Six Essential Tech Tools for 21st Century Classroom Workflow

What is the workflow for a 21st century classroom?  What does it look like?  Where to start?

These six ideas will help create a classroom that is engaging and inspiring long after the last bell rings.   Publishing, sharing, collaborating, and global is the name of the game.  Our connected learners need lessons that challenge them to think critically, share knowledge, be inquisitive, and collaborate globally. The workflow from classrooms of the past, must be left in the past.  The concept of a Flipped Classroom must be explored.  These tools are just a few to utilize to start flipping your classroom. 


A flipped classroom is an environment where students learn the lecture content online outside of the classroom via a movie.   Students are able to pause, rewind, and view a concept over and over.  Additionally, students take ownership of learning the material.   There are many benefits to this concept for the teacher. One benefit is that this frees up class time for discussion, projects, speeches, labs, and other engaging projects and allows teachers more one on one time with students. This is the reverse of how a traditional classroom works where the lecture is delivered to a whole group by the teacher with a minimal about of time for homework.
(Flipped Classroom Resources: A flipped highschool: Clintondale, Flipped classroom Prezi, Khan Academy, The Future of Education?).

The time is now to engage our passionate, mobile students in a classroom that uses learning modalities of their generation.  Dare to take the bold step in transforming your teaching style to meet the needs of the digital generation.

Prezi - http://prezi.com Create engaging web based presentations for students to view at their own pace with PREZI.  Prezi is a non linear way to make a presentation.  You can easily embed PDF files, images, and YouTube videos.  This is a fantastic alternative to PPT's and provides students a way to view and review material that has been presented in class. After a Prezi is created, click exit.  There you will find lots of options for sharing the Prezi.  The presentations are web based so it can easily be shared via a link or tweeted out. Simply click the Twitter icon from the Prezi site.    If you have a classroom hashtag on Twitter, students can find it your classroom stream. Prezis default as Public.  If you want to create private Prezis, there is a fee.  You do have the option to allow your Prezi to be copied or not. There is also a tab called explore.  Click this tab see other Prezis that have been created. Prezi Resources: Cybraryman's Prezi Page Examples: Courtney Smeby - Nebraska History Review Amanda McKibbon - Crayfish	Screen R - http://www.screenr.com/ Create screencasts for your students to view anywhere in the world. This site is easy to navigate. Within minutes, you can create a screencast on any topic. This is the perfect way to create tutorials for students.  Students can view it again and again to learn, re-learn, and move to complete understanding of a concept. Screenr is perfect for explaining a new concept or a creating how to tutorial on a topic. This is the perfect tool to use as an anticipatory set or a chapter / unit summary.  Video are easy to link or embed on blogs or websites. Here are several examples for you to check out. Article: Flipping Your Classroom Sharae Geldes - Explaining Geometric Concepts Courtney Jameson - Double Spacing a paper Luke Olson - Using Easybib.com
YouTube YouTube is a game changer for the classroom.   From either the student or teacher perspective, YouTube can be a powerful educational tool. Students: Create and publish projects that demonstrate mastery of an objective. View videos to learn a concept at their own pace. View videos to review for exams. View how to videos to learn a skill. Utilize a YouTube channel to create a digital portfolio of learning. Teachers: Create a classroom YouTube Channel and post teacher created educational videos that correlate with the curriculum. Utilize lists to curate a collection of videos to use in the classroom. Use the video editor in YouTube to edit video. Reflect on lessons and share with principal. Videos can be linked, embedded, or the subscribed to. Example: Tech Tools For Teaching YouTube Channel Michael Gentry - Friction Similes and Metaphors in Pop Music Carrie Borner - Idioms Alex Williams - Gas Laws Katie DeBuhr - Animal Types Andy Fjelland - Density	VoiceThread According to voicethread.com, “A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam).” Creating and sharing a VoiceThread is a powerful way for students to reflect on a topic.  During this process of metacognition, students can monitor their own progress in learning where students, teachers, and parents can provide feedback.   In addition, VoiceThreads are fantastic ways for students to create presentations that can easily be embedded, tweeted, or shared on a website.  This published work is shared far beyond the four walls of the school and potentially can have comments from people around the globe.  The web based nature of VoiceThread makes it a must have in every teacher's lesson plans. The skills to collaborate, communicate, and share are skills that students need for the world they live in. Example: Stacy Turner - teacher and grad student Becky Meier - teacher and grad student
Digital Study Aids Digital study aids such as the three listed below, make mobile students connected to learning wherever they may be. Each of these tools are easy to use, web based, and mobile!  No excuse not to learn! Quizlet- http://quizlet.com/    Word Dynamo - http://dynamo.dictionary.com/ Study Stack - http://www.studystack.com/ Example: Mr. Myers  - American History	Digital Presence A digital presence is a must for 21st century teachers.  If teachers aren’t blogging  and/or having a classroom web presence, they should be.  All classroom materials should be accessible for students so that continue learning happen regardless of location.  Purposeful, engaging, learning must be available online anywhere so students can learn on the go.   Having classroom materials easily accessible is a must for these mobile learners and their parents.    Examples: Dr. Kingsley's Third Grade Mr. Sims Fourth Grade

-Ann Feldmann

Twitter Etiquette

There are many things in Twitter that are tricky to learn. Etiquette is no different.
There is no official guide to read from. This is our take on a couple of key pieces to
having the proper etiquette on Twitter.


One thing to keep in mind before you continue in this post is good old-fashioned manners ring true in Twitter just like they do at home. Saying Please and Thank you are still the same.
If someone says something nice to you on Twitter, tweet them back a thank you. Pretty simple really.

• If someone follows you, @mention or Direct Message them and thank them for the follow.
•  If you retweet someone, you can edit their tweet, if you do make sure to put MT for a Modified Tweet. Perhaps in this case you take off a hashtag they used to make it fit or you wanted to put your hashtag like #tt4t on it to send it to your people.
• Include professional information in your profile. Many people carefully read profiles before following you.  It’s important for you to list your subject, grade level, & content areas.
• Text lingo can be used to shorten messages.
• Twitter is not texting or Facebook.  Take personal conversations to a DM (Direct Message) or move it to Facebook or Skype.  
• Use an @mention and tell the person that you like or have used their idea.  They will appreciate it.
• Always give credit where credit is due. So if you find a great blog post or article from someone on Twitter @mention them in the tweet that you found it from them.

Chats come with their own set of unwritten rules that we have discovered as we have joined the professional Twitter community.  

Educational Chats
1.  Add a column with the hashtag you will follow.   Ed Chat has a CHAT every Tuesday at 6 PM CST.
2.  Watch and read the tweets before jumping into a conversation.
3.  Stick to the topic that is being discussed. This is not the place for personal updates.  If you need to leave, just walk away, no need to waste a tweet to tell people that.  They will notice you are gone.  People don’t want to waste time reading something that does not help them as an educator.
4.  If you make a connection with someone perhaps you don’t use the hashtag and continue to converse through DM (Direct Messages) or through your regular home feed of followers.

#FF - Friday Follows

Dear New Twitter Friends,

You are going to see a hash tag #FF on Friday. This stands for Follow Friday.  People will tweet off people in their network on Fridays with @mentions of people in their network. This means they are suggesting you follow them and this is also a big compliment to them. A #FF is a tweet filled with people who are tweeting great things in their personal learning network (PLN).
_____________________________________________________________________
Example:
Shelly Mowinkel ‏ @ShellyMowinkel
#FF build your PLN with these awesome educators: @techiefeldie @j_allen @Coach_Sautter @catlett1 @mrbadura @jennykbps
______________________________________________________________________


This is a compliment to each person included in the #FF tweet.

The #FF’s also make it a simple, quick, easy way to find people to follow.  Since they are recommended by others as Twitter rockstars, they could be a great additions to your PLN!  Just click the names and follow them!

Our #TT4T #FF’s:

@cybraryman1 @stumpteacher @cyarzy @j_allen @Matt_Gomez  @NMHS_Principal  @web20classroom @shannonmmiller @Grade1 @mrbadura  @L_Hilt @justintarte @MrWejr @rmbyrne  @beth_still @chericson @shellymowinkel @kevinhoneycutt @shellterrell @stumpteacher @larryferlazzo @adambellows @teachingwthsoul

#FarAwayFridays

Recently I saw a tweet come across my feed and one of the teacher's I follow from Ontario, Canada.  Her name is Angie Harrison or @TechieAng on Twitter.  She tweeted, "Looking for an adult who loves Dr Suess & is willing to read aloud one of his stories via Skype tomorrow to our grade 3 class #deseussbday" 

I then saw her interaction with another elementary Twitter teacher I follow @Grade1 and Aviva was lining up a time to Skype in and read to Angie's class so I thought, what the heck, I could do it.  So I tweeted Angie and told her I was up for it.  In a matter of minutes I was lined up to read the following day, Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!  My personal, all-time favorite book to read to kids.  As a principal, on #drseussbday's I was always asked to come into lower elementary classrooms and read to them.  I always enjoyed it.  

This experience was no exception.  It was fantastic!  I was skyping into an amazing teacher's classroom in Canada who thinks outside the box, she uses Twitter to flatten the globe, and on this day I was in Canada for a little while.  How cool is that?  I busted out a CAT in the HAT hat and surprised the kids with that!  Ha!

Within this great idea of Angie's, her husband Brian Harrison or @bharrisonvp on Twitter, came up with an idea called #FarAwayFridays to go along with it.  And from that a Google Spreadsheet was born.  See it here: #FarAwayFridays This idea was to continue on with setting up educators skyping into classrooms all over the world from Far Away on Fridays.  What a great idea and a fabulous use of a #hashtag in twitter!  I love it!  I am so glad I tweeted back to Angie and got involved with it.  I will encourage and share this with as many teachers as I can because what a great way to show kids a love of reading and learn from others "Far Away".  

Check it out!  Get involved!  Pass it on! 

Here is @TechieAng's blog post about it.