3.7 Communication & Collaboration
Candidates utilize digital communication and collaboration tools to communicate locally and globally with students, parents, peers, and the larger community. (PSC 3.7/ISTE 3g)
Candidates utilize digital communication and collaboration tools to communicate locally and globally with students, parents, peers, and the larger community. (PSC 3.7/ISTE 3g)
Reflection
The first artifact is the Twitter timeline for Harbins Elementay School. As the technology coordinator, I share the responsibility for managing our social media accounts with our principal. I regularly post news updates and share student work with our followers, which include parents, other family members and the community at-large. The second artifact is a model blogging lesson I did with several first-grade classes. I introduced them to Kidblog, which they used to communicate with their peers, parents, and students and teachers in other parts of the country.
Through the use of Twitter, I helped to share Harbins’ story by showcasing important events, teachers, students, and student work. This demonstrates my proficiency with using digital tools to communicate photos, videos, and messages locally to parents and the community. Additionally, the Kidblog lesson and follow-up activities allowed students to communicate with a much larger audience than their classroom. One classroom even wrote and commented on blogs with a class in Australia. This demonstrates my ability to model the effective use of digital tools to communicate with students on a local and on a global level.
By using Twitter to communicate school events and share stories, I learned that many people are interested in what is happening at our school. I also learned that many parents receive communication in different ways. After starting a Twitter account, we also began using a Facebook page and Remind to reach a larger audience. If I were embarking on a school social media accounts again, I would start several accounts at once to reach a larger audience. I would also do a better job publicizing the accounts to get more parent and community followers. Through the Kidblog lessons, I learned that there is a large learning curve for beginning writers to learn effective written communication. It took several lessons for them to reach a point where their teacher was comfortable sharing their posts with an outside audience.
Using Twitter to share our school’s story had a large impact on our staff. Seeing their students featured in real-time on the embedded feed on the Harbins website helped them to become more comfortable with sharing the work in their classroom. Several teachers have since started classroom Twitter accounts in addition to their personal accounts. Its impact could be assessed through counting teachers who have Twitter accounts in addition to perception surveys. Teaching the blogging lesson with a 1st grade teacher helped to spark interest in student blogging throughout the grade level and the school. I taught several of the same lessons for other teachers in the following months. Students began to see the power of communication and get excited about comments on their blog. Their learning conversations helped to deepen engagement and give them a place to showcase their work and reflect on their learning. The impact of this lesson could be measured by a technology assessment on the ISTE-S Communication & Collaboration standard. It could also be assessed by local & state assessments on the writing strand of language arts.
Through the use of Twitter, I helped to share Harbins’ story by showcasing important events, teachers, students, and student work. This demonstrates my proficiency with using digital tools to communicate photos, videos, and messages locally to parents and the community. Additionally, the Kidblog lesson and follow-up activities allowed students to communicate with a much larger audience than their classroom. One classroom even wrote and commented on blogs with a class in Australia. This demonstrates my ability to model the effective use of digital tools to communicate with students on a local and on a global level.
By using Twitter to communicate school events and share stories, I learned that many people are interested in what is happening at our school. I also learned that many parents receive communication in different ways. After starting a Twitter account, we also began using a Facebook page and Remind to reach a larger audience. If I were embarking on a school social media accounts again, I would start several accounts at once to reach a larger audience. I would also do a better job publicizing the accounts to get more parent and community followers. Through the Kidblog lessons, I learned that there is a large learning curve for beginning writers to learn effective written communication. It took several lessons for them to reach a point where their teacher was comfortable sharing their posts with an outside audience.
Using Twitter to share our school’s story had a large impact on our staff. Seeing their students featured in real-time on the embedded feed on the Harbins website helped them to become more comfortable with sharing the work in their classroom. Several teachers have since started classroom Twitter accounts in addition to their personal accounts. Its impact could be assessed through counting teachers who have Twitter accounts in addition to perception surveys. Teaching the blogging lesson with a 1st grade teacher helped to spark interest in student blogging throughout the grade level and the school. I taught several of the same lessons for other teachers in the following months. Students began to see the power of communication and get excited about comments on their blog. Their learning conversations helped to deepen engagement and give them a place to showcase their work and reflect on their learning. The impact of this lesson could be measured by a technology assessment on the ISTE-S Communication & Collaboration standard. It could also be assessed by local & state assessments on the writing strand of language arts.