Leigh Graves Wolf

A while ago, Andrea and I wrote “How to Hack it on Twitter.” This is a followup (of sorts) on some of those ideas and food for thought for those thinking of using Twitter in the HigherEd online, hybrid or face to face classroom, specifically at the graduate level.  There are lots of guides out there for k12 and undergraduate – I am speaking to the population that I know best!

WHY SHOULD I USE TWITTER?
My mantra has always been to lead by example, I am not out to “convert” everyone to a Twitter user. I have found Twitter invaluable as a resource for teaching and professional development and I would love for my students to experience that as well so they can decide if they want to integrate it into their own personal practice.  Specifically in teaching, I find Twitter useful for a backchanel, reading discussion and connection to wider ideas and communities. You can connect with the authors you’re reading and discussing (see Adrienne’s recent tweet) and have public conversations that are not dependent on time and space – these are things that I have not been able to do in a traditional CMS/LMS.

HOW DO I FACILITATE CONVERSATION?
In our face-to-face summer sessions, we use Twitter as a backchannel and have found HootCourse (not to be confused with HootSuite) invaluable for facilitating these conversations.  HootCourse is wonderful because it allows you to create a “class” or group & designate your hashtag so anyone who tweets via HootCourse will have their tweet pre-populated with the class hashtag (more on hashtags in a minute.) The other thing I like and appreciate is the fact that HootCourse allows for people who have private Twitter profiles to participate and be seen in class twitter discussions without the rest of the class/group having to follow that person. I respect the privacy of my students and while Twitter works best when public, there are legitimate reasons why some students do not want to participate in the public sphere.  This allows them to do so, with out compromising their personal reasons for remaining private.

As a concrete example – Mike and Sean have the students “tweet and read” at night. They’re given prompts like:

Chapter 2 in Sparks (deep read, be thinking about how imagination might be different from creativity). Read and Tweet just this chapter using #maetyr3 and #sg2

While teaching face to face, I have HootCourse & TweetDeck open and between the two tools, I have a fairly good hand on the conversations.

In my online teaching, I currently use Twitter as an informal backchannel and have a close ear to the ground for anything with the #maet hashtag. (I also follow our MAET course codes #CEP810, #CEP811, #CEP 812 and on.)

WHAT HASHTAG SHOULD I USE?
Hashtags are a very important part of using twitter with a group of people – they’re what set your tweets apart from the crowd and allow for easier searching.  I always suggest using your course code – generally that’s very unique and means something to your class population.  If you want your tweets read by a wider audience, you may want to selectively use other hashtags – SELECTIVELY is the important word here, you will be creating a lot of noise and chatter, all good noise and chatter and relevant to your context, but may not always be relevant to the more popular hashtags.  For example, as edtech goes – a conversation or reading my line up with #edchat one week, or we may be doing something relevant to #nwp, #highered, etc. at that time, I would either model this in my own tweets, or, explicitly suggest to students that they use those hashtags to engage in more global conversations.

One other note here for newbies, you cannot control who uses your hashtag – that is the beauty of the open, unregulated twitter-verse. You will want to search the hashtag you’re thinking of using http://twitter.com/search just to make sure there is not another organization or group using that code frequently.

HOW AND WHY SHOULD I ARCHIVE?
Twitter is nebulous – and if you’re a newbie Twitter user yourself, can be tricky if you’re thinking about using it in a “high stakes” way (aka grading anything that happens on Twitter.) Twitter is not self archiving, tweets can disappear, you can miss conversations between students if you’re not following a member of the conversation or if a student forgets to hashtag a conversation. Luckily there are some tools that can help with this. Those that know me know I’m probably the #1 fan of ifttt – you can create some pretty amazing recipes with ifttt & Evernote that will help with archiving.

If you have a small class,  this recipe should do the trick:
Specific User Tweets to Evernote http://ifttt.com/recipes/20726

You can also try:
if twitter #hashtag then archive on evernote – http://ifttt.com/recipes/13829
twitter fav to evernote – http://ifttt.com/recipes/9172

The Archivist is also a very beautiful and handy tool that will allow for data visualization from your archives. The trick here is BE PROACTIVE in your archiving strategy – these tools cannot go back in time, it’s not the way the Twitter search API works.

HOW DO I GRADE TWEETS?     
My answer to this one – don’t (for many of the reasons I just listed in the archive section,  you may not be seeing everything that happens.) If you have to put a grade on it – blend it in with overall participation.  All too often, message boards/posts are graded based on volume (post x many things) rather than quality.  I would suggest developing some sort of rubric/scheme around Sliver’s idea of “thick and thin tweets” and have a discussion with your students on how they think participation should be assessed and collectively construct a rubric or set of standards.

This is just the surface! Let’s discuss more in comments – please share your best practice tips, successes & failures!

Answer to Five Questions to Ask Yourself When Using Twitter in the #HigherEd Classrom by Leigh Graves Wolf is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.leighgraveswolf.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.leighgraveswolf.com.

(cross posted on the Edutech blog)

We recently welcomed the spring and summer group of MAET graduates to campus on the evening of May 4th. It is always privilege and an honor to meet our students and their families during such a celebratory time.

MAET spreads across three forms – online, hybrid and face to face in our overseas program. About 60% of our student body completes the MAET program entirely online. For our online students the common space we all share is “the internet.” We know each other by email addresses, twitter handles, Facebook profiles and sometimes a Skype conversation or a phone call. I look forward to graduation every fall and spring because it gives me the opportunity to meet my students and advisees “for real.” We try hard to make the connection at MACUL or conferences, but sometimes, it’s just not possible.

I would like to bring your attention to a wonderful post by recent MAED grad Nick Sproull. (Often, we’re able to connect with students in the other programs in the college since the MAET and MAED programs share courses.) I meet Nick a few years at a Virtual Schools conference – he noticed my MSU gear and we started chatting. Nick eloquently and succinctly articulates what we hope all MAET students experience during their time in our program in his special guest post that was published today on GradHacker – please take a minute to read and comment:

Think Outside the LMS by Nick Sproull – http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/gradhacker/think-outside-lms

As you continue your journey beyond MAET – remember, you are connected not only to your MAET peers, but to the wider MSUAA network – “your personal network for life.” I encourage you to read the note to graduates from our Alumni Association director Scott Westerman and to redeem your free 2-year membership to the alumni association. I will frequently post job postings and information for alumni on our @MAET twitter feed and you can also join the MSU College of Education LinkedIn group for job postings and discussion.

In closing, we want to sincerely thank you for your dedication, hard work and contributions to the MAET community. As we all know, learning never ends (especially in the field of educational technology!) so please stay in touch and continue to share your successes as you continue your journey of lifelong education.

Congrats Spring & Summer Online Grads! by Leigh Graves Wolf is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.leighgraveswolf.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.leighgraveswolf.com.

 
I put a fraction of my peaceful & disconnected 8 1/2 hours on the plane ride home to reflect on my PELeCON 2012 experience…

I often go to educational conferences and bits and pieces click with my interests, maybe a gem here or there – other times I walk away a bit frustrated. This past week in the Roland Levinsky building on the campus of Plymouth University, I gained something from every single PELeCON session I attended, and even the ones I didn’t.  The community associated with PELeCON was fervently engaged in curating and sharing what was happening in each concurrent session. (Special hat tip to Oliver Quinnlan‘s incredible liveblogging workflow.) Though it was difficult to decide which concurrent session to attend, you could check #pelc12 on twitter, or, due to the intimate size of the conference, go to the presenter and chat with them over cream tea during a break.

I often get quite frustrated (and vocal) at conferences when the organizers ignore issues of gender and balance in the voices they support as the “highlighted” or “keynote” speakers.  Just as I’m vocal when it doesn’t happen, I am overjoyed to be vocal when it does – BRAVO Steve Wheeler et al. The diversity of voices (and not just in the gender sense) was tremendously refreshing. Never once did I feel an imbalance of voice.  We heard from all sides of the educational landscape, from multiple perspectives and lenses: David Mitchell, on the ground, making such a difference in the lives of his students, Alec Couros eloquently promoting open education, Simon Finch leading a revolution, Helen Keegan taking ultimate risks, and Keri Facer’s incredible insights into the future.  All of the keynote speakers explicitly and thoughtfully addressed issues of ethics in education (which are often complicated by technologies.) Ethical discussions are all too often left as a separate conversation, if discussed at all.

Impassioned, well-reasoned, well-researched practitioners from across the spectrum gathered in the Roland Levinsky building to have intense important conversations about learning.  It may also be one of the first conferences that exemplified what I believe is “true” educational technology integration. The technologies discussed and presented were seamlessly integrated into presentations along with pedagogy and practice – not a clunky side car add-on.

I know often after conferences it is natural to be effuse with praise, but honestly, PELeCON has pushed my own thinking in new directions and will shape my future practice and research. It was an honor to present and I can only hope that I returned a fraction of the inspiration I gained back to my fellow attendees during my  session.

Cross-Atlantic PELeCON Reflection #pelc12 by Leigh Graves Wolf is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.leighgraveswolf.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.leighgraveswolf.com.

Thank you so much for attending my session and participating in the first ever massively multiplayer quickfire challenge. This has been one of the best learning conferences I have ever attended (and I have attended quite a few.) I’m incredibly honored to be in your company.

Here are links to the resources I shared today:

Noah Scalin: Unstuck – http://noahscalin.com/

Trasformative Learning Theory, Jack Mezirow – http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/transformative-learning.html

Quickfires:
Haiku Stop Motion -http://www.leighgraveswolf.com/2009/08/19/quickfires-explained/
Example 1:

Example 2:

Flip Cam/Storyboard – http://www.leighgraveswolf.com/2009/09/17/adding-a-flip-cam-to-your-technology-toolbox-for-online-and-offline-instruction/

Windows to the World -  http://www.leighgraveswolf.com/2009/08/19/quickfires-explained/

This is a link to the “MAET Vault.” (MAET stands for Master of Arts in Educational Technology – http://edutech.msu.edu) The Vault contains quite a few Quickfire challenges along with a good deal of our curriculum. You will find many activities and resources for teacher professional development: http://www.msuedtechsandbox.com/MAETVAULT/

Here are links to the work of a few of my colleagues who also do work in this area:

Michelle Schira Hagerman: http://mschirahagerman.com/
Matt Koehler: http://mkoehler.educ.msu.edu/
Punya Mishra: http://punyamishra.com/
Andrea Zellner: http://www.andrea-zellner.com/

Side Notes:
If you’re in or around Dublin, Ireland this summer, we’re holding a free ICT conference on July 17, 2012! As part of the program requirements, students must organize and deliver an ICT/Ed Tech conference for their peers and the community at large. More about the MAET Free Conference here: http://edutech.msu.edu/2012/03/26/save-the-date-july-17-2012-for-the-5th-annual-maet-overseas-edtech-conference-dublin-edition/

Here is my Ignite presentation on Food Photography.  At the essence of my presentation is the explanation of how I use food and photography to challenge and inspire my teaching and learning:

Here are the slides from today:

Here is a slideshow of the Pelicans you created this morning: (coming shortly)

Thank you for this opportunity and for the engagement during the conference. Please keep in touch!

PELeCON 2012 Spotlight Session Follow Up #pelc12 by Leigh Graves Wolf is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.leighgraveswolf.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.leighgraveswolf.com.

This is a cross-post from http://edutech.msu.edu/2012/04/14/maetcareers/

This is the first of a series of posts addressing commonly asked MAET “Career Counseling” questions. One of the most frequently asked questions lately has been “what can I do with my Master of Arts in Educational Technology degree?” Here are 5 + infinity things you can do with a degree in Educational Technology:

Classroom Teacher
The majority of our students (approximately 75%) are certified classroom teachers and continue as classroom teachers after receiving their degree. The MAET degree helps educators think deeply about the connection between pedagogy, technology and content knowledge. Some of our students go on to teach at online schools or academies as a supplement to their face to face teaching.

Technology Integration Specialist
Technology integration specialists often work at building or district level – either as a K-12 specialist or at the elementary or secondary levels. Job duties include developing curriculum and assessments, co-teaching, staff-development, and school planning and visioning.

Educational Technology Consultant
An educational technology consultant often works for an ISD (Intermediate School District) and provides professional development at the county level. ISD consultants may run online training, develop curriculum and assist with educational technology policies and procedure development. Constants can also work as independent contractors.

Community Manager or “Evangelist”
Many technology companies have “evangelists” who support their user community. Evangelists work closely with users by learning how they use the technology products, often present at conferences and providing training to their community. Evangelists also act as a bridge between users and developers to help design better products.

Instructional Designer
Instructional designers are often in charge of designing online or hybrid learning experiences. They may work within a learning management system (like Moodle or ANGEL) or create stand alone instructional resources. Instructional designers often work along side faculty members at the community college or university level.

Choose Your Own Adventure
As educators, we often hear the statement “we’re preparing our students for jobs that don’t exist yet.” That statement rings just as true for adults! A degree in educational technology gives you a wide range of experiences in using technologies and thinking about pedagogy. These experiences position you with a unique skill set that can fit in many environments like museums, government, game design, and beyond. The sky is the limit, find your passions and use your experience in the MAET program to find a path to your dream position.

I’ve created a twitter list of some of our alumni and current students who represent the jobs listed above:
https://twitter.com/#!/MAET/maet-careers

Where to look for Ed Tech jobs:
We frequently post positions on our MAET Twitter feed. Job posting tweets will begin with [job]:
http://www.twitter.com/maet

ISTE career network:
http://www.iste.org/about-iste/careers-at-iste.aspx

AACE Career Center:
http://jobs.aace.org/home/index.cfm?site_id=3855

Michigan Association of School Administrators Job Postings:
http://masa.mistaff.com/

We would love to hear from those in the ed tech world who have found their dream jobs – what do you do on a day to day basis? Do you have any advice for current students? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Our next Career Counseling post will be filled with tips on effectively sharing your skill sets to position you for happiness and success.

5 + infinity things you can do with a degree in Educational Technology by Leigh Graves Wolf is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.leighgraveswolf.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.leighgraveswolf.com.

A few months ago I presented at the February VuDAT breakfast series. My session was titled #msutweets (click the link for a recap.)

Terri Gustafson contacted me to see if I would be interested in repeating the session over at Erickson since she had quite a few College of Education colleagues express to her that they were interested in the topic, but unable to attend.  I of course was more than happy to offer to repeat the session, sharing is what I do best!

I’ll be using the VuDAT presentation as a guide, but will be doing a bit more interactive/how-to work, so make sure to bring your own device.  I will be connecting the tools to research, theory and practice – but I have had quite a few colleges come to me and ask for nitty-gritty help on “how do I actually do this.”  With that in mind, I’ll be going over best practice and uses of Twitter, Ifttt, Remind101, Storify and a few other social media analytic tools.

If you’re attending the session and have specific things you would like to see, please let me know in the comments below!

While the session is held over at Erickson, all are welcome, faculty, grad students, staff, advisors, program coordinators and more! (A few MAET alums are coming!)

The session will take place this coming Tuesday, March 27 from 10-11am in room 133F. 

MSU Colleagues, need nitty-gritty advice on using social media in the classroom? I’m here to help! by Leigh Graves Wolf is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.leighgraveswolf.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.leighgraveswolf.com.

MSU’s presence at SXSW kicked off today with Jeff Grabill‘s presentation at SXSWedu – “Why Digital Writing Matters in Education.”

Jeff Grabill is a professor of rhetoric and professional writing and the co-director of the Writing in Digital Environments (WIDE) Research Center at Michigan State. Jeff is also the co-inventor of Eli. (Jeff is joined in the creation of Eli by MSU faculty Bill Hart-Davidson, and Michael McLeod) As the website says, “Eli was invented by writing teachers for writing teachers.” Eli is a web service that improves writing by helping teachers and students quickly conduct reviews, see and assess feedback, and learn from the revision process.

You can learn more about Eli (and MSU WIDE) on their YouTube channel – http://www.youtube.com/msuwide/

You can follow Eli on twitter @elireview

Finally, here is the Storify archive of the livetweets from Jeff’s session (which he completely rocked!)

Why Digital Writing Matters presentation by Jeff Grabill – #sxswedu and MSU by Leigh Graves Wolf is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.leighgraveswolf.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.leighgraveswolf.com.

So, I had a great idea to setup a DIY instant photobooth for our MAET MACUL 2012 exhibit. Here’s the looong version of how it came to be and how you can set one up yourself.

When I was at CES, I had the opportunity to play with the new Polaroid Z340 Instant Digital Camera.  I was really excited to get my hands on the camera because we’ve been looking for a Polaroid/instant camera that also saves a digital version of the picture.  I was VERY disappointed with the Z340.  The printouts were fine, but the UI was horrible and wayyyy to complicated (for something that should be very simple. As a footnote, if you haven’t already, be sure to read The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity.)

A few weeks after returning from CES, I ran across the Polaroid GL10 Grey Label printer.  For $99, it’s a decent price point and you can print wirelessly via bluetooth. I thought, pair this with the extra iPod touch we have + Instagram and BOOM sweet photobooth! I ordered the printer and anxiously awaited its arrival.

The printer came in and imagine my extreme disappointment when I found out…that the printer works beautifully via bluetooth with all devices EXCEPT an iDevice.  I thought about borrowing an android device, tried jailbreaking the iTouch, experimented with sending a pic from the iTouch to the computer and then printing via bluetooth and kept hitting roadblocks.  Instead of giving up, I put on my hacking hat and worked out the following solution. Keep in mind, the workflow solution had to – a.) post the picture to twitter, b.) save the picture and c.) be able to print the photo (somewhat) instantly “photobooth” style.

Photobooth Setup for an iPod Touch + Polaroid Grey Label Instant Printer

iPod touch, connected to wifi
Instagram app set up on iPod Touch
Instagram connected to twitter feed & email (I set up a special email address only for this purpose.)

Set up laptop with continuous power supply
Make sure laptop is connected to wifi

Connect Polaroid GL10 printer to power
Connect printer with USB cable (technically, you could use bluetooth, but, if you’re wired in to power, etc. why not.)

On the laptop, make sure you’re logged into email & the GL10 app is open
(Polaroid forces you to print through the GL10 app, you can’t use it like a “normal” printer. Here’s the link for the GL10 app since it’s impossibly hard to find http://www.polaroid.com.au/grey-label/gl10)

Take a photo using iPod Touch & Instagram (make sure Instagram is set to post to twitter & send email)

Go to laptop
Open email with the picture
ctrl click (or right click) on picture and save to folder (or desktop)
Pull picture into GL10 app, center picture, then print.

That’s it, a semi-instant photobooth :)

The quality of the GL10 print is pretty decent and we’ll be able as a program to save a copy/post the picture and our alumni, students and friends will be able to take the picture with them as a souvenir!

If you think I’ve missed any obvious/easier solution to streamline the process – please let me know!!

The story behind our DIY Instagram Photobooth for MACUL12 by Leigh Graves Wolf is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.leighgraveswolf.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.leighgraveswolf.com.