I did a session with Mike Agostinelli at NCCE 2013 this week about peer learning. I thought I’d try to model peer learning in the session, and the results were quite unexpected and very powerful.

The initial plan for the hour-long session was to ask people to start by sharing their experiences with peer learning, to share a bit of my thoughts about it, to show a few online tools that can facilitate peer learning (Twitter, P2PU), and then to spend the last 30 minutes on a live #connectedpd tweet chat about peer learning.

Here is the slide deck I planned to use.

I decided to sit out in the room instead of standing behind the presenter’s table, again to try to model a peer driven approach.

I started with my plan for the session and then asked everyone to share why they’d come and what they hoped to get out of it. (I also invited people to leave if the session wasn’t what they were expecting or if they didn’t think it would be useful to them. A couple did.)

When people shared their expectations and previous experiences with peer learning, they were predictably diverse. We talked a bit about PLCs and experiences with district-provided PD, and then a woman in the group said that she was starting a “teacher-led school” soon and wondered if we might talk about that.

My reactions were (a) how fascinating and (b) what a great way launching into this would be to model peer learning. There followed a spirited discussion of what a teacher-led school might look like, administrator roles, what systemic challenges schools have that may limit well-intended administrators, etc.

At some point, the woman expressed a concern that maybe we didn’t want to spend the whole session on this. There were indeed other things I’d planned to cover, but thought it was well worth diverging to experience this kind of peer learning firsthand.

As the scheduled time for the #connectedpd tweet chat approached, I suggested that we continue the conversation but move it to Twitter. I asked who had experience with Twitter and who didn’t and asked people to form small clusters to teach each other the basics of Twitter.

We jumped into the tweet chat with an unstructured format of small groups helping each other and me periodically giving some overall suggestions about how Twitter and tweet chats work.

It was a bit chaotic, but many meaningful conversations were going on. Much of that conversation continued to be verbal in the room, and we were trying to learn Twitter at the same time. At one point I said, “If we say these things on the tweet chat, we’ll also get the benefit of a whole lot more people talking with us.”

Did I mention that the wireless at this conference was a little shaky? And in the middle of the tweet chat, Howard Rheingold joined it? And that it was chaotic? (Here’s the Storify version.)

And man, was it fun! Afterward, I asked the participants – particularly those who had no previous experience with Twitter – if the format had worked for them. Most everyone said it was a valuable experience. Many of us connected on Twitter and agreed to stay in touch. Learning Twitter in the context of talking about peer learning seemed to bring a new level of meaning and authenticity. I suspect that more people than usual will come back to it after the conference.

At the end, I thought “this was kind of like an un-session!” And I would definitely do this again. I think that every time would be completely different.

I greatly appreciate everyone who took part and took the risk to participate in this experiment, including Claudia at #connectedpd. I hope you enjoyed it was much as I did.

The post An Un-session: Try This at Home appeared first on K12 Handhelds.

I consider myself “connected” — I’m on Twitter often; I use other social media tools to collaborate with others; I love online participatory learning. When I have a puzzling problem or a great discovery, I turn immediately to my PLN. Connected Educator month made me reflect on how important these connections are to me and to many others.

But perhaps more importantly, Connected Educator month made me realize what a great disadvantage teachers who are not connected face. I think this is becoming an equity issue for teachers. If you aren’t a part of a strong PLN, you simply don’t have the edge in your professional learning.

I think that professional organizations, state policymakers, and district and building leadership should be pushing this issue. Our teachers and our learners deserve it.

So the challenge for me has been thinking about how I can help more teachers get connected.

One thing I’m doing is helping coordinate a Teacher Boot Camp (hopefully, the first of many) with the specific aim of getting teachers connected. This day is for teachers who aren’t on Twitter, haven’t set up a collaborative Google Doc, don’t know what G+ is, and just haven’t gotten around to setting up a PLN.

This day will be in Portland, Oregon on February 27 and is a part of the NCCE “Make Your Future” summits.

If you know a teacher who might benefit from this, please let them know about it. (We’ve tried to keep the price low at $100 per person.)

And if you’d like to host an event like this in your own community, please do (either yourself or in conjunction with me or others)!

I think that getting more teachers actively connected is one of the most important things we can do.

The post All teachers deserve to be "connected" appeared first on K12 Handhelds.

As I talk with various people about Twitter, I am often asked about hashtags. What are they? How do you use them? So I’m writing this post to talk about that. (Thanks, Harry, for the prompt!)

Hashtags are those words with pound signs that you often see in a tweet, such as #oer, #sschat, or #whyiwrite.

There are several ways that hashtags can be used when you’re tweeting:

• To designate an event
  Many conferences and other events have a hashtag you can use (or attendees just informally make up one — anyone can make up a hashtag). That way everyone attending the event can follow what everyone else is saying and doing.
  
  
• To identify a topic
  Topics of common interest of discussion are often indicated by a hashtag. Those of us interested in open educational resources, for example, use the tag #oer. That makes it easy to find information on that topic, even beyond the circle of people you follow.
  
• To participate in a twitter chat
  Yes, there are real-time chats on Twitter, indicated by hashtags. One of the largest for education is #edchat, which is held on Tuesdays at 12pm EST and 7pm EST. A bunch of people get on Twitter together and chat about a specified topic, using the chat hashtag. It can be fast and furious! There are many, many interest-specific chats on Twitter, and they’re a great way to learn and to find new people to follow.
• As “punctuation” or to show sentiment
  Hashtags are sometimes used to express an emotion or to add something beyond regular words.
  

There are a few ways you can search for hashtags. The simplest is to just click the hotlinked tag in Twitter. (This is a relatively new feature.) You can also use the search box in Twitter to find tweets with a certain hashtag.

If you use a Twitter client (an application to manage your social media activity, generally used by “power users”), like TweetDeck or HootSuite, you can also configure them to follow hashtags you are interested in.

Another handy web-based tool is TweetChat, which makes it easier to follow and participate in chats on Twitter.

One nice thing about hashtags is that they’re really flexible. Anyone can make up or use one. So if you’re on Twitter, try clicking on the next hashtag you see that’s of interest and see where it takes you, or use one of your own to add to your tweet content.

The post Twitter tip – hashtags appeared first on K12 Handhelds.

Enter personal learning networks! Social media lets us learn when and where we want and to tailor the learning experience to our own individual needs. Twitter is one way to do this. If you haven’t used Twitter or aren’t sure how you would use it for PD, try tuning into EdChat (you can see it on Twitter at #edchat or browse transcripts of previous sessions here – see right sidebar) on Tuesdays at 12pm or 7pm ET.

Another way to advance your own learning goals is through virtual conferences. One great opportunity coming up in the Global Education Conference running from Nov. 15-19. All the exciting sessions are listed here, and if you can’t make the scheduled dates, everything will be archived for access later.

Take charge of your learning today with these great opportunities!

The post Global Education Conference (virtual) – Nov. 15-19 appeared first on K12 Handhelds.