Facebook, a School-Year Later

   So a back at the beginning of the school-year I wrote an entry about our school and district beginning an initiative to post on Facebook as a communication tool. I created attendance area pages (South Carolina schools are organized by county. Attendance areas contain a high-school, one to two middle schools, and several elementary schools) and each school was asked to have a Facebook page. Our school took that a step further: our principal encouraged teachers or grade-levels to set up pages as well for communication purposes. They could even use those pages in place of an end-of-the-week newsletter so long as a post was made by Friday. I can't speak for the individual teacher pages or grade-level pages, but our school page has been quite successful. The image of the graphs  is our weekly reach: basically how many people see our page, share something, how many friends of friends of ours can see the pages, etc. While we have about 777 "likes" we have a total weekly reach of close to 3,000. Basically that means that a lot of our "likers" are sharing our stories or their comments on our stories are showing up on their friends timelines. That also means a lot of good publicity and community building through our Facebook page.
     When this initiative first came up a lot of folks were concerned about community members using it as a sounding board to complain about whatever they had to complain about. We've actually seen the opposite. We've seen more questions resolved by the community itself than our page admins. For example, someone posted a question about an event time. Very soon after two other people posted responses completely clearing up the confusion before we even got to respond.
     What our school pages have done is amplify the support and corroboration that already existed within our community. It gives it a common area to converse, leave comments, and share their support. It also supports our "Green" initiatives as we get to cut down on printed newsletters (newsletters do get sent home to those without internet who opt to receive them). It also creates a clear, quick line of communication between teachers, administration, and parents.
     We have three admins of our school FB page and we all keep pretty close tabs on what goes on with comments. We have pretty tight reins on the pages meaning that only admins can make original posts and upload photos/videos. We also keep our comments "compact" meaning that a viewer has to "expand selection" prior to seeing the comment thread. This keeps any "unruly users'" posts from being seen right away without us moderating first. Our principal has really taken the lead on this: posting; moderating; and updating.  She also reviews the comments and really only keeps ones that pertain to school and not personal issues (which doesn't happen much).
    So overall its been a highly positive experience. The communication between our school and the community has opened wider and it gives us the opportunity to quickly relay what has been going on behind our doors. If you're toying with the idea of a school or classroom pages, I would highly recommend it.
      
   

Podcast - End of the Year Projects

In this podcast edition, we explore four Web 2.0 tools to liven up student projects, boost creativity, support deeper interaction with knowledge, and provide huge opportunities for online community sharing.

End of the Year Project Blues

Image from:
http://www.planetpals.com/images_recycle_crafts/shoebox.jpg

   So its approaching the end of the school year (at least for those of us in South Carolina) which means its time for those "end of the school year project blues". Students scramble to create posters, dioramas, papers, and my personal favorite (yes, that was sarcasm) a PowerPoint. I'm realizing that I've probably not done all that I could to prepare my students for this point in the year. I know I shouldn't have that much of a problem with PowerPoint, because it does have great features and can do a lot more if we think outside of the box with it - but here's my biggest problem:
   I was browsing over a student's work and noticed the language was that of a seasoned biologist talking about animals, not an elementary student's. When I asked if he wrote it or copied it, he said "I copied it". No problems, easy to do, learned and demonstrated absolutely nothing except how to copy and paste. This is unacceptable and its the reason why I said moments ago that I don't think I prepared my students properly. And here's why:
   I think that many web 2.0 tools like podcasts, blogs, digital storybooks, and even silly animated movies on Kerpoof challenge students to interact with their knowledge more than creating a presentation for exactly the reason demonstrated by my student. Its so easy to copy and paste into a presentation, its different when you have to add some creativity into the mix, give a personal opinion about something, or listen back to your own words and thoughts about a topic. Its more challenging, but I think if we direct our students in that direction, they'll come to find out its much more rewarding.
  The podcast associated with this post talks briefly about four potential options for projects; four tools that offer creativity, interaction with learning, and the potential for sharing online with friends, family, and the world. The tools covered are:
1) The website Kerpoof.com whose Make a Story and Make a Movie feature provide unique tools to share knowledge.
2) The program Audacity: a free and powerful audio recorder perfect for recording podcasts. If a student finishes a recording, why not host it on SoundCloud with an account for your classroom, or challenge the student to add appropriate content photos to the audio with Movie Maker and load it up to Facebook or Youtube?
3) The iOS apps Book Creator (cross-device) and Book Creator for iPad (iPad only) for e-book creation. Students can export their books as PDF's or share the e-pub file via email or Dropbox.
4) The online presentation tool Prezi: Yes, its for presentations but its setup makes it a bit more difficult to simply copy and paste text. Students would have to consider sequence, organization, and how to be concise (which gets NO consideration usually with PowerPoint).
  The challenge I'm presenting myself with for next year is to spend much more time on ethical research (yes, even in elementary school this is really important), and practical uses for the tools that we've spent time on in class.
   I think we'll have some fun with that!

Kerpoof! (and outside-of-class communication)

 

  I found this website earlier on this year while browsing for some out-of-the-ordinary web 2.0 activities for my elementary (2nd-5th grade) classes. Its completely based on creativity and computer-art projects like movies, cards, drawings, etc... and has excellent potential for literacy exercise as well. The features are basically free, plus with a (verified) teacher account, classes can be set up and projects shared either with the entire site, or just with one's class/group. 

  After setting up the classes, getting my students logged on, the students began creating their own content, sometimes with specific projects directed by me, other times, their own ideas. Many did this at home as well at school since they either remembered or took their logins with them. This is where the "mail/class/group" features come in. While I the chat or post features can be turned on and off, I wish there was a moderation feature. The classes are certainly private - no one except group members can post to their particular group - but as the technology teacher with over one hundred accounts and over 20 classes, it gets cumbersome to browse through every string of posts.

  Is anyone out there using Kerpoof in a "more than one class" setting? I'm curious as to if you're using the "mail" or chat features with your classes and how you moderate them. The concept of Kerpoof is pretty amazing and my students all love it. Just curious as to if there's a good method of monitoring the posts.