Learning About Blogs FOR your Students- Part IV: Connecting

This is Part IV in the series “Stepping it Up: Learning About Blogs FOR your Students”

• Part I: Reading
• Part II A: Writing
• Part II B: Student Writing
• Part III: Commenting

As a teacher,

• you have started reading blogs in order to get ideas, inspiration and format from other writers and educators…
• you have content that sparks your own interest and that you are able to connect to in your own writing…
• you are going through the “process of writing” for yourself, in order to coach your students in becoming better writers…
• you have started leading your students in writing on their own blogs…
• you are modeling conversations, critical thinking and connections by commenting on your students’ blog.

Now…

you are realizing that your students are NOT necessarily jumping up and down for you, eager to get to work in order to consistently produce high quality writing. Motivation to get on the blog, blinging it up and producing content might have happened for a brief period right after you started blogging.

The newness wore off fast for these digital natives and now it is (most likely with only a few exceptions among your students) nothing more than school work on a digital platform instead of school work with paper and pencil.

An integral component to keep it exciting and fresh for your students (and yourself too) is to:

Make a conscious effort to CONNECT your students to an audience beyond the teacher.

An authentic global audience for our classroom or individual student blogs does not happen on its own. I have been thinking, researching and experimenting  how to connect classrooms to a global audience for a while now.

In my opinion, it comes down to YOU, as the teacher, to make a commitment to:

• be the connector for your students (especially younger ones) or
• teach them how to reach out on their own.

How does a teacher drive traffic to his/her students’ blogs in order to connect them to an audience?

• Blogging Buddies
  Connect with blogging buddies (formerly known as pen-pals).
  Find another committed classroom teacher who is blogging. They can be from your own building, district, state, or from another country.
  (Leave your contact info and blog details on this Google Doc started by Kim Cofino, if you are looking for blogging buddies for your students)
• Quad-Blogging
  Become part of a Quad-Blog. Make a connection via the site or organize yourself with three other classroom teachers from your own network.
• Blogging Projects
  Join pre-existing blogging projects (Student Blogging Challenge)
• Twitter
  Tweet about exemplary student posts to your network.
  Use hashtag #comment4kids (more info about comments4kids)
• Cross-Posting, Linking and Commenting
  Cross-post student posts and link them on your professional blogs. Leave relevant comments on other blogs with links back to your classroom and/or student blogs.
• Experts
  Invite “content experts” of a unit your are studying or specific area of student interest to write a guest blog post or become a guest commenter
• Mentors
  Ask a university professor to connect your classroom or student blogs to a group of pre-service teachers. This can be a win-win situation for everyone involved.
• Parents
  Educate and ask parents to take the time to read and comment on the classroom or their student’s blog
  (Idea: Have students create a “How-to-Video” walking their parents through the steps of leaving a comment and give advice on quality comments)

How do YOU connect your students to a larger audience than one? What has worked for you?  Please share.

Reverse International Recruiting

Social networking is changing our lives

You are part of a social network, if you are reading this post on my blog because you subscribe via RSS  or are a regular visitor or someone has forwarded you this post as a “must read”.

I am about to test out, if social networking has changed the way we live, work and “do business” enough to not only change our virtual lives…but also help in our face-to face-world.

My husband and I are working with several recruiting firms (Search Associates, ISS (International Schools Services) and AASSA  (Association of American Schools in South America) in order to find a position at an International School starting the school year 2012/2013. This is the first time for us going through the process of applying to become a candidate at each one of the firms, then applying to attend their individual recruiting fairs hosted between December 2011 and March 2012.

It is quite a process, as we are filling out endless questionnaires and writing our philosophy of education and personal statements. We are requesting our supervisors and administrators to write and submit confidential reference letters. We are uploading our resumes, transcripts and certificates.

Once accepted as a candidate, we gain access to a database listing the international schools who work with the recruiting companies to hire their teachers and administrators. My husband is looking to be hired as a Physical Education teacher/coach, but my position is not as clear cut. My 21st century learning and literacy specialist/coach job title does not fit neatly into a category that is listed in these databases. I am as much of a Curriculum Coordinator, Information & Media Specialist, Technology Integration Facilitator as I am a Literacy Coach, Learning Manager and Professional Development provider for a school.

Finding the right position that will allow me to grow in my work is our top priority as we embark on this recruiting adventure.

That is when the idea of REVERSE RECRUITING came in.

“Recruiting” is defined as:

The process of identifying and hiring the best-qualified candidate for a job vacancy.

So what is “Reverse Recruiting”?

The process of identifying the best job vacancy for a candidate.

I am on the lookout for the right school for me, where I can contribute my expertise and  continue to grow as a professional.

Which school has already a position like mine? Or what school is ready to move into changing the culture of 21st century learning and teaching at their school by hiring someone like me? Which school needs someone to support, observe, mentor, model, co-teach, coach and plan with their faculty as they upgrade their curriculum content to prepare students for the 21st century?

In comes the experiment of social networking in the recruiting process. Is my network diverse and powerful enough to reach the right international school? Are the members of my social network able to disseminate (via blogs, Twitter, Skype, Facebook or e-mail forwarding to personal connections) this quest around the world.  Has my participation over the last 5 years in social networking built a reputation in my area of expertize that creates value for recruiting in the physical (not virtual) world?

Can my social network help me find the right position at an international school?

If you are teaching or are an administrator at an International School, take a look at the online hub my husband and I have established to get to know us a little bit better. Pass the information along to your administrator in charge of hiring or creating new positions at your school . If interested, they can contact us via the website or take a closer look at our profiles at the recruiting firms.

We are very excited to find out how this social networking experiment will turn out. We wonder if the world of international schools is ready for a new recruiting process and the transparency that it brings or if we will need to go via the traditional route of attending recruiting fairs or a combination of both worlds.

Stay tuned… and yes…. please blog, tweet, forward and talk about our quest.

Guide to Twitter in the K-8 Classroom

Twitter, without a doubt, has become the social network for educators to take their professional development into their own hands. Twitter allows teachers to connect with other educators from around the world, join discussions related to their interests and have a steady stream of resources (to help them teach and learn) available to them whenever, whereever and however. Creating a network on Twitter has catapulted educators to be part of a connected world where learning happens anytime, help is only a tweet away, collaboration partners meet and communicate, conversations that directly or indirectly impact their physical lives take place 24/7.  Twitter is helping educators gain many 21st century skills and literacies which could easily transfer to their classrooms.

So the next question is…

How do you bring Twitter into your K-8 Classroom?

If your students are under the age of 13, they cannot create their own Twitter account (Minimum Age Restriction). The solution is to create a classroom twitter account and start tweeting as a class!

Take a look at the following guide I created to help you think of a few ideas to use Twitter in your classroom and how to introduce tweeting to your students:

1. What is Twitter
2. Getting Started
3. How can you use Twitter in the Classroom?
4. Twitter Etiquette
5. The First Tweet
6. What is a Quality Tweet?
7. Logistics
8. Twitter Vocabulary
9. Tweeting Classrooms

Please leave a comment below with your username if you are tweeting with your K-8 classroom. Also add other ideas on how you have successfully used Twitter as a class.

Twitter in K-8 Classroom- Globally Connected Learning