Back to School in a Web 2.0 World

The sight of big yellow school buses and children with backpacks walking the sidewalks are emerging throughout the United States and several other countries. In many schools, teachers have already been working in their rooms for weeks preparing for children to fill their classrooms. But the preparation is no longer limited to an isolated teacher sorting through the bulletin board supplies alone in his or her classroom; more and more teachers have been using Web 2.0 tools to reach beyond their classrooms to prepare for a successful year.

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About a month ago, Steven Anderson, (aka as web20classroom on Twitter ) sent out a tweet looking for some great First Day Back activities. He also put this request on his blog. For those who have heard of Twitter but not tried it yet, check out this great Twitter in Plain English video from the folks at Common Craft.

Steven's personal learning network did not let him down. Within a few weeks over 50 people had filled out the simple GOOGLE FORM with wonderful tools, tips, tricks, resources, and advice for the first day of school. (It's not too late to add your own first day favorites.)

As soon as you fill out this form with your own advice, the results automatically appear in Steve's Google spreadsheet. With just a couple keystrokes Steve was able to share these suggestions with you by making his spreadsheet visible to the public over the Internet. This simple easy to use way of collecting information is being by used educators daily to collect and display data from their colleagues and students.

Steve used his blog to highlight a few of his favorite suggestions such as the way Ms. DeSilva uses
http://stixy.com/ to "post a welcome sticky on the board explaining to students that I would like each of them to drag a sticky to the board and on it to introduce themselves and tell us something about themselves that they would like to share with the class." Steve also shares the full list of suggestions with you by linking to the published Google spreadsheet.

Within minutes of exploring these suggestions I found myself gleaning lots of advice from educators from every discipline sharing their First Day Activities on a collaborative First Day Wiki set up by geometry teacher Dan Myer's (not to mention all the first day suggestions offered within the comments of Mr. Meyer's First Day blog post.

If your first days of school activities got your year off on the right foot, why not share them with other educators by adding to this wiki. If you've never contributed to a wiki before, here's your chance to share with others outside your school wall. Commoncraft video “Wikis in Plain English” offers an excellent introduction to the world of wikis.

And if your first day didn't quite turn out as well as you planned, don't despair, many of these suggestions can be used any day or even help you start over as suggested by Alice Mercer, Larry Ferlaza and others on the Starting Over Page of the First Day Wiki.

As we move beyond the world of Web 1.0 (the sermon) and surround ourselves with the tools of Web 2.0 (the conversation) , I encourage you to experiment with tools like Twitter, wikis, and blogs to join the myriad of educators who are changing the culture of teaching from one of the loneliest and most isolated professions to one connected with colleagues from all over the world and with rich resources provided by YOU using today's collaborative tools. For more information in creating this culture, check out Alan Novembers article "Creating a New Culture of Teaching and Learning or just jump in, reach out, and connect and get your school year off to a roaring start.

More Tips for New Classroom 2.0 Teachers

My last post provided practical tips to help teachers manage the integration of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. An invitation to pioneering educators to share their strategies generated a wealth of resources for teachers aspiring to use these tools. Thank you Ms. Mercer for referring us to Scott McCleod’s Moving Forward Blog. Greg’s 10 steps to help teachers to use these tools themselves before asking kids and Clay’s 10 must have Web 2.0 accounts are a great complement to Andrew’s Web 2.0 Tutorial for teachers and Barbara’s prolific perspective as a school administrator on her Dare to Dream Blog.

I’d like to offer a very special thanks to Candace for turning me on to Teachers First –which not only offers some very practical tips for first time teachers but also maintains an incredible database and review of web 2.0 tools specifically aimed towards teachers who “want to try tools but cannot envision the how and why.” This one goes right at the TOP of my recommendations for all teachers starting their journey towards School 2.0.

Photo Credit

As promised, here are just a couple more tips that I’ve found to help you proceed on this journey.

1. Read the terms of service of the tools you would like to use. These terms are often difficult to sift through, and I’ve been guilty of reading them too quickly. When in doubt contact the company and ask for clarification. (Example: In some cases, where it is not acceptable for a 12 year old to create their own account on a system, it might be acceptable for them to use a teacher’s account within a supervised classroom environment.)
   


2. Take some time to get familiar with the legal parameters that schools must comply with. Make sure someone in your school truly understands CIPA, COPPA, and FERPA and that the conversations that guide the development of policies, practices, and procedures in schools relating to Internet use is not based on fear and misconception. Much needed teacher voice is sometime lacking in this process. After reading this FAQ from SafeWiredSchools and similar information sources, I became more confident in my ability to make responsible professional decisions about classroom management strategies that used Web 2.0 tools.
   
   

   CIPA is the Children's Internet Protection Act, and was passed in late 2000. It requires schools and libraries receiving certain types of federal funding to filter or block Internet access to "visual depictions" of material that is obscene, child pornography, and when minors are using the computer, material that is harmful to minors.

   COPPA is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and was passed in 1998. It requires commercial Web sites oriented to minors to get parental permission to collect personally identifiable information from children under age 13.

   
   Your school’s legal advisor should be able to clarify ambiguity, and offer support and protection for educators seeking to use web 2.0 tools.
   
   


3. Create a classroom set of logins for your favorite Web 2.0 tool that you as a teacher keeps control of for your class. Google Certified Teacher, Kyle Brumbaugh, sent me this video tutorial he found in Google Certified Teacher Forums that allows teachers to easily create classrooms sets of logins without creating new emails for most Web 2.0 tools. However, I can't see a way to avoid creating a new gmail account to access Google docs for a each member of my class. Yet, this method did allow me to create those student accounts quickly using my teacher gmail account as the "required" alternate email account. As a teacher, I consider myself to be the one entering into a partnership with Google (not the students) and I would only do this with a group of students where I was willing to accept the responsibility for supervising my students' behavior. I would also take the additional precaution of setting up a forward rule on each student gmail account, so that all mail gets forwarded to my teacher account. You can then use the "filter" method suggested in the video tutorial to keep this mail organized.
   

A big thanks to readers who came forth with such wonderful resources to encourage our colleagues who are almost ready to take the plunge. Keep those ideas coming; readers like J. Allen are particularly looking for those strategies that work for younger children.

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P.S. In an upcoming post, I’d like to feature educators who have found Google Apps for Your Domain, the key to classroom management in a Web 2.0 world. Drop me a comment if this tool has worked well for you.

Tips for New Classroom 2.0 Teachers

Every veteran teacher knows that the first 6 weeks of school are the key to success for the rest of the year. The tone you set in your classroom and the practice of routines you establish with your students are key to creating a successful learning environment. Yet, despite 6 weeks of ‘practice”, classroom activities don’t always go as planned and when unplanned chaos takes over, teachers regroup, come at it from another approach, and often seek the advice of their peers. Thank goodness for veteran teachers who are willing to share tips like those found at Middle Web’s First Days of Middle School.

These wonderful ideas have been built from years of “experience” in Classroom 1.0. The educational technology world is filled with advocates for Classroom 2.0 who share the opportunities of Web 2.0. But some are starting to ask questions like “Why are more teachers not flocking to use Web 2.0 tools?”

Maybe, what teachers need is some really concrete tips and strategies on ‘management’ in a Classroom 2.0 learning space. Pioneers of Classroom 2.0 are ‘experimenting’ themselves; not all these experiments work exactly as planned. We need to remember that not all teachers or administrators work in an environment where they feel safe or supported to be pioneers in such a public arena as Web 2.0. This is much different than trying something new inside your own building or classroom. Fears of legal repercussions fuel environments that are not supportive of implementing a Classroom 2.0 model.

Perhaps those of us who do work in supportive environments should not only share our stories in terms of the opportunities that Web 2.0 bring us as a learning community, but we should start to put together a page filled with tips and strategies that teachers interested in using Web 2.0 tools could use to get started. These tips would also benefit IT Staff and School Administrators who would be more supportive of Web 2.0 tools in education if they could see a collective inventory of concrete classroom management (or risk management) strategies.

So in that spirit I’m going to start with three Classroom 2.0 management tips and invite other pioneering educators to comment with their own advice. Remember that what might be obvious to a seasoned Web 2.0 teacher might not always be obvious to a “first year” newbie interested in creating a Classroom 2.0 learning environment.

• Create more than one email account using web based services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail that you can use to sign up for web 2.0 tools.
  


• Start by limiting your use of Web 2.0 tools to inside your classroom until you feel comfortable that your students understand the rules for using these tools. Just like students need “practice” to learn what it looks like and sounds like to take a trip to the library, they will need your guidance to visit a virtual location such as a class wiki. And don’t give up if one of your students steps out of line, anymore than you would give up going to the library.
  


• If your students are under 13, consider signing in using one of your alternate web based email to register for a “classroom” account to a Web 2.0. tool. You can then sign in “yourself” as the teacher to a tool (like a WIKI) that you want your students to contribute to OR you can give them the username and ‘password of the day’ to sign in and make it part of your daily routine to change the password at the end of the school day. Many Web 2.0 tools stay logged in once you have signed in, so you might only have to do this once a day.

I’ll post more ideas in my next post but for now let’s hear your tips

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