Quick-in…Quick-out…Teachable Moments
Tom Barrett wrote a blog post” GeoTweets: Inviting your network into the classroom“, introducing a fabulous idea for the classroom.
A few moments before the children came in from lunch, I asked my network to challenge the children to find them in Google Earth, to search and discover their location from a few scraps of info via Twitter.
Tom describes how he
It combines so many things: Letting students be “explorers”, geography, global awareness, AND the power of learning networks.
This is exactly what Chris Craft and Clay Burrell were talking about in their conversation on “Beyond Global Collaborative “Units” to PLN’s“. They
riffed on the idea that the best projects are – not projects at all*. Instead, they are authentic uses – and modelings – of Personal Learning Networks (PLN�s) via Twitter, Skype, Facebook, etc: �quick in and quick out.�
We know that our students learn better if they are involved in authentic tasks and not just busy work or time fillers. We also know that any major project, like working collaboratively across the globe on a wiki or voicethread, even if it is an authentic task because it is work thought of by the teachers and mostly for the teachers. We all know and love those “teachable moments” that come unexpected and as a tangent from what we originally had planned in our lesson book. Those moments are the ones we want to duplicate.
In order to make ideas, like the ones from Tom Barrett, Clay Burell, and Chris Craft work, teachers need to build their network. They need to have other teachers who are willing to respond to a Twitter Shoutout and allow time to be part of that learning experience of other teachers’ students. We need to make a conscious effort to make ourselves available to allow teachable moments, like the one Tom described with Google Earth, happen.
The best ideas and intentions can be useless unless someone is on the other end responding.
I will make this conscious effort to be more available during school hours on Twitter and respond to a shoutout if humanly possible.
Maybe we need to I create a “Teachable Moment Shoutout” account on twitter that committed souls can start following ?
This is a great post. We have to be able to take advantage of those teachable moments, and I too will work harder to be available during the day to respond and to be in the moment.
Other aspects of Twitter are the regular requests from teachers to participate in online collaboration projects. I’ve started a delicious tag “twitterprojects” for open, ongoing projects teachers can have students participate in:
http://del.icio.us/mrmayo/twitterprojects
These are individual tweets that I’ve started to tag as a way of archiving collaboration projects. Twitter seems to be the perfect tool for teachers to connect around common interests, or topics. What are you studying, what are we studying? Let’s connect our students.
These easy in, easy out projects are also great ways to start relationships with other teachers that may lead to more in-depth collaboration projects down the road.
Great idea! This is exactly the type of thing that our instructional cadre is trying to bring forth within our district.
I tried adding @teachablemoment from you last twitter. However, the link is incorrect. There was a type and it came out @teachablemoments. I ended up just doing a search for it. Anyway, you may want to re-tweet that. Is re-tweet a word? LOL! Thanks for getting this ball rolling.
Wow, it seems like no one so far has the issue of twitter being blocked at school? I’m jealous!
George,
That is a great idea about tagging projects through del.icio.us. I have subscribed to the feed and will remember to tag it “twitterprojects”. Now the challenge is to spread the word about the delicious tag and @teachablemoment on twitter. It will only work and be reliable if people are using it.
If you are reading this Let’s spread the word to our network. Blog about it, twitter it, talk about it f2f.