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Are your thoughts tweet worthy?

March 23, 2014 by adteaman 5 Comments

I will always remember the first conversation I had with a professional colleague about Twitter. I’d attended BLC and been swept away in a Twitter tidal wave by Liz Davis and Lisa Thumann. (This also, coincidentally enough, was where the @8amber8 moniker came from…who knew this tool would become my go to PD reference and I’d have to explain that bad boy all the time!)

It came up in conversation that no one wanted to know what I’d had for lunch that day, that Twitter was pointless. This thought has now gone by the way side, 🙂 and there are 243 million monthly active users. While some may still talk about their lunch, it has become a place to share and be shared with. Twitter is an outstanding communication tool for three main reasons:

  • Twitter enables you to release brief, 140 character, gems of greatness to the world.
  • Twitter encourages conversations outside of your silo.
  • Twitter is word of mouth “genius sharing”. Great ideas get shared, and seen, and built upon.

Are you worried you don’t have anything to say? Wonder if your ideas are tweet worthy?

Here are 5 things you can tweet about….

1. Edu Wins: Share the good things happening on your campus. Break down the walls of and allow others to see what is happening. Tell your story. There are GREAT things happening every day in our schools, we should want to invite everyone to know how amazing our students and teachers are. An elephant can be eaten, one bite at a time, and some of our tweets may be those bites that show others just what we do.

2. Great ideas: My favorite event we’ve done this year has been “Tacos & Technology”, an idea I learned about from Sam LeDeaux, a principal in Chicago. While I love both tacos & technology, I’d never thought about putting them together for a parent night until he shared what is campus had done.

3. Support: A PLN becomes your educational support system. Need to ask a question and not feel judged? Need affirmation that what you are thinking or doing is what’s best for kids? There are people there to support you…and vice versa. Support others!

4. Questions: If you’ve ever read a thought-provoking article and wanted to discuss it with someone, here’s your chance. Tweet the link and start a conversation. Wonder how to make genius hour work? This space allows you have dialogue with other educators, other practitioners, who have tried it. Learn from them!

5. Who are you? George Couros has written about the difficulty in keeping your personal and professional life separate. Educators are persuaders. So much of our professional life is inspired by the personal connections we have. It’s impossible to keep those separate and yet simultaneously woven into the relationships we develop. You can’t know my heart if you don’t know a little of whats inside of it.

4 things that you shouldn’t ever tweet about, 🙂

1. Negativity: There are enough negative people in the world. We don’t need anymore like that. Any donkey can knock down a building, but it takes a special donkey to build one up.

2. Rants: Same as above. Ranting and raving will not solve anything. This isn’t that kind of space, and it undermines our goals in education: to lift up, inspire, and to teach.

3. Profane or inappropriate thoughts, images, jokes: The best (and safest) social media advice I’ve ever been given came from our communications coordinator. If it isn’t something you’d be ok with on the headline of the newspaper or happening in your school lobby, don’t post it. He didn’t say don’t DO IT, he said don’t post it, anywhere. There’s enough that can happen in life that we don’t, as an educational system, need to be sharing publicly things that could damage our professional image or efficacy. That’s a lesson to learn the hard way. Just ask her, her, or her... (Three cases have gone to the Supreme Court involving educators and free speech, and all three lost, by the way.)

4. Remember your purpose! If you’re on Twitter to learn, to share, and to grow professionally, as defined by your intent and bio, then do that.

 

What of your reasons have I missed? Not jumped into the Twitterverse? What’s holding you back?

 

Tweetly,

Amber

 

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: #admin, #cpchat, #teachers, #twitter, #txed

Tacos & Technology: a parent tech night!

December 17, 2013 by adteaman Leave a Comment

Tonight is our tacos and technology night! We’re inviting parents in to hear where we are going as a campus using Twitter and to help them understand/get involved in our conversation!

My initial invite for Technology & Tacos spelled out the “who” should come, modeled after Sam LeDeaux, up in Chicago, who was so helpful while I was planning this event.

Technology & Tacos1

We also mentioned it EVERY day until the event. A local mexican restaurant gave us a great deal on tacos (!!!) and we will be providing devices for those who don’t have one to bring. I have staff and an amazing number of parents helping facilitate as well as watching lil’wildcats that come with their parents.

I’ll be distributing this click sheet for them to take home Signing Up for Twitter (spanish: CĂłmo empezar en Twitter) and talking through this presentation, Final T&T tech night.

This site will also be able to be accessed through this QR code. 🙂 I plan on streaming this event and will link that broadcast back to this site as well, for those parents who are unable to make it.

T&T qr code

taco twitterN,

Amber

 

 

Filed Under: Leadership, Parents, Social Media, Staff Development Tagged With: #cpchat, #parents, #qrcodes, #twitter

Voxer: an Edcamp on my phone

November 24, 2013 by adteaman 2 Comments

voxer-logo-horizontalWhat do you get when you combine a free walkie talkie app, a New Yorker, some Wisconsins, a Missouri-an, and a Texan?

Day after day after day of professional advice, personal support, and a LOT of smiles.

Jessica Johnson introduced me to Voxer while planning our Indiana Leadership presentation. I have to admit, I didn’t quite get the point…why couldn’t we text? or email? or tweet?

Did I really need another techie tool?

Thank goodness she was persistent! Daily now I am in conversation with Jessica Johnson (principalj), Curt Rees (@curtrees) Tom Whitford,(@twhitford), Leah Whitford (@leah_whit), Jay Posick (@posickj ) Joe Sanfelippo (@Joesanfelippofc) Tony Sinansis (@TonySinanis) and Melinda Miller (@mmiller757).

From the crazy events that happen throughout our days to the how would you handle this moments, we have a group to add ideas,thoughts, and advice.  Tony mentioned today that these convo’s have become mini edcamps on our phone and I completely agree. We throw out random questions or thoughts and get feedback from in a safe, non-judgmental, different perspective environment.

What have I gained from random, when we have time, less than a minute each (Curt’s rule) messages? Well, considering that this is a group of rock stars…a lot. All principals and a superintendent….I’m literally hanging with the cool kids!

 

  • “That’s me!” An activity in whole group settings where you ask questions and the participants all say, “Hey, that’s me!) A great way to show that we all have more in common than we think…
  • How to handle staff situations gone awry
  • Instructional writing programs, a debate on a package versus organic teaching/learning
  • Inspirational videos on demand
  • How to get out, take a break, reflect on difficult situations
  • Ways to support our teachers and provide communication tools to help them connect with parents
  • Social media management, handling multiple accounts for a campus and a personal one
  • That the FC crickets are THE team! (And I have the tee shirt to prove it!)
  • That seasoned, experienced administrators struggle, that we all have bad days, but that we do all LOVE our jobs!

 

I am SO thankful that I have this group daily to hear from, learn from, and laugh with. Considering that I’ve only “met” Jessica, it sure is ironic that I talk more with these “online” peers than I do some of my closest friends.

 

Thank you, Voxer fam, you are such a great addition to my PLN world!

 

beep beep,

Amber

 

 

Filed Under: Freebies, Leadership, Social Media Tagged With: #admin, #cpchat, #twitter, freebie

Feeling defeated or tired already?

October 10, 2013 by adteaman Leave a Comment

I was listening to a webinar last week discussing the benefit of effective teachers in the classroom and was blown away by what was being shared. The average effect of one teacher on a single student is modest. All else the same, a student with one excellent teacher for one year between fourth and eighth grade would gain about $4,600 in lifetime income. The student with the excellent teacher would also be 0.5 percent more likely to attend college.

That’s not too shocking, right?

What about this? Replacing a poor teacher with an average one would raise a single classroom’s lifetime earnings by about $266,000. Multiply that by a career’s worth of classrooms.

Students with top teachers are less likely to become pregnant as teenagers, more likely to enroll in college, and more likely to earn more money as adults, the study found.

How can you ever doubt the importance of what you do, every single day?

The webinar really solidified for me that teachers are the most important part of a child’s education. Not a program, a strategy, or a test. Great teachers make a great difference; poor teachers hurt a child’s life chances. LIFE chances.

You. Matter.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7FHdHUzRnms

Remindingly,
Amber

Filed Under: Leadership, teacher leader Tagged With: #admin, #classroom, #cpchat, #teachers, #tichat, #twitter, technology

Parents not on Twitter? No problem!

October 9, 2013 by adteaman 3 Comments

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One of the first things I hear from educators as a reason why they shouldn’t jump into the social media stream is because they don’t have families/staff on Twitter.

Social media can be very dividing. Justin Tarte and I were just discussing how there is still such a mentality of “block it & lock” it…as if we were to stick our heads in the sand, *maybe* these crazy tools will go away. I don’t think that is going to happen but I can tell you my rationale’s for moving forward with twitter as a communication tool between the home and our campus.

I LOVE that when I get onto twitter, facebook or instagram, I get updates on my daughter’s school. It is SO much easier for me to read an update on Facebook than it is for me to get home after a 12 hour day, get her purple folder out, get through her graded work, and find any announcements her campus has sent home.

Now, the flip side of that is that my anti technology hubs? ONLY gets info that is in that purple folder. He doesn’t visit the website and *gasp* has no online presence.

I’m not suggesting that schools stop sending paper items home, I’m merely pointing out the opportunity we have to reach even more parents.

When we send home information at the beginning of the year, we send home something asking if parents want to get school information through text messages. (Regular rates apply.) It walks them through sending a text, “Follow Watson_Wildcats” to 40404. Once they have done that, every tweet we send, that parent gets as a text. It doesn’t require a twitter account. You don’t have to have the “scary social media” talk.

98% of all text messages are opened, and 90% are opened within the first three minutes.

The point isn’t getting on Twitter, or blocking social media, or adding to your plate. The point is connecting with as many parents as you can in order to do what is best for our students.

 

Connectingly,

Amber

 

 

Filed Under: #SAVMP, Classroom Integration, Conferences, Leadership, Social Media Tagged With: #admin, #cpchat, #edchat, #parents, #students, #twitter

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