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 ?

Posted: 19. January, 2008 at 8:25 pm. Filed under: Collaboration, Social Networking, Twitter.
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