covers, notice headlines and stop when something particularly catches my interest. Most people I follow on Twitter are educators like myself, but I also follow educational psychologists, brain researchers and political wonks who I find thought provoking.

The power of Twitter lies within its simplicity and its dynamism: unlike other Internet forums, topics are set on the fly and don’t dwell in linear pathways. The cap of 140 characters per “Tweet” enforces brevity and actually encourages spontaneity. Much of what goes through my Tweetdeck are links to blogs and websites recommended by people I respect, much like the articles we photocopied for ourselves 20 years ago.

Here is a sample of Tweets from people I follow:

Reading "A Math Paradox: The Widening Gap Between High School and College Math" 

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"

~ Albert Einstein

New blog post: "My Students Are Visual Learners, Maybe Their Parents Are, Too" Fighting fire with fire. http://is.gd/4JA46

Nuclear Accidents and the Origins of Superhero Origins: http://tinyurl.com/yjfocp4

"Stay the course, light a star, change the world where'er you are" Richard Le Gallienne

The types of discussion I have and the information shared in my PLN has not actually changed very much over 20 years–what works in class, how are my students learning, how can I become a better teacher. The medium is not longer paper exchanged in face to face meetings. What has changed, and dramatically so, is how I meet other educators and thinkers, where we discuss ideas, and how we share information. I meet them online. I learn from them online. I share with them online. And therein lies the dilemma. Whenever I mention an idea I have gleaned from Twitter to a colleague, there is a funny sort of silence. Twitter is such a new phenomenon that there is a lot of misunderstanding of its true power. From afar it can seem like 140 characters sent off anonymously would only spell trouble. But it is really like paper and pencil which create amazing works of art as well as scribbling those horrible notes during class. Twitter, like most all human communication, is dependent on human intention. The nearly 600 people I follow on Twitter show the highest professional standards I have ever seen. And if someone slips, I simply unfollow them.

My challenge to anyone interested in exploring the potential of Twitter to envigorate their professional engagement is to try it for a month. After that month you can reflect on the relative benefits and make a better informed decision on whether you will adopt this technology.

You need to create a list of interesting people to follow. Once you follow them, you can look at their lists and decide to follow those people. You’ll need to understand a few basics of Twitter communication style:

@ – when placed in front of a twitter name, it allows the person to see a reply to them under Replies

RT: – you this to retweat a tweet that is worthy of sending again

# – hash tags to track specific conversations (try #ascd in Twitter Search to see what I mean)

Post several Tweets a day: something great (or a struggle) from your teaching or learning, a question for the day. When you see an interesting Tweet, reply to it. You might find yourself engaging in a fascinating conversation in no time at all.

This is a great website to find other, like-minded educators to follow:

 http://twitter4teachers.pbworks.com

These are some particularly interesting people I follow closely on Twitter.

Angela Maiers  @angelamaiers :excellent thinker about education

Larry Ferlazzo  @larryferlazzo Amazing provider of resources

Vicki Davis  @coolcatteacher : one of the most followed teachers on Twitter

Mr. Tweet  @ MrTweet - provides you with personalized recommendations

Russel Tarr: @russeltarr History Teacher: incredible, web-based resources 

Ira Socol: @irasocol  Deep thinker of educational policy

My PLN has evolved in interesting and unpredictable ways. The virtual staff lounge I currently sit it in loud, rambuctious, irreverant and exciting. I invite anyone reading this join me as in the joyful cacophany of professional growth. You can find me on twitter as @pepepacha. Let the rumpus begin!

Quote

Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain.

Twitterversifying

1 goal this yr is to preserve ambience of self reliance in class and let the natural leaders of the group lead group by example.

Great Article about PLN from Chris Cotter

I found this on Chris Cotter's blog Head's Up English.

I feel it really sums up my professional enrichment via Twitter and blogs.

Thanks, Chris. Well Done!

Personal Learning Networks

Written by Chris Cotter

As educators, we know that learning takes place every day and everywhere. But with the need for information and expertise in all sorts of related and unrelated fields these days, we just can't learn quickly or deeply enough to satisfy personal or professional demands. Consider the following approaches most people take: Workshops and training programs: These may be great, but they end after several hours or days. How do we continue to seek guidance or confirm our understanding once the workshop or program has ended? In addition, so many in the ELT profession live in areas without a large enough community of teachers to allow regular workshops and training. Self-directed and continuous study: Yes, this proves essential to our professional development. Yet, at first, we can't apply the ideas gleaned from many sources so readily. We need to move this information to flexible knowledge that then lets us quickly adapt and apply it to new situations. How do we do this? Observe a lesson in whole or in part (or be observed): We have the chance to gain some new ideas. If we see a successful activity that has students actively participating, we similarly have the chance to add this to our teaching repertoire. If we are observed, it really only becomes a mini-workshop unless our peer provides repeated feedback. How well do we know the whys and hows and what ifs that allowed for the success of the lesson and/or activity? Thus is a Personal Learning Network, or PLN, so important. A personal learning network represents a group of people who can: 1: Recommend articles, guides, websites, blog entries, experts, and so on. This tops the list because it supports all the following points. With a personal learning network, we automatically have access to the accumulated references and resources of possibly hundreds of people. For each person in our network, they are similarly connected to other people in other networks. Each person is a hub of sorts. And some people may be very active networkers, connecting to and engaging with thousands of people individually. These can be considered mega-hubs. 2: Guide your learning. When we hold conversations with others in our PLN, they provide knowledge and expertise gleaned from articles, websites, blog entries, and personal experience. They've accessed this information more than once, thought about it, tested it, perhaps retested it, and linked it their pre-existing storehouse of knowledge and expertise. They then share the information with us, as well as possibly recommend the articles, websites, etc. In short, they guide our learning. 3: Answer our questions. This is especially important, because training and workshops, self-directed study, and personal observations generate so many questions. We seek to plug that information into what we presently know. However, without answers to those questions, we don't move towards the ability to apply information in new and novel ways. The knowledge remains rigid and stuck to the situation in which it was initially learned. 4: Push us in new directions. Let's say we understand but one aspect of an idea, resource, theory, etc. Our PLN can offer competing theories, caveats, or suggestions. We eventually have more methods and models on which to base our future studies and endeavors. 5: Challenge our currently held beliefs. Discourse advances understanding because it requires us to support our opinions. The careful analysis that comes with discussion reveals the fallacy, truth, or perhaps inapplicability of the information to a given situation. Many times we must reevaluate the beliefs we currently hold. 6: Prevent us from taking the comfortable, well-walked road again and again. When confronted with challenges and problems, most people instinctively fall back on what has worked in the past. Although newer, better, and more efficient methods may exist, it takes time to move those new methods into action. Our personal learning network provides us with the chance to carry on the discussion, which reinforces what was learned but not yet implemented. It also allows access to additional materials and resources that offer improved comprehension. 7: Offer support. Not every day goes well. Not every lesson meets our anticipated objectives. A personal learning network provides much needed support. People in our network can provide recommendations, guide our learning, answer our questions, push us in new directions, and force us to more carefully examine the ideas and information we currently possess. (Review the above.) A personal learning network requires reciprocation, which means we similarly provide all of the above points too. A PLN isn't unidirectional, as is a workshop or book. And even a novice on the topic can actively participate in the discussion. Although he may not understand the full depth of the conversation, he still has access to articles, sites, lesson plans, and experts that allow him to provide value. So where can we get access to personal learning networks? First, it's easy to share ideas and information with our coworkers, perhaps between classes in the teachers' room. It's easy to ask one another questions or give answers. There are also professional organizations. These often provide newsletters, forums, and conferences that allow us to gather support. Although these traditional PLNs remain valuable, they're also somewhat limited in their breadth. For example, a handful of teachers who work together likely have faced the same difficulties, or teach the same demographic of students. As a result, they then have faced the same problems, discussed possible solutions, and accessed the same information. Professional organizations offer a wider network, but conferences don't get held every day or even every month. Forums may be active on some topics, not so active on others. Newsletters most often remain one directional. Web 2.0 offers the best and quickest ways to expand our personal learning network. Much of the article was written with web 2.0 in mind, as so many links and references are at hand to share. We can communicate with teachers all over the world, twenty-four hours per day. We can ask questions, offer comments and advice, or make pleas for help. Take a look at my personal learning network, where I can be found learning and sharing most every day. The network has expanded my expertise, thanks to all the friends and fellow educators, and their friends and fellow educators, and their friends and fellow educators... The list goes on and on through an endless network of personal learning.

Twitterversifying

@NMHS_Principal: "Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best" - Bob Talbert

Twitterversifying

Obama's speech was good, old fashioned advice about the value of schooling. Why the uproar?

"You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job," Obama said.

Twitterversifying

crystal_bubbles: Why can't more subjects be backed with online materials? Educators need to be lass hesitant to adopt some new technologies!

Tomorrow it all begins again...

I am jazzed to be a teacher this year.

22 years after my first year, I somehow feel the same excitement all over again.

A colleague and I were discussing the up-coming school year. He is entering his 4th year of teaching, just completed his Masters degree and is considering ways to publish his thesis. And now he is questioning what the great theme for this school year will be for him.

I think there are ebbs and flows in one's life and certainly in one's career. There are going to be strong years and weaker ones. When I used to body surf, I remember how the waves would come in sets of 7 or 8, followed by a slack in the action. The down time has its own function: time for reflection, for consolidation, and for focus on other things. Personally, for me, last year was a crucial year because I found myself considering the consequences of several key decisions I had made: 1. Working in a private school after so many years in public service; 2. Continuing as a classroom teacher rather than pursue administration; 3. Personal health and family issues that were bubbling up under the surface.

In this time of ebb, I may have not exerted myself as productively as I could have and several of my students did not get the opportunity to see me at my best.

But along came Twitter and my connection to a large and vibrant professional community.Twitter has allowed me to explore new possibilities with technology and communication. It has put me in touch with math teachers around the globe. I have been able to explore any idea that comes to my head with an eager audience of responders. At the same time, I can access the collective and individual wisdom of people I would otherwise not have the priviledge of "knowing".

Also came the Bay Area Writing Project and the 5 week long seminar in which I not only got to explore my personal voice, but also bathed in the collective wisdom of 22 other teachers around me.

I am thrilled to be a teacher in the era of technological blossoming, and at the same time, happy to have the many years of experience that actually allows me to access the new stuff with greater wisdom.

Twitterversifying

@evelynsaenz It seems if it is not measurable it's not allowed. What happened to watching a butterfly hatch or counting the petals on a daisy?

Twitterversifying

quotesnackRT @zephyrpassing RT @RubyRenshaw RT @corpusoptima "Beware you don’t lose the substance while grasping at the shadow." Aesop

Twitterversifying

@kyteacher I am looking forward to teaching again. Setting my alarm clock...not so much.

Twitterversifying

 @PJA64X : I like not only 2 be loved but 2 be told that I'm loved; the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave.   —George Eliot

Twitterversifying

@TalkDoc2“An angry person is seldom reasonable; a reasonable person is seldom angry.”

Twitterversifying

@studentofsuccess : "What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination." Zig Ziglar

Twitterversifying

@suewaters Twitter lets me learn AND share. Tips, suggestions and ideas galore are available via twitter from everywhere around the world.