Why Multitasking Is A Myth AND Bad For Our Children

Source: ASIDE 2017

Today's students live in media-dominated bubbles. They stream Netflix, check Snapchat, Facetime friends, and scroll Instagram — simultaneously on laptops, iPads, and phones — all while purporting to do their evening homework. Parents tell us that homework now takes five or six hours a night for their children. But candidly, most of our parent conferences end up being conversations about how to wrestle devices away from their kids. Families acknowledge that more often than not, their sons and daughters are in bedrooms with doors closed and with devices on full blast. It's a mystery how much "work" is actually being done.

Source: NBC News

That's because today's media-saturated world demands multitasking to parse the competing inputs. "Multitasking" seems like a badge of honor for modern professionals and learners. But for most children and adults, multitasking is a myth that deserves to be disproved. Multitasking by its definition relies on interruption. It (wrongfully) claims disruption as a blessing. Countless scientific studies have refuted this premise. Instead, every endeavor benefits more from full attention, not fractured thought. Every test, quiz, or homework assignment benefits more from dedicated study, not digital disturbance.

A helpful video from NBC News tries to make sense of this contemporary obsession with multitasking. The scientists quoted in the clip argue that monotasking is in fact more vital for brain development. They note that interruptions of fewer than three seconds can double the rate of errors on simple tasks. Multitasking can lead to a difficulty in ignoring irrelevant information and in memorizing facts, both of which are crucial for young learners.

Source: ASIDE 2017

Here are some other articles that provide terrific ideas for teachers and parents about how to negotiate the multitasking impulse in our children:

• Students Think They Can Multitask. Here's Proof They Can't.
• Media Multi-Tasking: Effects On Students' Attention
• Multitasking Increases Study Time, Lowers Grades
• You'll Never Learn! Students Can't Resist Multitasking, And It's Impairing Their Memory

New Media Literacy Skills Empower Learners

Source: MediaOcracy

Media Literacy Week just ended a little over a week ago. It could not have come at a more opportune time for our sixth- and seventh-graders to set up their Twitter accounts and participate in the KQED Do Now challenge called “How Does Social Media Influence Our Political Values.”

As part of the challenge, the students watched the video called “MediaOcracy” from the WeTheVoters, and they tweeted their responses to the guiding questions below with the hashtag #DoNowViews.

• Does social media help or inhibit our ability to develop our own political values?
• Are your social media networks actually shrinking your worldview?
• What do you do now, or what can you start doing to make sure you are seeing all sides of an issue while on social media?

MediaOcracy from We the Voters on Vimeo.

This eye-opening video made the students stop and think a good deal about how viewers could be so easily influenced through algorithms that deliver content from a single point of view, and moreover, how it often leads to a one-sided look at information. It unnerved them a little when they found out that “someone” was aggregating their search results based on likes. It also surprised many that 60% of Americans use social media to get their news.

Source: MediaOcracy

One important takeaway recommended in the video was to watch or listen to another media network that you “violently” oppose to avoid being caught up in a social media stream that feeds only what one wants to hear. With so many modern media outlets openly biased toward the right or left, it was important for these young minds to see the value in comparing information.

The media literacy program at our school has been in place for over 16 years, and it starts with the first graders. We’re fortunate, too, that our students are permitted to use social media for learning; it allows us to update our program to include new media literacy skills as part of the learning process. In an age of media bombardment, learners must be permitted to practice skills not only for today’s world, but also for their future.

The New Media Literacies video below drives this point home. In order for learners to be fully engaged with today's participatory culture, they need the social skills and cultural competencies to do it. It, therefore, must be integrated into the learning environment.



We witnessed first hand just how much it means for students to use their voices to express opinions in a world of shared content. Media is not just questioning the traditional types, such as newspapers, magazines, or websites. It’s participatory. They felt empowered to share their ideas with others and to follow what others had to say. Students need access to new media as it evolves in real time, their time, in order to be discerning learners.

Born Digital, Live Digital, And Our Students' Obsession With Documenting Their Lives

Source: Spencer Brown

Does our obsession with technology and documentation go too far? This powerful, short film titled “The Boy With The Camera Face” by filmmaker Spencer Brown is a satirical fairy tale about a boy born with a camera instead of a head who cannot escape the lens. From the moment of his birth, everything about his life is recorded. Does this sound like our students, or maybe you?


The Boy with a Camera for a Face from Spencer Brown on Vimeo.


The narration by Steven Berkoff tells the story in a nursery rhyme or somewhat Seussical way. As the tale unfolds, it’s clear that the effect on people’s fixation with the daily life of the “Camera Boy” is hypnotic. They stop noticing things around them and become transfixed as if in a catatonic state -- a scenario we witness on a daily basis with our students on their devices.

Perhaps even more important is the issue of privacy in the always-on world. As educators, we want to take advantage of the liminal web while still preserving the anonymity of our learners. That task is a lot harder today then it was a decade ago.

This award-winning film is worth 14 minutes of your time. It puts modern reality into focus in a beautiful, strange, and moving way.

Social Media Is An Opportunity - Not A Problem In The Classroom

Source: ASIDE 2015

The resolute attitude of many schools to resist the “Social Age” by blocking websites within their walls strikes at the core of what it means to collectively share ideas. The system seems stuck in the notion that kids will do bad things if they have access to social media. Hello! They have access to it anyway, just not in school. We shake our heads every time we hear educators who want to share digital projects but can’t because of a school’s firewall. Some educators depend on the very students they teach to share when the leave the building in order to promote their work.

Source: ASIDE 2015

We value the opportunities at our disposal for creating digital portfolios with our students, running Tumblr pages for the humanities, maps, and classwork, using Twitter (@BCDS_History_56, @BCDS_History_78>)and Kidblog, and sharing through Padlet to engage in the open practice of real-life skills.

Social media is not the culprit. In this day and age, digital environments are not separate from physical environments. If we want our students to understand the importance of building a healthy, digital footprint for prospective college applications and employment, then practice is imperative. It can’t be taught from a book.

Source: ASIDE 2015

Like other educators, we see the value in using social media. We are fortunate to work in a school that believes students learn by actively and responsibly participating in an online community of practice. We firmly believe that learning communities that allow students to use social media in their education build stronger digital citizens. They also encourage parents to be more proactive in the online behavior of their children by participating as digital partners.

We made a passionate plea to educators in our presentation, entitled “Tear Down This Firewall: Using Social Media To Engage Students And Parents,” at the annual NYSCATE conference. We showed multiple ways that we have incorporated social media in the elementary and middle school classrooms, as well as demonstrated how the skills learned from social media include context, framing, information, perspective, questioning, and problem-solving. We hope the solid foundation in instruction behind our students’ work will provide motivation for others to approach their administrations to unblock valuable web resources for learning. We included our SlideShare presentation here.

Tear Down This Firewall: Using Social Media To Engage Students & Parents from The American Society For Innovation Design In Education

The value of modeling, practicing, and incorporating social media into the curricula to better educate learners for a world that exists now is vital to their development. It builds the collectiveness of the community and a trusted bond between all participants, including administrators, faculty, students, and parents. Most importantly, it takes the fear out of the equation.

 In 2010, Rachel Botsam coined the term “collaborative consumption” in her critically acclaimed book, What’s Mine is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live. The theory of “collaborative consumption” is the reinvention of traditional market behaviors that are taking place at a rate not seen before as a result of technology. These changes affect more than just the economy; they influence and disrupt traditional learning environments as well. It shouldn’t be a “Them vs. Us” mentality; instead, it should build a collaborative network of making, sharing, and responding.

Source: ASIDE 2015

Yet despite this social revolution in an on-demand, real-time world, schools are still resistant to change, even though educators try desperately to show the value of collaborative work by using social networking.

As for the students, the firewalls may not be crumbling yet inside the bricks and mortar, but outside, learning takes on a life of its own, unfiltered without restrictions. They hunt and gather wherever they can, and technology has opened that door.

Students need to construct their social capital through shared networks, and schools need to participate in building it, not restricting it.

For other resources please see:

• How To Comment On Social Media: An Infographic Of Tips For High Quality Feedback 
• Student Video Projects In Vine: The Six-Second Constraint Encourages Creativity 
• Collective Consumption: Social Media and Active Learning 
• Engaging Tools To Teach Social Media 
• The Uber Generation Of Learning - Fast, Efficient, And Driven By Tech

Student Video Projects In Vine: The Six-Second Constraint Encourages Creativity

Source: Vine

Poets have long considered the sonnet and the quatrain as the highest forms of poetry. The strict meters, the rigid rhyme schemes, and the unbreakable line limits force poets to create elegant verse within exacting structures. In other words, if writers can craft soaring language under such restrictive rules, then they have true talent.

Making Vine videos with students falls into a similar category. Vine is a social network owned by Twitter that allows users to record or upload clips no more than 6.5 seconds in length. With over 200 million users and 1.5 billion daily loops, Vine has created overnight celebrities and has changed the way kids watch, generate, and share content.

The ease of publishing makes Vine a terrific tool for the classroom. The strict time limit of the videos forces students to maximize the pithiness of their messages. In other words, the short videos demand:

1. Efficiency of narration
2. Effectiveness of visuals
3. Concision of message

Students cannot be wasteful in language or vague in communication. They must get their points across succinctly and above all creatively. They are compelled to invent novel ways to pack a lot of meaning into a tight space.

For example, our eighth-graders have been studying how technology and inventions transformed society in the late 1800s. We, therefore, invited them to conduct a mini-research project about modern inventions in the contemporary era that have similarly revolutionized daily life. Our instructions, storyboards, and rubrics are included in this post. We have also included several examples of the innovative approaches that students took to produce these brief films. For other ideas about incorporating Vine in the classroom, check out 20 Ways To Use Twitter's Vine In Education.

As with all social media, there is plenty of content on Vine that would not be appropriate for all ages. That is why digital citizenship needs to be a crucial partner with digital publishing. As with all online activities, educators need to encourage students to be their own filters, to use their own good judgment in engaging with social media.

How To Comment In Social Media - An Infographic Of Tips For High Quality Feedback

Students are writing more than ever before. They are tapping out rapid-fire fingerstrokes across multiple platforms. From text messages to social media, children and adults of all ages are engaging like never before with the written word. This type of transliteracy emphasizes more than ever the need for thoughtful conversations and clear instructions that guide students in how best to express high quality feedback.

Most remarks in the comment sections of Instagram and YouTube are useless. They are either crass or curt, sprinkled with emoji that do more to satisfy the ego of the commenter than to further the richness of the page.

Instead, high quality comments on blogs and social media should create a dialogue that furthers the colloquy and deepens the learning. Replies on Twitter, for example, should offer suggestions or make interpersonal connections. Thoughtful comments in social media should add information, incorporate links, or most importantly, ask questions.

Susan Sedro offers a terrific post about "Teaching Children To Comment On Blogs" on her site, "Adventures In Educational Blogging." She includes a presentation, a document, and a rubric to help teachers incorporate successful commenting into their lessons. Similarly, Danielle Degelman recently shared on Twitter (@deedegs) a photo of her whiteboard with excellent tips on helping students comment successfully.

We learned a lot from both Sedro's and Degelman's suggestions. For our own learners, we combined these two teachers' ideas with a few of our own to make a handy one-sheet for our students. For example, our seventh-graders used it to exchange feedback via Twitter (#BCDSHist7) on their Thirteen Colonies research projects.

Here is the infographic we made to promote positive engagement through social media:

The Uber Generation Of Learning — Fast, Efficient, And Driven By Tech

Source: ASIDE 2015

It’s no surprise that the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission is lobbying for limits to Uber’s expansion. In fact, municipalities across the country are fretting over Uber’s intrusion.

Uber’s appeal — and its rapid, unmitigated ascent — is exactly like the edtech groundswell in contemporary learning.

Uber is a private car service currently taking the country by storm. It allows anyone with an app to instantly summon a professional ride. It takes away the guessing about street corners and hand-waving. It offers customized choices, such as a car seat or SUV. Uber provides real time, visual tracking of how far away the car is and how much the trip will cost. 

Uber takes the frustrating tasks of flagging a phantom taxi or confronting a gruff phone operator and replaces them with immediate, digital satisfaction.

This is exactly what today’s students expect from their lessons and teachers.

For better or for worse, children enter our classes with a ready affinity toward online tools and an understandable assumption of digital learning. They are used to texting in realtime, chatting in realtime, Googling in realtime, and creating in realtime. When anachronistic teachers give them paper worksheets and bubble tests, it’s no wonder they roll their eyes and feel like they’re being intentionally stranded on the side of a high-tech boulevard, while the wired world seems to be passing them by.

Kids (and adults) live on their smartphones. They demand instantaneous answers via Siri or Wikipedia to any question that might pique their curiosity. In this way, they are uber-researchers. They seek information more actively and more frequently than any prior generation. The gift of the Internet offers them answers, but they still need to know their end destination. They still need to have a conclusion in mind, to drive their scholarship in the right direction.

Source: ASIDE 2015

The greatest gift from laptops, iPads, SMARTboards, and phones is efficiency. What used to take a middle schooler an entire Saturday now takes a split second. Kids can diagram the locks of the Erie Canal or study the bricks of the Giza pyramids in the same time it takes to tie one’s shoelaces. The “Internet of things” is a powerful encyclopedia. Any school district that blocks access to YouTube or Twitter, therefore, is closing the doors to Alexandria, erecting antiquated barriers in the face of authentic learning.

We expect our Uber driver to know our name, know our route, and know our credit card number. We expect service with a smile and quiet satisfaction in skipping the crowded van to the airport or the late-night carpool quest.

This is modern education — personalized, differentiated, and affordable.

This is technological learning — satisfying, searchable, and immediate.

As a point of reference, check out this current ad for Microsoft Windows 10:

Many educators still fight against this disruption, against these invading technological hordes. They demand professional development and budget studies to delay the inevitable. Many administrators side with city districts, viewing apps as interlopers seeking to upset the status quo.

Many still resist the arrival of a learning alternative, because it’s not “the way we’ve always done it.”

But the rabid popularity of Uber speaks to a communal need. The instinctive embrace of real-time learning by students means that if educators don’t change, kids will be chauffeured off into the sunset without them.

10 Ways To Use The Meerkat Streaming Video App In Education

Source: Meerkat

The new Meerkat app has taken the tech world by storm. Especially in the cubicles of Silicon Valley and the newsrooms of political sites, early adopters of Meerkat are trying to figure out how this real-time streaming video app will transform both social media and news reporting.

In the run-up to the 2016 presidential campaign, major news personalities have been signing up for Meerkat like their jobs depend on it — and maybe they do. Now, no political candidate is safe from a phone’s camera lens. More than ever before, any citizen solider can become a news maker. Just like the Internet heralded the slow demise of the daily print newspaper, Meerkat may spell the end of corporate news conglomerates.

Source: Meerkat

Essentially, Meerkat merges the best of real-time video sources into one app. It is a combination of FaceTime, Skype, Vine, Instagram, and Google Hangouts. It makes any person with an iPhone capable of broadcasting live TV. 

Once you authorize Meerkat, all of your Twitter followers will see your video, live, immediately in their stream. The video is saved on your device, but for your followers, à la SnapChat, the video disappears after airing. Because it piggybacks onto your already existing Twitter network, Meerkat has no barriers to entry. Your current followers will see whatever you are broadcasting. Compared to prior technologies, it elevates a time-delayed recording or a static photograph into an instantaneous, interpersonal communication.

The possibilities for using Meerkat in education are only beginning to emerge. Here are 10 possible uses for the Meerkat app in the classroom or in working with students in general:

1. Real-time streaming of class lessons to kids who are absent or at home
2. Genuine remote learning for children in rural or inaccessible environments
3. Super-chats of study groups before tests and quizzes
4. Global connections across continents for widespread cohorts of schools and learners
5. In-the-moment broadcasts of school plays, sporting events, and assemblies for families
6. Authentic connections for working parents to classroom events like speeches and projects
7. Sincere professional development for teachers to join educational conferences remotely
8. Democratization of TED talks and other "experts" to reach all audiences without webinars
9. Immediate access to major news stories and current events on mobile devices
10. Tracking of political candidates for 2016 in history and Social Studies classes

Source: Meerkat

Meerkat follows the same privacy safeguards as Twitter. There are, however, potential risks in welcoming Meerkat into the classroom. These concerns echo similar abuse of apps like SnapChat, Yik Yak, and others, but to a possibly magnified degree. For example, if a student were to broadcast live video from the locker room, or during an altercation, or without peer permission, it could lead to serious ramifications. Like all use of social media, though, regular and meaningful education regarding digital citizenship can help young people avoid improper usage and instead reap the benefits of its learning potential.

If Parents Can Work From Home, Why Can't Students? A Snow Day Doesn't Have To Be A "No" Day

Source: ASIDE 2015

We have another snow day today. The relentless snow this winter has forced many schools into crisis mode. Teachers are panicking about missed curriculum and make-up days. But with today’s access to mobile technology, shouldn’t there be a middle ground between all or nothing learning? Genuine remote learning should be a regular practice, not just a prediction. Even amid record-breaking blizzards, a snow day shouldn't have to be a “no” day.

Students frequently get sick and miss school. Consider, too, how many times you've seen a kid in your classroom who really shouldn’t be there. He has his head down, or has bags under his eyes, or has his mind clearly elsewhere. How many times have you noticed a student who truly needs a break? She's been burning the candle at both ends, or has been bearing the weight of a bully, or has been negotiating a tough family situation.

Source: ASIDE 2015

A kid sometimes needs a personal day. It used to be that a student’s absence meant a day of missed learning. Today, this not only seems strange, it seems unforgivable.

For parents, “working from home” is a common occurrence. Many companies have no problem with their employees telecommuting at a distance, staying in contact via phone, email, and instant message. With all of the dynamic digital tools available to schools today, why can’t students work from home? Many teachers post all of their assignments online anyway.

Source: ASIDE 2015

Video conferencing and social media and collaborative documents all offer easy avenues to engage a class of home-bound learners. Many teachers use these resources daily inside of the classroom. Why can’t these tools also be tapped to coordinate a corps of kids, either in real-time or at the students’ own paces? 

Backchanneling, for example, has emerged as a valuable way to invite feedback and questions during an in-class lesson. If we can turn backchannels into forechannels, then we can transform these supplemental tools into primary vehicles for distance education.

Tools for remote learning:

Sources: Company Logos

• TodaysMeet - The leading real-time channel, TodaysMeet creates discussion groups for instant message communication.
• Twitter - The ultimate social media tool for education, Twitter mimics the classroom environment with chats, text, links, images, and videos.
• Croak.it - Both teachers and students can create a 30-second audio file with a url that can be embedded in a backchannel, website, or tweet.
• Remind - This free way for teachers to text students protects everyone's privacy and instantly reaches kids on their phones.
• Cel.ly - Cel.ly creates individual social networks via its texting feature that can be moderated directly from a smartphone.

Sources: Company Logos

• Verso - Flipped learning with Verso can include videos, images, or links in self-contained classes with rich commenting features.
• eduCanon - This site collects videos from across the web and allows teachers to add flipped learning elements.
• EDpuzzle - Teachers can crop videos and add questions and explanations to fit any age group.
• Zaption - Zaption makes videos interactive by adding assessments.
• audioBoom - Teachers can record podcasts to pass lessons on to students, and kids can capture their own answers, readings, or projects.

Sources: Company Logos

• Nearpod - The teacher guides the presentation, and students on their own devices see the slides progress as they interact from anywhere with polls and assessments.
• Issuu - Intended to publish webzines, Issuu turns any .pdf into a scrolling web document for students to read and save at their leisure.
• iBooks Author - The ability to publish customized content on iBooks is becoming easier and easier.
• Wikispaces - Still one of the most flexible platforms for a class website, Wikispaces accepts any media and any embedded content.

Sources: Company Logos

• Skype - Teachers can broadcast themselves in full video and audio to reach students in their homes.
• Facetime - As more and more schools opt for iPads and Apple TVs, Facetime provides an easy way to videoconference.
• Google+ Hangouts - Multiple participants from any device can come together in a live-streaming video chat.

Sources: Company Logos

• Google Docs - Google Drive keeps getting better and better, and the real-time collaboration is still the industry standard for essays, presentations, and spreadsheets.
• Padlet - Padlet is an infinitely customizable public space with customized urls to post text, links, images, videos, and student projects.
• Dropbox - The larger storage capacity of Dropbox makes it ideal for file-sharing.
• Email - When in doubt, simple email can allow students and teachers to swap instructions, questions, and assignments.

Charts, Graphs, And Visual STEAM - Teaching The Super Bowl By The Numbers

Source: Asbury Park Press

Aside from the physical drama and the halftime theatrics, the Super Bowl provides prime fodder for data analytics. The enormous volume of communication and marketing around this shared cultural moment offers a case study for exploring numbers and significance.

These days, graphs are no longer the sole purview of math class. This fall, for example, we spent a “math week” in social studies talking about how historians incorporate statistics and charts in probing the details behind pivotal events. Similarly, the Super Bowl bridges academic disciplines as an appealing touchstone for students to get excited about analytical reasoning and data design. That’s how right-brained and left-brained mindsets can merge perfectly in a contemporary STEAM study.

Some examples of lessons and visual aids that use graphs and charts include:

• Is There A Visual Thinking App? Charts, Graphs, & The 1:1 Classroom
• The School Of Big Data - Choosing The Right Graph
• I Love Charts - Discovering Stories Hidden In Numbers
• A Taxonomy Of Graphs

Source: Yellowfin

On Super Bowl Sunday, 1.25 billion chicken wings are expected to be consumed. The number of tweets is predicted to top 25 million, up significantly from the 13.4 million last year. And the average American is projected to consume 2,400 calories of Super Bowl chow.

The emphasis here is on the visual presentation of numerical sets. Graphic literacy (or “graphicacy”) means that learners can “read” the grammar of lines and bars. Understanding trends and anomalies are key skills in interpreting mathematical and scientific figures.

As every educational institution searches for ways to blend STEAM proficiencies into the curriculum, the pop draw of the Super Bowl can be just the ticket to grab kids’ attentions in discovering the day’s dynamic details. Any of the tables or diagrams below would be terrific examples to show on Monday in kicking off a week of visual STEAM activities. The logical reasoning of numbers meets the illustrative narrative of the liberal arts:

Source: The New York Times

Super Bowl ads often get the most attention from both football diehards and passing revelers alike. This interactive tool from the New York Times allows students to compare a timeline of percentages as they parse the media blitz across the years.

Source: Yellowfin

The media literacy component of Super Bowl mayhem cannot be overlooked. Many avenues exist for teachers to guide students in realizing the emotional tug of advertising during this high profile event. Yellowfin has designed an easily understood graph of Super Bowl ad prices to engage any student.

Source: Yellowfin

For aficionados of the sport itself, Yellowfin has assembled a horizontal bar chart of MVP winners by position. The results are familiar enough to let the content drive the comprehension. In other words, even the youngest mathematicians can expect QBs to win awards, and thus the extended blue bar becomes a visual signifier for their predictions. 

Source: Yellowfin

For strategists of team offenses, bubble graphs can blend with traditional tables to illuminate the choices of quarterbacks in certain situations.

For other Super Bowl educational resources, we recommend these posts:

• Teaching The Super Bowl: Social Media Literacy
• The Other Super Bowl Commercials And The Power Of Student Voice

Thank You NYSCATE 2014 - TransformED

Source: NYSCATE 2014

The annual NYSCATE 2014 conference ended just before the Thanksgiving holiday in Rochester, New York. Thanks to another excellent roster of educators assembled by The New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education (NYSCATE), we returned with our toolkits full, ready to share what we’d learned with our colleagues and learners.

Source: NYSCATE 2014

The theme for this year’s conference was TransformED, with a magical overlay to encourage us to wave our magic wands to engage the mind. For the first time, an EdCamp component was added to the roster of sessions, as well as 15-minute lightening sessions on a variety of topics.

We had the privilege of participating in an EdCamp round on visual thinking, and we met a host of impressive educators who emphasized the importance of the learning environment and the ability of teachers to influence it with creative ingenuity, technology know-how, and forward-thinking approaches.

The social media kiosk, a fixture at the conference, added a new twist to attract educators to grow their personal learning networks with a visual display of live tweeting and cameo photo opportunities.

Source: NYSCATE

The “iPad App Smackdown” session by three Apple Distinguished Educators, Mike Amante (@MAmante), Richard Colosi (@RichardColosi), and Ryan Orilio (@RyanOrilio), did not disappoint. The friendly rivalry for the session's winner and the shouts of “SLAM” allowed for an engaging banter between presenters and audience. All we could think of was how fun this would be to do with kids or at a faculty meeting.

Source: iPad App Smack Down

Click here see the 12 apps they demonstrated in the session.

Lastly, thank you to the generous crowd who attended our session on Simple Ways To Publish In A Paperless Environment. All of the resources and links highlighted in our workshop are available here.

Source: ASIDE, 2014

Finally, if you're ever at the Rochester Riverside Convention Center, stroll three blocks for a delicious, dining experience at Dinosaur BBQ, and if time permits, don’t miss Craft Company No. 6, a unique gallery housed in a Victorian Era firehouse, located in the Neighborhood of the Arts district.

What Role Should Blogs Play In The Life Of An Educator?

Source: ASIDE, 2014

A recent #EdChat Radio show on the Bam! Radio Network discussed the topic of teacher blogging. We were invited to participate in the broadcast with hosts Tom Whitby (@tomwhitby) and Nancy Blair (@blairteach). The conversation on "What Role Should Blogs Play In The Life Of An Educator?" broached a range of topics about online writing and publishing for both teachers and students. Check out the podcast, or download the show for free from iTunes.

A few of the insights included:

Source: Jackstreet;
Bam! Radio Network

• Blogging levels the playing field; expressing one's opinions about education is no longer about status or access
• Writing a blog is not just about publishing, but it is also about sharing in a community of fellow educators
• Blogging validates the voice of each teacher and allows niche ideas to rise to the mainstream
• Blogging is the new normal for student writing, and teachers can model this literacy
• Commenting is an important skill for young people to master and also an avenue for all teachers to enter the conversation
• Publishing adds a pleasant pressure to stay relevant and maintain helpful resources

For other information about teacher podcasts and online broadcasts, we recommend the full slate of educational programs on the Bam! Network. Also, take a look at the article, "Add #EdChat Radio To Your PLN."

The EdCamp Mindset - How An “Unconference” Can Yield An “Unclass”

Source: ASIDE, 2014

Perhaps only an EdCamp could inspire educators to dedicate a September Saturday to vigorous professional development. Despite the bustle of back-to-school work — and the ache to cling to summer's penultimate weekend — several hundred teachers and parents convened yesterday for the inaugural EdCamp Long Island event at the Willets Road School in Roslyn Heights, NY. 

Source: EdCamp Long Island

Following the mold of the EdCamp movement, this “unconference” featured a roster of organically generated sessions. Rather than being tethered to a prefab schedule of speakers, participants at #EdCampLI could join conversations posted by like-minded souls on a wall-size chart of sticky note suggestions.

Not surprisingly, many of the workshops centered around technology. We were intrigued by Voxer in its combination of voice, text, and photos. We were also excited to try TodaysMeet as an easy backchannel for student questions and feedback. Our two favorite sessions, however, had little to do with edtech and everything to do with communication and leadership. 

Source: Voxer

The meeting about “Transformational Leadership In The 21st Century School" with Dr. Sheilah (@docsheilah) demonstrated a host of tried and true ideas built around the philosophy that just because it’s always been done one way, it doesn’t mean you can’t step back and rethink the purpose. Imagine faculty meetings where the administrators make their own simple “TED” style talks to promote discussions, or an a la carte menu of meeting topics from which teachers get to choose. This forward-thinking approach made it clear that in this type of school, the administrators model the concept of "lead learners."

The round-table discussion on “Fostering 2 Way School-Home Communication” gathered thoughtful teachers and parents who were genuinely motivated (and at times frustrated) in getting school constituencies on the same page. The small-group seminar was organized by principal Dennis Schug (@DJrSchug) of Hampton Bays, NY, and parent Gwen Pescatore (@gpescatore25) of Philadelphia, PA (and #PTchat). The unstructured confab yielded honest questions about the most efficient technologies for communication and the barriers to inclusivity in PTO meetings. There were also creative strategies to welcome non-English-speaking families and adults intimidated by social media.

Source: TodaysMeet

In fact, the day’s free-flowing learning made us realize that regular faculty meetings could be better structured like an EdCamp. They could involve authentic colloquies spawned from the bottom-up. They could welcome differentiated dialogues initiated by teachers themselves, rather than administrative decrees.

Even more, our classrooms could become miniature EdCamps. We could do more to solicit interest from the students themselves, to invite direction based on kids’ curiosities and passions. Our daily lessons could embrace the messy beginnings of finding a path and honing an objective. In the end, we would probably still nurture the same key skill sets. But we would reach our goals by letting the children themselves scribble post-it notes of wonder and glom onto subjects that matter not to us, but to them.

If you were unable to attend, here is the Google Doc of session notes from Saturday. Also, the hashtag #EdCampLI captured all of the lively exchanges and resources. Many thanks to the organizers who staged yesterday's event, and we look forward to EdCampLI 2.0 next year.