ICT in my Classroom

Many Twitter users have woken up this morning to find that their followers/following lists are a bit wonky. I noticed yesterday afternoon that I was approximately 300 people short of what I thought it should be. My first reaction was to dismiss it as a silly little problem, it is just a number, it will probably get sorted - I shouldn’t worry about. Mulling over it for the rest of the evening I realised that in fact it was a big problem and that it was truly bugging me.

That number, the followers/following count, may only be a simple number on the profile but for me it means a great deal. That number represents part of my learning network and I value every connection that is there. I suppose the saying “You never fully appreciate what you have got until it is gone” applies here. The lost connections really troubled me.

Each person involved with education who added me to their network I thanked for doing so and I said hi. I checked out who they were and what they were blogging/tweeting about. I found out their real names when I could. I subscribed to some of their blogs. I spoke with them about where they taught and what edtech they were interested in. More importantly I began to learn from them, their perspectives and their thoughts, their classroom practice and projects, their links and conversations.

I value their connection.

When 300 connections were lost it felt like someone had unpicked all of my our hard work. In the last 24 hours I have realised more fully what my Twitter network means to me professionally. It is only part of my PLN but it has a unique position, in the sense that it is close to being a live network. I don’t get the same number of people connecting with me via Skype, my blog or email - Twitter holds the majority. Nothing comes close to allowing me to connect with other teachers across the globe.

Is my network part of who I am as a teacher now? Definitely - and so I value every facet of it.

The majority of those 300 have returned as I write and it seems that perhaps the others will too - but I am currently 70 shy of what my Twitter network looked like yesterday morning, and that still bothers me.

“Dear Twitter try and fix the rest of the problem soon and remember you hold some of our precious professional networks in your hands. Please look after them.”

Image: ‘Regret‘

I think I have found the perfect place to reflect on the way a network, and specifically how Twitter, can impact on what goes on in the classroom. No mains gas, no telephones, no mobile signal, no internet connection, no possible way to interact with my personal learning network (PLN). Tucked away in the Cornish countryside the location of the cottage we are staying in provokes vocabulary such as: isolated, severed, detached and remote. But similar rhetoric could also be applied to the lack of connection I have with my network. I am removed from the network I want to reflect upon and away from the classroom that it can impact. This perspective is welcome as it offers me clarity of thought, as I write, that I have not had for a long time. In this post I hope to unpick what my Twitter network means to me in terms of my classroom practise and explore the best ways that you can utilise it in your own classroom.

Twitter: a communication tool

In my experience, and in the short time that I have used it, Twitter has grown quickly to play a major part in the way that I interact with fellow colleagues and professionals from around the world. In my classroom and with the children I teach it has been an exciting tool to utilise and support learning. However it is one of many tools that we have at our disposal. I do not see it replacing any of the others we use nor do I see the positive impact upon learning being exclusive to Twitter.

This diagram is a simplistic representation of my network in terms of numbers. It does not reflect that many individuals in your network will be linking up with you using different tools. For example, someone may be your contact on Skype, Twitter and perhaps subscribes to your blog. This would not be uncommon as each tool plays a different role for you and your network. However what we can conclude from the numbers is that I have been able to connect with a large number of people using Twitter. It forms a large part of my current PLN, but has been the tool I have come to last of all. This should be encouraging for most teachers looking to use Twitter, as with careful consideration and some small effort your Twitter network can expand quickly.

Unique communication

Twitter is primarily a communication tool and has often been described as filling the gap between email and instant messaging (IM). It is interesting that it occupies this middle ground. I believe it is important to understand how this communication functions in order to make the most of it in your classroom. IM is all about synchronous communication, relying upon people being online at the same moment. Asynchronous communication characterised by email (and blog commenting) is slightly more time consuming but does not rely upon people being online at the same time.

Twitter communication can be in both of these two different camps. It is a platform that can fluidly handle both synchronous and asynchronous messaging. However each exchange or interaction you have with your network can be more or less synchronous; no two will be the same. This is important because it allows a teacher the best of both forms of communication and the ability to utilise the power of them using just one application. So you could request information the night/day/week before and then return to those responses after some time. On the other hand you could activate your network to help on the spot, in that moment or current time frame when you need it. When you are planning to use Twitter as part of a lesson or to support learning the asynchronous facet of Twitter communication is perhaps the most useful. You can gather responses to a tweet over a short period of time and return to explore them with your class when you are ready. However you still have the opportunity to foster responses from your network in real time that can have an impact on learning. Here is a simple, theoretical timeline of a planned Twitter activity that can be easily adapted to suit your needs, and one that I know from experience works well.

The timeframe that A-D occurs in is flexible enough for it to work within hours or just minutes between. The repeat request (B) is optional depending on the sorts of responses you get from your initial interaction. If you are to take advantage of live feedback then it is a good idea to repeat your request (C) just prior to working with the children on the activity (D).

The information torrent/stream/river/brook/flood

My favourite metaphor for how we use Twitter is the idea that it is a river that is constantly flowing. And that when we open up the Twitter site in our browser or start up Twhirl we are at the banks looking on. Some of us stay on the banks, roll out our picnic rug or unfold that favourite chair and settle in to watch the information stream pass by. Others quietly observe from the banks for a short time but have their trunks on underneath their clothes, and were always going to jump in and contribute. However we choose to interact with this ever moving and changing flow of information, whenever we move away from the current we no longer see the flow - it passes us by, it carries on downstream. We can still hear the ripples and froths of the information eddying and ebbing along (or is that Twhirl alerts) but we no longer see it or interact with it directly. Understanding this distinct current is vital to make the most of Twitter in the classroom. I could ask for some contribution to a lesson, but those people momentarily away from the riverbanks could easily miss this request. My network may well return but the request will already be bobbing downstream out of sight.

I hope that you do not mind me indulging so deeply in such a metaphor - it helps me to appreciate the nuances of the tool.

Depending on how many people you follow will depend on how quickly the information flows. If you have only a small network of people that you follow then the brook will flow more slowly, those people are more likely to pick up upon your information request. Those following a large group of people will experience a much faster flow of Twitter updates and so when you throw your own into the torrent it can very quickly be washed downstream and out of sight. Armed with this knowledge I have begun retweeting requests so as to give people the opportunity to respond if they can. From the timeline diagram above you can see I have included just such a repeated request. This is particularly important if you are looking for a good number of responses to work with or if you send out a Tweet days before the event.

Manageable networks

Every user of Twitter has a different take on what sort of size your network should be to be manageable. In my opinion I do not think much of it matters. I currently follow over 500 people, I receive their updates, and I hear what is going on in their world. However they do not all tell me at the same time! I do not see this number being particularly difficult to manage, what is there to manage? I visit the information flow when I want and take what I wish from it. I know that when I am not engaged with it the river continues to flow. That does not bother me, I know that my PLN is wider than Twitter and anything important I need to know about will reach me through another tributary. I also appreciate some factors that will allow my network’s information to remain valuable even when it is greater than 500.

1. How many people actually update every 5 minutes? According to my Twitter Karma only 236 contacts have updated in the last 24 hours. That is less than 50 percent.
2. The global aspect means there will always be people asleep and inactive when I am engaged with Twitter.
3. I know the times when my network updates the most.
4. I also appreciate who updates most frequently.
5. In my opinion the greater number of people I follow the richer the tapestry.

A global network

As any network grows it soon begins to encompass professionals from different parts of the world and this can dictate the levels of asynchronous and synchronous communication that goes on. When you plan to use Twitter in the classroom it is important to be aware of the time differences for different parts of your network. For example when I asked for some responses for a maths lesson at 9.30am GMT, Australian responses dominated the replies. I knew this was going to occur so I repeated the request later in the morning and at 1.00pm to take into account those waking up to the west. With this planned repeat of the request, members of my network in the US, Canada and South America were able to respond and contribute their small part to our lesson.

Who is in your network?

Although the numbers in the PLN diagram above are clearly dominated by those in my Twitter network I am more than aware that it is more to do with the “who” than the “how many”. In a previous post I explored a metaphor for interacting with your Twitter network. I wrote that asking if there was a doctor on board a plane would be much better if doing so on a large passenger jet, you surely have a greater chance of getting a response. When I wrote that, I was reminded of a story of a gentleman who, suffering from a severe heart attack aboard a small domestic flight, was saved by a whole team of cardiac surgeons, doctors and registrars who were all travelling to a conference on the same flight! I could not verify whether this was true or not and clearly there is a healthy slice of luck involved - but it does extend the metaphor in an important direction. A carefully constructed network of valued colleagues, all with a an ethos of sharing at the heart of what they do, may well be more valuable to you then a random mixture of hundreds of people. From my experience the vast majority of education professionals using Twitter have a fairly tight control over who they follow, I am no different. It is often when I receive an email notification of someone adding me to their network that I will think about these simple steps.

1) Explore their Twitter profile, scan who they follow.

2) Look for the language of education in the profile - teacher, tech coordinator, K12 etc

3) Explore their online work, blog, wiki or school website link.

4) Skim read recent Twitter updates.

5) If they are clearly involved in education I will follow back.

The very fact that someone has chosen to add me to their network is strong incentive for me to “follow” them back. I firmly believe in that approach to using this tool. I consider it to be a compliment every time someone clicks the “follow” button for similar reasons as I would. I try to thank people for adding me to their network with a direct message and I am always hopeful that in this new exchange there is a new possibility for learning for both parties.

Talking and listening

You have no control over the choices other people make in terms of adding you to their network. Just because you have added them does not mean it will be reciprocated. It is important to appreciate that Twitter in fact has two networks working alongside each other. To help better understand this below I have republished some graphics that I have used in the past to help explain this dichotomy.

Building your network

I do not profess to have all of the answers in terms of building a network using Twitter but below I have included some simple steps that I hope will support you in building your own. I have deliberately chosen to use the word “building” as I believe that you have to take some specific steps in order to lay the foundations for a successfully and appropriately populated Twitter network.

1. Make it your own: the P in PLN is for personal, so take steps to follow people that interest you both professionally and personally if you so wish. There is no right way to do it. Consider how you want to use Twitter. In the classroom?
2. Hit the ground running: if you are new to Twitter then explore other people’s networks and follow a bunch of people you would like to listen to, it will get the ball rolling.
3. Go global: use Twitter mashups to explore possible colleagues in other countries - you will soon begin to appreciate a better sense of network geography.
4. Friend of a friend of a friend: again use network visualising tools, like Twitter Blocks, to help you explore who is following members of your network. Take a couple of further steps and you may see many more possible connections.
5. Your own rules: it is a good idea to establish what you will do when someone follows you, how will you check them out? Do they have to be a teacher? On what grounds will you decide not to follow someone?
6. Reciprocate: try to follow back fellow education professionals when they add you. Your network widens and so does theirs.
7. Balanced or unbalanced, does it really matter?: It is your choice how many people you follow and there is no Twitter police frowning upon us. If you want to follow 1000 teachers then go ahead!
8. Participate: when it is right for you jump into the stream and get involved, there is no better way to characterise your profile then making contributions. When you want responses from your network, for your own lessons, your own participation may help to yield a reciprocated involvement.
9. Respond: When other professionals ask for help/information or interaction via Twitter (and it is relevant to you) respond. Simple acts of 140 characters or less maintain a sharing ethos amongst your network. Others are ostensibly more likely to respond to your own requests later on.
10. Search: Use Tweetscan to find out about discussions on Twitter. Search for keywords that are relevant to you - so a SMARTBoard or IWB scan may uncover a new network contact.
11. Momentum: The behaviour of my network has changed since I began using Twitter. Momentum has been built in the numbers of followers I have and I would say that at around 400-450 followers I began to receive followers daily. That is network momentum.

Different types of questions to ask your Twitter network

When you plan to involve your network in teaching and learning in your classroom it is basically inviting individuals to offer their voice to what you do. Twitter is all about communication, so when thinking of what you will get from Twitter for your lessons - conversation is the currency. Below I have outlined some general categories for types of questions or requests you can make to your network, plus some examples for each. Anytime I would ask my Twitter PLN to be involved with the class with their responses I would always precede my response with, “I am working with my class…” or something similar indicating to all that it is directly for teaching and/or learning. I think that this helps persuade fellow professionals to contribute.

Creative

Involve your network in the creation of something new - perhaps in decisions during shared writing with a class, or a piece of music.

• We have written this so far…what word would you use to describe the event/character/scene/action?
• Can you help us to think of synonyms for “help”?
• Here is what we have written so far (insert URL) Should the character in our story be A or B - and tell us why you made that decision.

Data

A Twitter PLN provides a large group of teachers available to contribute all manner of data to a historical or mathematical investigation. Twitter would allow you to collect data easily but only superficially, but if you were to direct readers to an online form or poll then the data could be more in depth.

• What is the temperature where you are today?
• How far do you have to travel to work?
• How old is your school? What year was it built?

Opinion

This type of question could be incorporated into many different types of curriculum areas. What you are looking for here is the addition of another facet to the class debate and Twitter gives you that very easily, you can extend your discussions via feedback and insight from others. I would always recommend an age stamp clearly on these sorts of posts to signal what level of discussion, feedback or opinion would be most appropriate. (Twitpic is an excellent resource to share and discuss images using Twitter)

• Here is an image of Queen Elizabeth I what does it tell you about her?
• Here is what we have written so far (insert URL) Which of these sentences continues the report in the most persuasive manner?
• We have written some class rules what do you think of them so far?

Information

Instead of gathering data from all of your contacts, with these types of questions particular information could be teased from your network. These could ideally be used to help provide a global perspective about school life for children. Further steps in the conversation could be taken to find out more about a particular school etc.

• What is it like to work in an international school?
• Does the weather effect you at school? What do the children/staff do to tackle the high temperatures during the day?
• Most of the children in our class walk to school because so many live nearby, what is the most popular form of transport in your class and why?

Location

This is pretty simple - a request to find out where people are. I have used this to inspire a Google Earth introduction. Lots of potential for finding out about different locations and having a teacher there to guide you a little. Imagine having a teacher for your class to talk to in every city in the world?!

• We are exploring world time differences, it is nearly lunchtime for us what are you doing and what time is it?
• What is the weather like where you are?
• We are looking at the differences between the UK and Australia, is there anyone who can help us?

Challenge

Ask your network to pose challenges and questions for your class. Again this type of response could be planned for and incorporated into many different lessons.

• Challenge my class to find you using Google Earth, please provide us with just a small amount of information where you are?
• My class is revising the human body. Please give us a challenging question to answer. Grade 5.
• Challenge us to find a landmark or building that has a distinct shape?

There are many, many types of questions and requests you could make to your network but I think it is important that for every one you make there is a clear thankyou to those who have taken the time to contribute. After the lesson make a point of sitting down and tweeting to all of the individuals who helped. Another little tip that became very clear from the comments to a recent post is about the follow up. Where possible a blog post explaining how Twitter was used helps those who contributed get the bigger picture. Their 140 character contribution may have been a small piece of a larger tapestry - and it is useful to help other teachers realise that.

Reliable response

One of the most important questions when planning for a Twitter activity is: will I be able to get a response from my network? This is valid. You have to feel completely comfortable with the network you have built and the reliability of response you will receive. This reliability is very important if you are to plan for using Twitter as a teaching and learning tool, after all you do not want 0 responses. How can you get guaranteed responses? I think that this is impossible as you have no influence over the people that follow your updates. However there are two aspects that, in my opinion, can increase the reliability of response. Firstly it is important to build a network as described above. If you have network members that are more willing to share and contribute then a response may be more favourable. Secondly the sheer number of followers will statistically increase your chances of getting a response from the network.

The latter point is worth considering as you plan to incorporate Twitter in your lessons. If you have only just started out with the tool, then waiting for the number of followers to grow to reach a sort of “tipping point” is crucial. I explore the idea of a “tipping point” in this post. Only you can decide when this is, for me it was around 80-100 people and was proven in light of a particular interaction that went well.

Summary

In my opinion there is great potential in the use of Twitter to support teaching and learning. It is unique in this role because it is all about conversation on a larger scale. Not just instant messaging with one or two contacts or including a Skype call in your lesson, but speaking to a wider network of fellow professionals. Currently most users consider Twitter to be just a networking tool, this opinion was confirmed when I recently asked if it could be a teaching and learning tool. To make the transition into the classroom and having a direct influence on learning will take more people planning to use it and a growing weight of examples and successes to explore.

I look forward to seeing the different ways that I can use Twitter as a teaching and learning tool in the future with my class and I hope you will do to. Unfortunately the peace of the Cornish countryside is miles away as I finish this post. I have returned to the ever-connected world we work in and I can’t help but feel a mixture of reactions about that. Anyway I had better get Twhirl fired up and visit that river…

Buckleys mate

That was the first reply from @deangroom to my Twitter request in support of a maths lesson earlier this week. I had asked my network to explain to my class of Year 5s / 4th graders what the probability of snow was for the following day. In my planning I had included this activity as a plenary to my maths lesson on probability. The children were exploring a range of statements and deciding what the likelihood was. The conclusion of the session was planned as follows:

Explore with the children the language that they have used in the session. Ask: Is the same vocabulary used in other countries? Ask Twitter network to respond to: “What is the probability that it will snow where you are?” Explore the responses and discuss the reasons for any differences.

“Buckleys mate” threw me a little though, I shared it with the children and after a little searching we discovered that it is an Australian slang term meaning “No chance” - so we figured out what @deangroom meant!

Time Aware

One of the most important things that I have learned from successfully using Twitter to impact on my lessons, teaching and ultimately the children’s learning is that you have to be time aware. I sent out this tweet, as you can see, at just after 9.15 GMT.

I did not need the responses for a further hour but allowing your network time to respond is very important. By the time that I was sitting with the class to finish the session we had approximately 20 responses to explore, and more was rolling into twhirl as we were working. I simply displayed the “Replies” view so the children could see specific responses to us.

I was also very aware that America was still tucked up in bed and only those very early risers, insomniacs and those burning the midnight oil would be responding at the time from the US. The morning session worked out that we continued our maths on until lunch so I retweeted 2 hours later and then again around 1.00pm. This may seem like you are pestering your network but single tweets can get lost in the torrent for many of your network - some may not respond because they simply may not have seen the request. I knew that the 1pm tweet would nudge those in the US and many added their responses to the stack of examples we had to discuss with the kids.

Shaping the learning experience

As you can see from my planning and the request I sent out the focus was on the language that other people would naturally use to describe an event’s probability. And the coincidental geographic information that justified such a likelihood helped our discussion. We were able to establish from the early responses that they were mainly from Australia and the children were amazed to read the responses:

This naturally lead to a discussion about why residents of this country would give this sort of response, we discussed their climate and the ostensibly long history of no snow days and how this leads people to believe more fully that it is highly unlikely. Then came a response from closer to home.

I swooped upon the language that @jonesieboy had used in his tweet and saw it as a good teaching point. I focused the children’s attention upon his use of “1 in 4 chance” and we explored how this could be rephrased as a a quarter and that led us naturally to the equivalent percentage - 25%.

The children had been using 5 words to describe their own statements in the main part of the lesson. Certain, probable, possible, unlikely, impossible. After reminding them about this I asked them to position “1 in 4″ or 25% on their own scale and to give a word that best describes the chances of snow in East Lothian. It is amazing what a single tweet can do to a lesson.

Creating a learning experience

In a similar way to how our Geotweets lesson proved successful the quality and quantity of responses from my network offered me an opportunity to create a new learning activity. The initial plenary was really successful, we discussed the tweets we had received at that point and the language differences it presented. I decided to continue with the maths lesson for the rest of the morning and spent 10 minutes, whilst the children were outside for breaktime, creating two additional SMART Notebook pages that incorporated the Twitter responses.

The main focus was of course the language individuals used and although we concluded many people, when asked about probability, responded with a figure/percentage, I challenged the children to juxtapose the responses onto our original scale.

The second notebook page was an additional bonus, but the geographical information is very important to explore with the children when reviewing any responses in Twitter. In the case of this maths lesson the probability could be justified by geotagging the tweet. I used a rudimentary map and we discussed the location of the respondees and how this affected their responses. I could have looked at a map+Twitter mashup but this would not challenge the children’s geography knowledge, rather it would just display the locations.

To create these pages in SMART Notebook I simply used the screen capture tool to snip the individual tweets from Twhirl. You have to ensure that the inactive opacity is set to 100 as Twhirl becomes inactive when you switch to the SMART screen capture tool. You can download the notebook file with these two pages in here.

I was delighted to use this networking technology in this way and it was great to finally execute what I had long conceived to be possible in my head. The lesson was so much richer for the carefully planned introduction of Twitter responses. The two SMART Notebook pages supplemented the original nbk resource and the discussion in the plenary. The parallel Y5 class was able to benefit from the depth and quality of responses as they also located the tweets and scaled the responses using the notebook. In terms of my own teacher assessment of the lesson I think that the children had a truly global picture of what this question meant to real people and a far greater understanding of the variety of vocabulary used to describe probability. For some people who responded the possibility of snow was almost far fetched and for others it seemed they were having to literally defrost the very keyboard they were frostily typing on! When I look back at the short paragraph of planning I had written it’s brevity does not reflect the depth of opportunity it actually produced. I move on from this lesson knowing that when you invite responses from your network to expect much more and to be flexible enough to make the most of the learning opportunities it readily presents.

With a careful, planned approach I think I have proven (in this instance) that Twitter can be used to impact on the children’s learning. That may be a very narrow impact in terms of a wider curriculum but it is an impact nonetheless.

Make it work in your classroom

• Think carefully about what topic to support - the simplest questions are the best.
• Phrase your 140 characters with great care. Get as much in as you can. I must have taken a good 5 minutes redrafting the original tweet.
• Be time aware. Think carefully about who will see your tweet when you send it out. Send your request for information prior to the time you actually need it, to allow the network time to respond.
• Don’t be afraid of retweeting a request so that people who have just logged in can pick it up.
• Request a location from your network as this can form some excellent points for discussion.
• Display the responses using the Replies view in a Twitter client like Twhirl or Snitter, this way you will not be distracted by the other conversations passing by.
• Share with the children the language of Twitter and what it all means, one of my children heard the alert sound of a reply and said “That means someone has tweeted us!”
• Be flexible and prepared for the direction that the tweets can take you.
• Save an image of your replies for future reference - you can see all of the replies we received for this lesson here.

Many thanks to all of you who responded to our question - thankyou for contributing to our maths work this week.

I am pleased to announce the second of our EdTechRoundup podcasts is available for you to listen to. In this episode yours truly is at the helm alongside John Johnston. It was a great fun making the show and I was delighted to be working with John as he was instrumental in getting this blog off the ground in the early days.

In the ICT Buffet we explain about a range of current projects we are involved in with our classes. We discuss Voices of The World, Tumblr and the ManyVoices Twitter writing project.

John and I spend some time exploring the ways that we are using Google tools in our classroom and I explain how we have collaborated on a Google spreadsheet together. John explains how he is using digital still cameras to create small videos as a way to create a record of learning in science investigations.

View the shownotes on del.icio.us

I hope that you can find the time to listen - all of your feedback, thoughts and comments are always much appreciated.

Last week I had a fantastic afternoon which saw, for the first time I can recall, my learning network impacting in real time on my lesson and the children’s learning.

I had planned to do 2 sessions with our two Year 5 (9/10 yr olds) classes on the usual introduction to Google Earth type content but it all changed. Sometimes things just happen and I love those sort of sessions - the unknown, the edgy, the challenging sessions that we all learn more from than sticking to the usual, grey sessions we could do with our eyes closed. Pushing the boundaries a little.

Needless to say Twitter and Google Earth were involved, and the latter is not a particularly new tool - but the combination of both created very powerful real time discovery. 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. Well the challenges rolled in and in a couple of hours we had 25 different people to track down.

Of course we got stuck in straight away and I sent the first class off trying to find the locations of our helpful teacher GeoTweets! Then it occurred to me that we had to reply in some way and prove that we had found them, so once we had identified where they were we Tweeted them a message with the proof. Here is an example:

Not much there but we did a quick look at technolibrary’s Twitter profile and soon found her location on her blog. Off the kids went trying to track down her school. The imagery was excellent and we could even read the words on their football pitch! Of course hidden under all of this excitement is children using the search and layers tools to refine what they are looking at - some of them using GE for the first time.

Here is the Tweet I sent to prove we were there…

and

The children’s efforts were driven by a real purpose and I always think that such a context around any edtech helps to push it to one side and we focus on the learning going on - not just the tool. Of course we had some trouble finding Clay Burell :-0

As you can imagine we had lots of fun exploring the world and the real time challenges from real people - that is the power of bringing Twitter into the classroom. I repeated the session with another class and just refreshed the request for challenges in the break. It worked out to be a wonderful intro to Google Earth which would also work really well with adult learners or during a professional development course.

Towards the end of the sessions we found Chris Lehmann and the Science Leadership Academy. The kids found it fascinating as we looked at the 3D buildings layer and what more GE had to offer.

Here is a quick summary of how you could use this concept in your classroom:

• Ask your Twitter network for challenges, GeoTweets if you will. Do this in advance of the session to give people time to respond.
• Guide the children quietly - you want them to be explorers not tourists!
• Encourage the children to found out about the area of the GeoTweet - find proof - we found the name of the local garage for one!
• Tweet back the proof to the sender to say you have found them. Maybe ask a further question about the area.
• We used my own Twitter network as I wanted the children to focus on using and exploring Google Earth.
• If you think your network isn’t quite at that tipping point where it will give live results, then you can prep it before hand and ask for specific responses a couple of days before. Ask others to pass on the request to their network - spread the word a bit.
• Some children will not find some of the locations because of the inaccuracy of their search. Encourage them to check and retype.
• Display the GeoTweets on a separate board or in a different application because Twitter’s timeline shifts everything down. You could use the screen capture tool in SMART Notebook (or other IWB app) to pin up current searches.
• Get different groups of children searching for different people - to spread the work.
• Be flexible and relax - this is a live session and is in the hands of your network, go with the flow of it. You have invited your network to contribute something so be prepared for the change of pace. You may have to wait, be patient - also you may have to juggle lots of GeoTweets.
• Remember to explain what Twitter is to your kids! Explain about the connections it cultivates, you may be surprised by their reaction.
• Have fun!

A big thankyou to the 25 odd people who jumped in with their challenges for my classes we had a great afternoon of GeoTweeting fun!

Over the last few months I have been using Twitter as part of my PLN (Professional Learning Network) and explored some of the issues for a classroom teacher on this blog. I consider it to be a fantastic tool in helping teachers connect and my own PLN has impacted on my teaching, planning, subject coordination, professional development and even children’s learning.

In my opinion if you can better understand these tools you will be able to use them much more effectively. It turns out that in fact if you are a Twitter user, you are part of two quite distinct networks. Listening and Talking.

Affectionately known as “lurking” you may follow many people and listen to their updates, their conversations, their thoughts. I have called this the “Listening” network. There is much to offer in this passive part of the Twitter network - follow the people you are interested in and you may pick up on little gems you may be able to use. But it has it’s disadvantages. The “Listening” network is based upon a passive interaction. You as a teacher are tuning in but cannot steer the conversation so long as you remain lurking.

As soon as you engage with someone in this “Listening” network things begin to change and the two network models above begin to merge and blur together.

The active part of your Twitter network is clearly this “Talking” element and, for me anyway, this is where I gain the most professionally. I may stumble upon a conversation thread and follow along, lurk if you will, to the point where I gain something for myself. But my most useful Twitter experiences occur when I actively engage my network either with a request or question.

So get out there and engage your network!

Whether you are a lurker, listener or talker it does not matter, as long as we continue to push these tools to affect change in our own professional sphere.

I am pleased to say that we are going to be contributing to this great little writing project from George Mayo. The @ManyVoices project is a collaborative, creative writing project using Twitter.

Each child writes part of the story sticking to the 140 character limit, once they are done another pupil picks up the authorial baton and continues the tale.

One of the best aspects of using Twitter for children to author creative writing is the character limit - those reluctant writers do not feel over-awed by a large blank page. The short paragraph they have to contribute is manageable and offers greater accessibility.

We are going to access the @manyvoices Twitter account and I will ask the children to work on a single laptop throughout the day next few days

The updates are copied onto a supportive wiki whereabouts you can read the whole story so far and follow along. George also explains:

The story concludes at the 140th entry. At that point, we collectively edit and revise our little Twitter story before publishing it as a small book through Lulu.com

I look forward to contributing over the next few days and I will post about how it goes. If you want to be involved I know that George is still looking for contributors - why not get in touch with him and get your kids to play their part.

You might say that this post has been brewing for a while. I took another look at Twitter a little while ago and it started a train of thought about it’s place in a personal learning network(PLN). There is something odd about how it functions. I hope to explore in this post what part, if any, Twitter can play in supporting fellow education professionals and to unpick it’s nuances through a teacher’s lens.

Before I begin I want to set a clear frame of reference for what I refer to as the Twitter network. I will be referring to the supportive edtech environment it has created and is used by hundreds of teachers. The network that helps you to solve a Mac iPod problem or alike. I am not referring to the day to day trivia or more personal aspects of this form of communication.

My Analogy

This is very simple and I hope that it allows you to understand the basic issue that faces many new users of Twitter, and indeed turns people away from it.

I hope that I never have to ask the question:”Is there a doctor on board?” but if I had to I would prefer to ask the question over the tannoy on an Airbus A380 then a small helicopter. With 839 passengers hearing my question I clearly have a higher probability that someone is indeed a doctor! I know that my chances are pretty poor when I turn to the other 3 passengers of the chopper and say “Doctor?”. But, and here is where the analogy changes slightly, bear with me, imagine that you went to the tannoy or stood up on that flying bus and asked the same question but no one even heard you utter a word. In fact you have a legitimate need and you imagine someone can help, and yet nobody can hear your request. The only option for you is to listen intently to everyone’s conversation in the hope that they maybe mention something about your problem.

This, in part, explains the frustrations for new users to Twitter.

The New User Experience

Joining Twitter as a teacher, generally speaking, intrinsically means that you want to connect, collaborate and tap into the wider community’s expertise to help and support your learning. However it often takes time for the value in a Twitter network to be revealed. If a new user is not “followed” by many people than their voice is not heard, their questions go unanswered, they echo into an empty space. This is not what Twitter is about? Do we need to show new users the way it works? It would be great to see a movie of someone using Twitter to get an immediate response, receiving an answer to a question etc. This would prove the concept so clearly to a new user, maybe we need to model it.

I have begun to see much more of this modelling behaviour. I do not think that Twitter is a resource that can be explained if detached from the network itself ie. away from a computer that is online. You may refer a colleague to this great networking tool and they perhaps take a look on their own later that day but, not surprisingly, they will wonder what all the fuss is about. I demonstrated Twitter to a friend last weekend and after 5 or 6 quick responses from around the world, realised the value of the “Say hi to…” tweet (a Twitter message). It is quite an innocuous thing to do but modelling how the network actually functions, much like a great deal of learning, leaves a much more indelible image on a new user.

Building your Network

Everyone starts from the same place when using Twitter but the day to day experiences have a varying success, depending on the number of followers you have. It is a simple equation, that is, if you have accumulated 100’s of followers over the course of a considerable time using Twitter the chances are when you ask for advice / help / contributions - many more are forthcoming. This successful, positive experience breeds more commitment to the network tool. You see great value and consider using it more / more often.

The flip side of this is that a newbie may have to wait until their network is large and eclectic enough to reap the immediate rewards of Twitter. Perhaps it is these new users that need a broad, wide reaching network from the word go. They (and I am referring to teachers curious of the benefits of such a tool) need to have success pretty early on and see the link with their own practice and how it can make a contribution. Otherwise they may turn away and see no value.

I think the importance of “I follow you - you follow me” behaviour cannot be underestimated, we need to help each other build a supportive collaborative network.

Tipping Point

Since I began writing this post (its been a slow one!) my own Twitter experiences have changed. I went through the period of use when my network was growing, when between 20-30 people were listening to your updates but you would get little or no interaction or replies. I am currently on 101 followers and I think that my first real successful interactions with the Twitter network took place between 80-100 people following my updates. These two experiences combined have been my tipping point - after which I knew that this tool is very important to my day to day work.

On a Thursday morning my teaching partner and I normally get some PPA time and 2 weeks ago we were sat talking about the following week’s planning. I was exploring the use of magazines in literacy linked with PSHE. I asked on the Twitter network:

> Anyone know of good examples of school magazines or newspapers produced by the kids?

Two replies came back immediately…

> @tombarrett there is a case study on the BBC newsround site http://tinyurl.com/28l5hx

> @tombarrett - Have a look at http://www.edu.fi/magazinef…

All of this occurred within the immediate time I was planning, allowing me to take it into consideration. Twitter has impacted on my planning processes.

The second positive experience I had was just this week. My Twitter PLN had grown to close to hundred followers by this point and this particular example has to be the most successful use of the network so far. After a successful meeting regarding the school laptop project I decided to author some possible questions for a pupil survey. However I just had a blank - I managed one but needed some inspiration. So I asked…

> Aaargh - I am writing our pupil laptop survey but hitting a brick wall, need some inspiration. 8 ltops per class 9-11yrs any ideas for q’s?

The responses were fantastic and really helped to shape the survey:

>where have they used the laptop? is it easy to carry? what action have they had to take to make sure its not damaged?

>Don’t know much about your program but here’s a question: What do u do on the laptop when ur not being told what to do?

>’Has using a laptop with a partner changed how they collaborate?’ ‘If so, how?’

>’given the choice, what would they still rather use paper/pens for?’

>Which was most fun / useful? Anything else they’d like to use? Best thing / Worst thing? Biggest benefit of having laptops?

>what about any software they would have liked on? frustrations, such as speed and connectivity to school network?

>Pupil survey Question: If u had to write a blog about using a laptop in school, what would the name of your blog be?

>three ways in which they have used it in subjects? what restrictions they have had?

As you can see the suggested questions are both insightful and creative - and they proved invaluable in authoring the survey. But the Twitter interaction was not finished there, as I created a Google Doc for the questions, shared the link and asked for comments about the drafted questions. Again the feedback was very helpful and contributed to a further edit of the survey. I am very grateful to those who helped.

Again it all comes down to numbers - if you have a large enough network with the right people in it who are willing to share, contribute, advise and help - then you will get experiences like this. Be patient and let your network grow - don’t expect too much from it early on. Nurture it and encourage it to broaden by following other classroom practitioners.

What does it all mean for classteachers and schools?

In my opinion building your own PLN is vital in the current edtech climate. I learn so much from being involved with people like YOU, reading this post, your comments and contributions help to shape my practice in class. Furthermore tools such as Twitter not only help make connections easier, but allow individuals to tap into the collective wisdom of many.

I would advise if you are a classteacher, like me, to take a look at Twitter - and if you can get someone to show you then all the better. But it is a long road and you need patience to build your network up. At the beginning of this post I was thinking of changing the Twitter model - to make it easier for newcomers to realise the potential, (I still think that this is important) to bypass the frustrations and shortcut into a bigger network, but perhaps a true networking journey in itself is more insightful and enjoyable.

Building any network takes time and I think that it is time well spent.

As I have been writing this final paragraph I saw this Tweet:

http://twitter.com/room24 This is cool experiment. 4th grade teacher letting students tweet on class account. embedded in his blog.

This would be a nice way into blogging in such a micro form and would facilitate further writing on a class blog. In effect the children microblog and connect directly with a class network.