2016-17 #5) Thing 12: Final Reflection

Cool Tools For School.
Year three.
I really enjoyed this PD.
Again.

My favorite Thing this year was Social Reading and Book Stuff.  I started this Thing back in January and have been actively "doing" something for it every month since!  I "sucked" another colleague into it as well and although we have yet to do anything ourselves within our own district, that does not mean we have not been active!  Far from it.  Taking the time all these months to participate in others online book chats is helping us become more comfortable participating in them as well as beginning to get a full grasp on just how much work is involved with starting and running our own.  I know that I will continue to spend time each month participating in these to learn as much as I can - not to mention the fact that I find them fun!  I've been told I'm a dork.  I'm completely Ok with that. I can really see the benefits of organizing our own in some way, either with students or teachers.  All those details I am not sure of yet.  One update to my Thing 37 post is that the @ALBookClub that I couldn't find much information about back in January when I started suddenly came to life in my Twitter feed and I joined in for their February book selection (When Breath Becomes Air, which I had not heard of before and is fantastic by the way; if you haven't read it I highly recommend it!) and have put on hold their March selection.  If anything, these online Twitter book clubs have exposed me to so many new books to read and that is what I hope to do in some way within our district!
Ive said it before and I'll say it again, but I really enjoyed this type of PD that allows me to pick and choose what I am most interested in.  I spent more and more time this year thinking about how we can bring this type of PD to more of the teachers in our district.  I think that all of our teachers could benefit from this.  I encouraged a good friend of mine to participate this year.  She is someone who isn't necessarily afraid of technology, but at the same time she has said that she is intimidated by it and finds it uncomfortable for her to do on her own.  I wanted her opinion of this type of PD and so far, she loves it!  It is incredible how much more comfortable teachers can be checking things out if given choice and time.  I repeat - I think that all our teachers could benefit from this!  I just need to figure out the way for our district and department to do it since I doubt we afford to pay for all teachers in the district to take part in your amazing PD.  I also think we might need a way to start a little smaller than what you have built - maybe a few less choices for beginners or something.   I don't have the answers yet, but my wheels are turning!
New this year was the Canvas LMS, which allowed for discussions. This was a nice addition. I must admit, I didn't always post (guilty!), but I enjoyed reading through some of the boards. I will need to make that a goal for next hear- to participate in the discussions more!
Thank you again for a great PD! 

2016-17 #4) Thing 14: News Literacy

Well, this certainly is a hot topic right now, isn't it?!  I figured now was a good a time as any to take some time to look into this.  Partly  because of what is going on in the world, specifically right now concerning our latest section and new President, but also because our district is taking part in Safer Internet Day this year on Feb 7th.
          https://www.saferinternetday.org/
We are in the first year of a several year digital transformation in our district and this will be one piece of that.  The Instructional Technology department is going to heavily promote this and I know that news literacy is one component of internet safety.  We are also pushing the use of the Netsmartz website, including the educator training piece, to help our teachers learn more about internet safety for our students.
          http://www.netsmartz.org/Training
It is our job as educators to help student safely navigate the internet, and once component of that is new literacy, which as I said, is quite the thing these days!  It is scary that we seem to have a new president who seems to somehow be involved with a lot of the debate around this right now.  I mean, how did CNN and the NY Times become fake news...or did they?  The president said it, so it must be true, right?  It all makes no sense to  me, so imagine how confused kids probably are!  Fake news is so easy to make appear real and social media, something kids love, is a very easy way to get it out there quickly!
For this Thing, I spent quite a bit of time reading through both the resources you had as well as some resources our district has gathered and plans to use for our upcoming Safer Internet Day.  I also happened to get an email this weekend from Listenwise (which I signed up for in a previous Thing) titled "Helping Students Spot Fake News" that had several resources as well.  I know I  already said it but I am really liking Listenwise!  They have several resources that teachers can use on the topic and in conjunction with Netsmartz and Safer Internet Day I think there is a lot to choose from for teachers to use.  I found myself getting lost (in a good way) in all of the information! Itt was good to read through a variety of articles and resources that had ideas of how to teach this valuable skill to students.
I think our district is moving in the right direction around this, but I also think we need to do more; more teachers need to be engaged in this undertaking and doing more with our students.  I think that sometimes it is easy to assume students will see a clearly fake news story and know that it is fake, but the clearly fake ones are now what worries me.  It is the false news that could be true as well as the lack truth or purposeful omissions of certain truths that worry me the most.  These are the things we need to very carefully delve into with students.  I will definitely be looking into how we as a district can get the word out to more teachers, including more resources from the sites mentioned above for them to use!

2016-17 #3) Thing 37: Social Reading and Book Stuff

I have always wanted to join a book club so the Social Reading and Book Stuff Thing caught my eye.  Once I read through all the information, I was intrigued by the idea of an online Twitter book club.  I looked into the two  you mentioned, #SharpSchu and #2jennsbookblub, and immediately went to my Overdrive app to check out the books they both have for January.  I had to waitlist all of them, so I hope I get to check them out and read them before the chats!  I waitlisted them from the NYPL as well as my local MCPL so hopefully between the two of them I will get lucky!  I am clearly late to the party on these books and Twitter book clubs; better late than never I always say!  I made sure to waitlist the future books from #2jennsbookclub as well just in case - they have a list of books through the end of the year, however some of their selections are not available through the library currently; I will count on Twitter to remind me to check back (by way of following the four people behind the chats).

This is so exciting that I  decided to look into adult Twitter Book Clubs, since the two above are for grade school.  I love reading good grade school and young adult books, but I also am always looking for good adult books to read as well!  I googled "twitter book clubs" and the 4 top results

were very promising and I was excited!  I went to twitter and checked them all out.  I followed all 4 of them and then did some reading through their previous tweets.  I was super bummed to see that it appears none of them are currently up and running! :(  If you read through their tweets, the "newest" ones are from 4/23/15 (@thebookclub), 9/27/16 (@ALBookClub), 5/8/15 (@1book140), and then @Penguinusa had recent tweets, but nothing I could find about their book club.  I then went back to Google and searched them individually to see what I could find out but it wasn't much.  The only one that had some information (and recent use of twitter) was @Penguinusa so I sent them a private message through Twitter asking if they are still doing the book club.  We'll see if I hear anything back!

This made me a little nervous so I made sure to do a little more research about the two you mentioned - to make sure they are current!  I read more about them and then again, went to Twitter and followed the people behind the clubs to read through their previous tweets.  A little stalk-ish, but hey, it was necessary!  I was very happy yo see they are current in their tweeting!  Leave it to the educators to be on top of their games, not the book companies! ;)
I really liked that #2jennsbookclub keeps a list with past Twitter chats through Storify!  How cool is that!  You can check out their list here (bitly.com/2jennsbookclub) and if you notice, in their charts, they have a column for archived chats!  Such a great idea and it really helped me to read through a few of them.  It also added to my every growing list of books to read - I swear, I never seem to be able to make progress because for every one book I read I am always adding at least two more; a good problem to have I suppose!
Anyway, back to the task at hand! This Thing has been very interesting and I have spent way more time than I thought!  However, after all my researching and reading, I am still not quite done yet- I need to come back and comment after I have had a chance to participate in the Twitter chats!  I added them to my calendar and am looking forward to both later this month!  Until those, I am done-ish for now......now I just need to get to reading the January book selections!


Update, added after the fact:
Well...I am hooked!
I have thoroughly enjoyed all of the twitter chats (book club or otherwise) I have found to participate in this month.  I participated in my first book club twitter chat (#2jennsbookclub) and it was fascinating.  I also discovered #NHCSchat (http://nhcsdtl.wixsite.com/nhcschat) and spent an evening following this one.  This one is not a book chat, but similar in format - it is a chat for educators with a different topic each month.  There are so many possibilities!
Luckily I had read about TweetDeck from another twitter account I follow, so I settled in one night with Tweetdeck on my iPad, Twitter on my phone and a nice cup of hot tea!  I was pretty immediately hooked and started texting with a colleague telling her that we are definitely investigating how to use these live twitter chats for our work.  Her and I work to run our online learning courses for students across the district so that was one thought.  The other was for PD for teachers in the district!  We could incorporate live twitter chats into book collegial learning circles!  The night after my first twitter chat, we spent some time discussing how we could incorporate these 2 ideas into our work - either a book chat or just a general education chat.  We also did some more research into Storify because we will definitely need to archive our chats!  She is going to participate with me in a few of the future chats from #2jennsbookclub, #NHCSchat, and #SharpSchu.  We definitely need more practice participating before we can host!!
As I said, I am hooked and look forward to more research into this area of twitter book chats!  They are definitely coming soon to the RCSD!