New Tab

A Simple Guide on The Use of Hashtag for Teachers Chris Messana was the first guy to share a tweet containing a hashtag back on August of 2008. Since then, hashtags have become the most popular communicational medium of choice for television shows, political campaigns, educational news and updates, commercials, and also an icon of the 21st century pop culture. So, what is a hashtag ? Who can use Hashtags? How can I create a hashtag ? Related : Why using a hashtag ? 1- #edtech This is one of my favorite hashtags on Twitter. 2-#edapp If you are interested in discovering and learning more about the use of educational apps in teaching, edapp is a hashtag to follow. 3-#edchat This is one of the popular hashtags and it is a great way for you to meet other teachers from all around the world and stay updated about the trending topics in education. 4-#edreform This one stands for education reform and it speaks for itself , when you join this chat you will have the chance to explore what educators are sharing on educational issues.

Twitter for Teachers: Home - Twitter for Teachers Can Technology Transform Education Before It’s Too Late? Editor’s Note: This guest post was written by Prerna Gupta, who is CEO of Khush (now part of Smule), whose music apps, like Songify and LaDiDa, have been used to create over 125 million songs worldwide. You can follow her @prernagupta. As technology continues its march toward the Singularity, transforming the way we work, socialize and play at an increasing rate, there is one very important aspect of American society that lags behind: education. Many in Silicon Valley have strong opinions on how education should be improved, perhaps most notably Peter Thiel, who believes we are in a higher education bubble and should be encouraging kids to skip college and pursue entrepreneurship instead. Why is higher education overvalued? It’s because our primary and secondary education systems suck and are thus shifting the burden of educating our population to college. Dave McClure’s fund, 500 Startups, plans to invest in 10-20 education startups this year. There are other examples as well.

One Hashtag Helps Educators Change Their Schools Every day on Twitter, educators discuss issues they’re facing, share advice and pass on resources. But as Tom Whitby found out when he started debates on the social network, conversations can be hard to follow, especially when they’re mixed in with a bunch of tweets from other people. That’s where the hashtag edchat comes in. Whitby worked with Shelly Terrell and Steven W. Anderson to provide a time, a place and a tag for educators to talk about major issues. “We’re fostering a conversation that needs to be had,” said Anderson, an instructional technologist for 19 schools in North Carolina. Edchat empowers educators to ask questions When Anderson goes to educational conferences, he hears about all the wonderful things that schools have, such as smartboards and 1-1 laptop programs. “What edchat allows us to do is talk about the dark side a little bit," Anderson said. Edchat empowers educators to fight for real change Edchat empowers educators to support each other

Language Teaching Methods About the Site Foreign Language Teaching Methods focuses on 12 different aspects of language teaching, each taught by a different expert instructor. The site contains video footage from an actual methods course held at the University of Texas at Austin. This flexible resource is designed to be used by foreign language teachers as a component of a classroom methods course or as a stand-alone course for independent learners. “While I was taking this course, I was already changing what I was doing and I can already see the difference. ” - Verónica, beginning language teacher (Spanish) “I loved having a different teacher [for each module]. - Sarah, beginning language teacher (ESL) “People have so many different creative ideas you can draw from and use for your own class.” - Judith beginning language teacher (German) “The more different languages and different types of approaches we saw, the better understanding of teaching languages I got.” - Elena, beginning language teacher (Russian)

Teachers Teaching Teachers, on Twitter: Q. and A. on 'Edchats' A screenshot from TweetDeck showing, left, a recent #Edchat stream and, right, the #Engchat stream at the same time. Like other groups with shared interests, from epidemiologists to James Joyce fans to locked-out N.F.L. players, teachers are turning to Twitter to collaborate, share resources and offer each other support. Many, in fact, are using it to take professional development into their own hands, 140 characters at a time. Each week, thousands of teachers participate in scheduled Twitter “chats” around a particular subject area or type of student. Math teachers meet on Mondays, for instance, while science discussions happen on Tuesdays, new teachers gather on Wednesdays and teachers working with sixth graders meet Thursdays. (Jerry Blumengarten, Twitter’s @cybraryman1, posts this helpful list of educational chats.) Anyone can participate, and joining is easy: just go to Twitter, search for the hashtag of the chat that appeals to you, and start to read the stream of messages. T.W.

Twitter Handbook for Teachers 2011 Lesson #5 Make teamwork, collaboration and relationship building a habit The separated classroom with separate teacher model taken to the extreme - it has to change. We are no longer educating children to work in production lines - and in the developing world, this model would be a major factor in the 80-90% post school unemployment rate in many countries, simply because students have not been taught job creation skills. Earlier this year I looked at defining the ‘old paradigm’ classroom as compared with a new ‘learning community’ model. A simple question to ask ourselves in this post-industrial era is why? I think I was most challenged to think this one through when visiting Rwanda – a wonderful country full of amazing people and a very tangible sense of hope. Where does the problem start for schools and teachers? • student behaviour issues drop away • engagement into learning increases significantly • teachers remodel themselves as teacher learners • there is a marked increase in creative approaches to curriculum delivery Why teamwork? The future?

RockMelt - Your Browser. Re-imagined. Connect for an invitation. Flipped Professional Development 7 Steps To Flipped Professional Development by Laura Conley first appeared on gettingsmart.com Arriving home from San Diego and having just attended the ISTE (International Society of Technology in Education) conference I was scheduled to facilitate an all-day professional development for our district. I was excited to share as much of the conference as possible in a day without overwhelming everyone. I wanted to present the information in an engaging way by modeling the use of technology instead of just handing everyone a sheet of paper with some links. I knew where those papers would end up! From past experience I knew a lot of time was wasted creating accounts and log-ins at the beginning of each professional development which allowed many participants to get off task and off focus from the start. With this in mind, I decided it would be good for everyone to have the information ahead of time so they would know what to expect. All of the preparation paid off! 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.