I want to start this blog post by saying that I am no expert at Facebook. In fact, I would say that I am still pretty much a learner myself because though I have had an account for some time, I don’t use it much. Recently however, I set up a second profile which is specifically meant as my “professional” presence and will be focused on topics for students, parents, and teachers. I have been using Twitter more than anything for quite some time now and actually prefer it but am primarily opening up to Facebook to reach a larger group of people. The beauty of this is that by using a program called Tweetdeck, I can post in both places at the same time. This blog post is meant to relate what I have learned, give some advice, and elicit others to add their own opinions and advice.
Privacy
So, the first thing I want to say to students is to think carefully before you post anything on-line. This advice is not one of those things you want to learn the hard way. The first step I suggest you take whether you are new to Facebook or have been using it for a while is get your parents to go through this with you. You want your parents to trust you right? Part of building that trust with them is letting them be a part of your life (even your on-line life). So go get one or both of them now. I know the urge to set up your profile and get it personalized quickly, then add friends so you can get going, is strong. But, if you take some time to start with your privacy settings, you will be taking a step in the right direction. If you already have your Facebook profile, I urge you to open it now in another tab on your browser and take a closer look at all the options available to protect your privacy. To do this, on your Facebook profile, click the “Account” button in the upper right hand corner and select “Privacy Settings”. When this page opens, read each of the sections carefully. Think hard about what you want people to know.
General guidelines:
Don’t let “Everyone” see anything.
Don’t let “Friends of Friends” see anything personal because you don’t know who one of your friends might be friends with.
Do keep your contact information private.
These guidelines can take care of so much protection of your privacy so please pay them close attention. Now, to get this really quite under control, give yourself a little time to dig deeper into these options. Notice the small blue link at the bottom of this section that says “Customize Settings”? Click on this to go deeper. There are three sections here (labeled on the left): Things I share, Things others share, and Contact information. Each of these sections has many properties which each have a drop down list of choices. The choices include Everyone, Friends of Friends, Friends Only, and Customize. The Customize option even lets you make certain information only available to you. I use that for things like Birthday, Religious and Political Views, Relationships, etc. By setting each other these carefully, you can really take control of your information and I strongly recommend that you carefully adjust each one. Rule of thumb here: make more stuff private than you might even think, you can always change it later if you want.
“Friends”
That being said, let’s talk about what it means when you are “friends” with someone on Facebook or MySpace or any number of social networking sites. Would you tell a complete stranger on the street where you lived, how old you are, or any personal information? Why not? Well, why would you do the same thing in an environment like the internet? I hope that is reason enough to make you stop and think carefully about who you allow to be your “friends” on-line. DON’T “friend” someone unless you know them in real life.
Posting (Status updates)
So, this is the fun part right? I love to send out status updates which, in Twitter, are called Tweets. When you send out a status update, say something you think people will want to read. Good example: “I had a great day at the school basketball game. Our team is doing so well this year, great job players!” I know, this is a little cheesy but it is nice, worded well, and it lets people know your feelings. Bad example: “Sitting on the toilet” This is obviously something we don’t want or need to know!
Commenting on the posts of others is also fun. This is how you connect with friends and it is part of what makes a social network so great. At the same time, remember that your comments should be carefully thought out. Rule of thumb: Treat people the way you would want to be treated. “Flaming” someone on-line is not cool and can actually lead to big problems for you. Cyber-bullying is something that can lead to big problems in real life and will not be tolerated at any school I ever work for.
Parting thoughts
So, I decided to write this blog entry because of the increasing use of Facebook I have seen by students and felt that it would be a good idea if we had some discussions about it. Like I said at the beginning, I am no expert on Facebook, however, I have been using the Internet since before 1995 and feel like the things discussed here can help you. What I want to know is if it has helped? Also, what other tips and tricks have you found for Facebook that others could use? I would also love to hear your opinions about this topic, please feel free to respond.
For the 2011-2012 school year, I have been named as Principal of Gypsum Creek Middle School. The process of applying and interviewing for this position has been amazing. The committee selected to interview all of the top candidates were well chosen and completed an extremely important task. I am so excited for this opportunity and am honored that the teachers, parents, and district administrators feel I am the best fit at GCMS. Replacing Steve Smith (who is retiring at the end of this year) will be tough indeed to fill his legendary shoes. He and the GCMS staff and students have already accomplished such incredible achievement and growth, what an amazing place to work! The staff I have come to know this year through the E2T2 grant have been super impressive and I can’t wait to get to know the rest. Having already attended a Red Hill Elementary PTO meeting, the parents of incoming 6th graders seem so enthusiastic and supportive. Getting to know the rest of the parents and students will be a wonderful process! GO WOLVES!!!!
For quite some time now we have heard many discussions revolving around the use of games in the classroom to engage students in critical thinking. Lately, I have reflected on this a fair amount as I watch my own 8 year old use her Nintendo DSi and then we discuss what she is doing with the game and the depth of problems she has to solve to succeed. Recently, I also have had a couple discussions with one of our district mac gurus, Kevin Rowe, about World of Warcraft. He has explained some of the “big picture” concepts from the game and we also talked about how that game itself has evolved from a strategy based game into a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). It incorporates strategy, collaboration, critical thinking and reasoning, communications, and self-direction all within the guise of a fun filled fantasy world. If only I had 34 hours in a day! This past summer I listened to Steven Berlin Johnson speak at the CASE convention about critical thinking in games and it reminded me of so many great things that teachers could be using in the classroom. He is the author of Everything Bad is Good for You and has a new book out I am looking forward to getting my hands on. I used a number of games and simulations in my classes but always felt that there were so many better ones out there for social studies, science, and math. What ones have you heard about or used?
This video is from edutopia and it shows some excellent examples of games and simulations in education. I invite you to watch it and respond to my post below.
Last night I had the opportunity to see Daniel Pink speak about his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us in Aspen as a part of the McCloskey Speaker Series. This was the first time I had been to an event held by the Aspen Institute and the first time in the Paepcke Auditorium which was a beautiful venue for the event. Daniel Pink presented about the way one might expect if you have read any of his books, witty and intelligent. His three key ingredients for a successful presentation were followed: “brevity, levity, and repetition”.
For the large part, he discussed the premises in his newest book and focused on the three main ideas of what feeds the intrinsic motivation of people. Pink says that “autonomy, mastery, and purpose” are those ingredients for boosting productivity, innovation, etc. He closed out the presentation with a question and answer session for the audience. His book, and now listening to him speak, truly make me reflect on how I lead others in any given situation at work as well as how I parent my children. When the day comes that I take a principalship at a school, I want to implement the ideals of those key ingredients in my staff. I feel that if you are looking at the performance of a given school over the course of several years, keeping a staff focused and moving forward depends highly on giving them autonomy in their tasks, tools with which they can strive for mastery, and inspiration for their purpose as educators.
I attended the presentation with two colleagues and we really had a great question to ask but were not chosen. So I felt that I would just write a brief blog and pose this question for anyone who would like to comment: If Daniel Pink’s assertions and research hold water in education, what do you feel are the implications for the trend toward merit pay systems in public school districts?
This year we will be holding the 21st Century Learning Expo again during “The Return of Motivation and Engagement” conference in Vail. Last year, I was one of five presenters to showcase skills and tools for the 21st Century that students and staff alike should be developing. This year we are expanding this truly exciting aspect of the conference by offering twelve sessions from which the teachers may choose three. The twelve sessions represent the two levels (elementary and secondary) and the six 21st Century skills sets for our district: Critical Thinking & Reasoning, Information Literacy, Collaboration, Self-direction, Invention, and Globalness.
So far, the speakers who have signed on and their tentative topics are as follows:
Marcie Gass and Pat Hollandsworth : Self-Direction using iPod Touches (elementary)
Lisa Derse: Critical Thinking and Reasoning in an ActivClassroom (elementary)
Geoff Grimmer: Invention with Google Apps (secondary)
Mary Ann Stavney: Globalness through Activism using wikis and other tools (secondary)
Barb Romersheuser: Information “Smackdown” (secondary)
Kathy Ferrel: Information Literacy using Primary Sources (elementary)
David Russell: Collaboration with wikis and various web 2.0 tools (secondary)
As of this year I have some new elements to my job here at Eagle County Schools. Previously I was exclusively the property of Eagle Valley High School but now my responsibilities have shifted to the district Professional Development department for more than half my time. In fact, I am working this whole summer just developing new training for teachers and implementing year two of our E2T2 grant. Currently, we are revving up for the The Return of Motivation and Engagement conference for Eagle County School District teachers. This conference is held each year for all the teachers in our district and boasts some very impressive speakers and work sessions. In preparation, I am working on a little training for teachers to start using Twitter. I feel as though I am relatively new to Twitter and am certainly no expert but I do know just enough to get teachers started. My Twitter account is here: mrdavidrussell and the new Eagle County Schools Professional Development account is here: EagleSchoolsPD .
My web site has had a problem being able to load from within our network so this post is a little old but I figured I would just send it anyway now that I can get back into it now. For those of you on the ECOTT project, I usually write my posts here and then copy them over (there has to be a better way). So here it is…please check out the links and videos.
Recently I have been reading and thinking about what the future holds for the use of technology in the classroom both by teachers and students. One particular Technology that I have not heard many people talk about within Eagle County Schools but I have seen as an emerging trend is that of Augmented Reality. Thus far we have seen slight forays into this area if you consider devices like the iPhone/iPod Touch and some of the applications developed for that platform or others. Some of the new toys, games, apps, and educational products being developed right now are VERY exciting. Imagine what it could do for an elementary school classroom if the student could study a fully rendered insect blown up and projected on a large screen. Being able to manipulate it from any direction and examine it “up close”. Check this out…
This is what I saw at FETC in January and I believe that we will start seeing this technology in classrooms within the next 2-3 years. As it relates to this grant, I would say that all of the projects we saw were incredible steps forward for the district in terms of teachers ACROSS the curriculum using new web applications and gaining a step into the idea of cloud computing. Not all of you may understand that term yet but most of you were using it in some fashion or other.
It all boils down to collaboration and getting our students to think critically about what they are learning to do. I forget who said it at our final meeting but I heard the comment “I told the kids, it’s not about the tool you use but rather, what you do with it…” VERY COOL! Great job everyone!
It’s amazing how hard it is to design your own web site. I have been teaching web design for a long time now and have put together a million example designs for students but now I have been trying to decide what this new site should look like. The Web Designer Wall has some really great insight and examples of trends in layout, graphics, etc. The more I look at the stuff there, the more I want to ditch everything I have tossed together. So, if anyone out there has any good sites for inspiration please send them my way or post them in a comment.
If anyone is interested in getting started with your own web site and would like to depart from a google site, eboard, or some other generic site builder, let me know. Don’t get me wrong, using those types of sites is a GREAT way to quickly get going and even manage your content but I would love to get another group together for a second “Web Design for teachers” class. I did this last summer for several people at EVHS and feel as though it would be a great thing to put out there to more folks. I guess personally, I just love the aspect of creating my own graphics, layout, and everything because it is a lot of fun. It is time consuming for sure but in the end I often like having something that is all mine. Another place that has some good inspiration (although overwhelming sometimes) is Smashing Magazine. Again, please share site you have found with a great look, great navigation, great content layout, etc..
Today we (Adam Irvine and Gretchen Gerleman) have been attending a training on how to use a classroom set of iPod Touches. Some of the useful things we learned and tips we found are:
Great thing to remember for managing space on the iPods when you want to upload audio (music or maybe podcasts) would be to select the “Convert higher bit rate songs to 128kbps AAC”.
For Movies, one idea we have played with over the last year is to download videos from Discovery streaming, convert it within iTunes, then sync it on student iPods (or now the sets).
For pictures, consider using Picasa and Google apps to share and just sync the free Google mobile App.
Very handy to be able to use iTunes to organize (and sync)where certain apps appear on the iPod’s screen.
Kevin Sheppard from Apple was there to do the training and he was very helpful and insightful for all the teachers present. It was great for me to be there because I truly do have limited experience with iPods, iPhones, and iTunes. I have resisted getting sucked into iTunes for a long time but just got a new iPhone and have been (admittedly) very excited to learn more. Staying up late and running the battery down to learn all the little tricks is fun for a geek like me. The thing I am most excited for is getting the SDK and working with some teachers and students on developing our own apps which are specific to our school(s). I also can’t wait to see what our teachers do with this as a resource. There were some great discussions around ideas for use, dropbox, podcasting, etc.
Hello and welcome to my new site and blog. I have imported old entries from mrrussellonline.com and now have the app on my iPhone to post. Soon I will be getting the whole new site designed and uploaded.
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