Educational Chats

This week, I participated in two educational chats, #iPadchat and #edchat. In general, it was nice to casually chat with people who are passionate about education and have all different connections to it. The two chats were vastly different though.
Edchat was so popular and the stream of information was moving so fast that it was hard to read the tweets. The topic was, "how do we know when our students are engaged?" I re-tweeted my favorite tweets, and added a couple of my own insights. Some common tweets included, "when students do not leave their seats when the bell rings" and "when they do not ask if the information is going to be on the test." I added that it is awesome when students quiet down their peers so that they can learn. At a few occasions, the chat started to get more deep by  people discussing how a teacher should be to make class engaging. A lot of people were re-tweeting the comment, "If we expect our students to be engaged, we (teachers) must be engaged." Something I found interesting and is often true is that teachers sometimes inhibit the engagement out of fear of how their class will look to administrators. In general, what I gained from this chat is that teachers being curious and active in classwork and lessons increase student engagement, and that can be best measured by talking to students to see what they are learning.
iPadchat was a lot less popular. I think maybe five people participated. However, I received a few great links, which I added to my Diigo bookmarks. So, from this chat, I increased my web presence and gained some resources.
Overall, it's fun to participate in educational chats on Twitter. The only occasional downfalls are that there aren't enough participants or it is overwhelming how many participants there are. The chats are great opportunities to increase one's PLC, learn something new, and reflect on what one knows and does already.

Reflection: Learning in New Media Environments

The YouTube Video, "Learning in New Media Environments" is about how we are often constrained by four walls in classrooms, and are not creating students who are ready to go out into the world and make a difference. The best part of the movie to me was at the end: the speaker makes a point to say that they actually failed in their concluding simulation because the students didn't solve the world's problems... but they failed in a "good way" because the students left not thinking about what they need to know for the test, but they left thinking more about how they can better get to know the world. As an educator, I am reminded how important it is that I give my students relevant information that they are able to apply to the real world. I don't want to give busy work; it is about quality over quantity. It is my goal to apply everything I teach to their unit and to real life. 

Dan Meyer on Real-World Math

Dan Meyer gave a talk on this at the GSDMC last weekend. Very interesting! Time to take my camera out and look for inspiration. This idea of making word problems more exciting can be used in any content area, not just math!

Visitor vs Resident

People use the world of the Internet in a variety of ways. The narrator of the video, Visitors & Residents: The Video, pigeon-holes users into two different groups, visitor and resident. Visitors tend to leave no trace, are private, only use the Internet to complete assignments or get something done, and feel no need to establish online identities and networks. Residents live a good portion of their lives online, try to be visible, are communal, and strive to make their comments short and of good quality instead of unnecessarily wordy. I see myself mostly as a visitor of the Internet for reasons including: I often simply use it to accomplish tasks, I haven't yet become well known in social networks, and I tend to stay private. In my experiences so far, trying to become a resident has been more of a daunting activity than a helpful one. However, in the future, I see myself getting helpful information and ideas online from teachers locally and around the world. Also, it will be more common for people to have social networks on the Internet, and therefore I will be probably be more communal and less private.