The Schoenblog

Back to School night is this week, and I’ve been thinking a lot about it. I think I’ve always given a hopefully engaging ten minute performance for parents, but that’s really what it is. Ten minutes of the teacher talking at parents, often quickly and densely enough to avoid questions. And it’s a broken system in a lot of ways--who is that good for? It’s certainly not the culture or style of classroom nor the message about learning I want to share.

So instead, I’m refocusing my efforts towards a conversation about relationships. Building relationships and shifting culture has definitely been a theme in my teaching and work so far this year, and it shouldn’t stop with students. I’m sure I have a full post in me about back to school night and family engagement, but these thoughts led me to important questions:

How can I use the technology we use in our classroom to better connect and communicate with families? How can the tech be leveraged for stronger relationships in the students’ out of school worlds, too?

Again, these big ideas deserve more space that I’m dedicating to them here. Don’t worry, I’ll explore them more soon.

Instead I want to share small, easy, and still powerful ways I’m using technology to move from focusing on reminders to building culture.

It’s great to use tools like Remind, Google Classroom, and Twitter to schedule reminders, assignments, and all kinds of class resources (see 4 Tools to Schedule Communication), but I think they can be leveraged for more powerful ways, too.

Break Down Classroom Walls

Share the learning going on inside our classroom walls with parents, families, and the world. Create a parent group on Remind, use a class web site, or share on Twitter by posting pictures, videos, and learning activities online to help break down the classroom walls. No matter the tool or technology, the more families can understand and connect to what goes on in our classrooms, the better the students’ learning will be.

Find more by reading any of my social media posts, including the Why I Want Students Using Social Media series.

This quote below from George Couros is a favorite. What if we encouraged students to share, too? How could that impact relationships, culture, and learning?

Open Lines of Communication

I want to be in touch with all of my parents and students all the time about their successes and challenges. The personal phone call home is essential, but e-mails, online portals, web sites, and reminders are all valuable tools to maintain consistent and effective communication.

With that, I really want to invite families into my classroom and their students learning, and to open the lines of communication. I’ll reach out as much as necessary or possible, but truthfully it can be tough with one teacher and so many students. So I want my students and teachers to send e-mails, post questions on Classroom, and send chats on Remind. Let’s use these tools to provide more opportunities for success.

Positive Messages

After I plan a new lesson or assignment, I usually turn right to Google Classroom and Remind. On Google Classroom, I schedule the assignment to post in the appropriate class. Then, using Remind I schedule at least one reminders to help keep students on task. Sometimes I add my parent Remind classes, too.

But lately I’ve added another layer to this. In addition--and instead of--sending just reminders, I want to use this space to connect to my students by sharing positive or motivational messages. I started with a Kid President meme and a writing reminder, but now the ideas are spinning. I want to send memes, quotes, and other fun and positive messages from time to time. I do this a lot on Twitter but know that many students are more likely to see, read, and react when the message comes on a Remind text. This is an idea to explore more.

Back to Back to School

These are some of the things I hope to talk with families and parents about at back to school night this week. I’ll emphasize the talk with, as opposed to at. I want to share strategies for us to connect and communicate, resources to learn about our class, and all of the ways to help their students succeed. I also want to model the real learning and culture that takes place every day.

Let’s see how it goes. I’ll report back soon and share both my thoughts on this year’s event and my plans to improve in the future.

What’s your best back to school night advice or experience? Share in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

Twitter has provided me with some of the best professional learning of my career. It’s likely the most important tool for my own growth and learning as an educator. With Twitter, I’ve networked across the world, shared my students’ work and stories, made friends, and learned so much. For me, the true power relies in both Twitter’s reach and its flexibility.

Every Tweet has power. But when my tweet can get retweeted, and that gets retweeted, the power becomes exponential. In seconds and with just a few clicks, my question, message, or work is shared with my network and with the world. When I have a question or need help, Twitter is one of my first destinations.

With Twitter, your reach is unlimited but so is your purposeful use of the tool. You can decide how to use it. Do you follow EVERYONE? Or just a select few? Are you searching all education chats or just your favorites? How much time do you want to dedicate to this platform for connection? With Twitter, you are in control, creating a social learning experience to meet your needs.

Below, I share tips for getting started with Twitter for teachers. The list is not definitive or exhaustive, but it’s true to how I’ve made meaning of Twitter over the past few years. For more tips, take advantage of social media or Google and you will find dozens of more intricate articles and guides. And be sure to check out 140 Twitter Tips for Educators: Get Connected, Grow Your Professional Learning Network and Reinvigorate Your Career by #Satchat founders and Evolving Educators, Brad Currie, Billy Krakower, and Scott Rocco.

5 Tips for Teachers New to Twitter

1. Profiles Matter

A good profile is a must for any educator (or user). Create a Twitter handle (account name) that is clear and meaningful and add a profile picture that represents you well. My standard picture is me as Superman; it’s not the perfect professional headshot but it’s true to my personality and work. Have some fun with it, but make sure to change the Twitter egg to a picture ASAP. You’ll hear the phrase, “Don’t be an egg,” meaning, add a picture and develop your profile.Why an egg? Consider the Twitter bird logo (this one took me too long, I’m embarrassed to say…)

Add a bio with a location and some interests and any validating links, like a blog or website. You want to represent yourself and your interests clearly to make it easier to connect with other like minded users and educators. Keep it all public to really be able to take advantage of the power of Twitter; I often don’t follow users with private profiles because I can’t see if their Tweets would be of interest. For me, Twitter is a public space.

2. PLN: Follow & Engage

Start building your PLN: a personal/professional learning network. Follow educators and users that you want to learn from and connect with. A good way to start is to pick a user you know you want to follow, and then to see who they follow. You can also find curated lists on websites like Cybraryman’s, listing educators to connect with by subject area.

Many educators will follow other educators back; others are more selective. For some, each follower is a dedicated commitment. Others follow lots of people. There’s no right or wrong to it, but follow and engage in the online community to increase your connections. Retweet good content, follow interesting users, and comment on links or ideas you appreciate. Ask questions, provide feedback, and interact when you can. Some of my real friends today started with a favorite or retweet on Twitter. Edutopia has a great article with more: How Do I Get a PLN?

3. Follow Hashtags

In addition to following users, keep an eye on hashtags to take Twitter to the next level. Hashtags help curate content and make it easy to find what you are looking for. Want to learn about upcoming conferences? Check out #TheEduCal. Interested in the teaching of English? Try #engchat. Nearly every content area and age level have dedicated hashtags, as do books like Teach Like a Pirate (#tlap) and more.

Find a guide to education hashtags on TeachThought and get started. Sometimes, I’ll ask a question or send a Tweet with a specific hashtag and at times, I’ll just search a hashtag to find interesting content. For example, when I have a Google question, I’ll use #GAFE, #GAFEchat, or #edtechchat in my Tweets because other users are likely following the hashtags, too. Often, they can help me find what I’m looking for. Other times, I’ll have an open search for a hashtag like #NYEDchat or #NJED to see what’s going on in the NY/NJ areas.

Use a tool like TweetDeck to help keep your hashtag searches organized for efficiency and ease.

4. Try a Chat

Hashtags aren’t just for tracking topics and interests, but they also help facilitate Twitter chats. Take your hashtag game to the next level by participating in a chat that meets your interests or needs. For example, #satchat takes place from 7:30 - 8:30 EST every Saturday morning, with rotating topics and guest posts on all things education.

Be sure to check out the Education Chat Calendar for a full list of chats to explore. You can also use a tool like Participate Learning to help manage the chats easily.

Education Twitter chats are happening nearly all day every day, connecting users around the world. Pick one that’s relevant to your educational interests, and give it a try.

5. Start Simple

If you are new to Twitter, worrying about PLNs, hashtags, chats, and tools is probably a little overwhelming. I’m overwhelmed sometimes, too. The most important advice I have for any teacher new to Twitter or ready to give it another shot is to start small.

I Tweet constantly and am always checking the stream of new messages and links on my phone. Sometimes I’ll read and explore for a few minutes; othertimes it's seconds (and rarely, still, hours). They all work just fine. Do what works for you.

Twitter is as much of a commitment as you want it to be. The more of a chance you give it, the more payoff you are likely to see, but start small and grow from there.

How do you use Twitter to learn, grow, and make connections? What tips do you have for educators new to Twitter? Share in the comments below or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

One of technology’s greatest gifts is the manipulation of time. In my experience, no amount of prep periods can ever be enough for the time and effort teachers spend working. Whether it’s the planning, grading, and teaching or time spent working with students, parents, and administration, the school day is packed. We need to use our time effectively.

Take this week for example. In addition to my regular teaching and coaching, I have district meetings, interview committees, and a site visit. I know that some of my classes will have subs or be cancelled, and I wanted to plan ahead. I love that my students can check my Google Site or Classroom for updates and reminders, but sometimes I want more control over the details, like scheduling.

Thankfully, there are technology tools that help us get the job done. It’s great when that technology can help make communication easier and more efficient, but it’s even better when it can improve your planning and workflow. Sometimes, it’s okay to give students a lot of information at once, but there are times when I wish that technology could be used to plan things on my schedule. And now it can.

With these free tools, you can not only improve your communication but plan to do it better by scheduling the release of your communications. These are tools that I stand by and use regularly to make simple communication easier, more efficient, and more automated in my teaching practice.

For more tips on using technology to improve communication, check out 

Better Communication, Better Learning.

4 Tools to Schedule Communication

1. Google Classroom

All of the work in my classroom is organized with Google Classroom. One of the great things about Google Apps for Education is the iterative nature of the product: it always gets better. For example, the ability to reuse posts and save drafts were great additions. Two weeks ago, another important update rolled out: scheduled assignments.

You can now create your assignments and schedule them for timed release in advance. Unfortunately, you can’t yet schedule a timed release for more than one class at a time, so rely on the reuse post feature for that one. Still, this is a powerful new update for Google Classroom users. For more info, check out Dani Kennis’ blog post, Google Classroom: Scheduling Posts.

2. Remind

I love Remind. The product is great and the Remind team is wonderful, too. I wrote about them almost a year ago in Why I Remind, and they certainly deserve a spot on this list. I use Remind regularly to do the job the name implies--to remind my students of stuff. Whether it’s a change in the schedule, a homework reminder, or an update for parents, Remind is my go-to site and app. Earlier today, two students chatted with me about a grade, and I was able to reach out to another student who is home sick to check in.

Most weeks, I schedule a dozen reminders on Monday. When my class is cancelled tomorrow due to meetings, I have three reminders scheduled already to remind my students about their work and responsibilities. When an essay or project is due, reminders are scheduled with helpful hints. Sometimes, I just send reminders with jokes. No matter the purpose, I almost always schedule them in advance and send them to multiple classes at a time with the click of a button.

3. Tweetdeck

I love Twitter and Tweetdeck is my favorite tool to manage the Twitter feed and workflow. The site lets you organize Twitter by search terms, like hashtags, notifications, and more. For example, I currently have columns open for my notifications, scheduled Tweets, and hashtags #edtechchat and #satchat. I’m also logged into multiple accounts on Tweetdeck at once, so notifications for @TheEduCal and #TheEduCal are there, too.

In addition to making Twitter easier to manage, Tweetdeck allows me to schedule my Tweets in advance. I do this when I have individual Tweets to schedule; for bulk scheduling take a look at Postcron below. Every day, I schedule the #JokeoftheDay for a 2:30 PM release with Tweetdeck. It’s the most important tool for my day-to-day Twitter use. 

We all do great things in our classrooms, schools, and educational worlds. No matter your position or grade level, you do something awesome that affects young people. You probably wouldn’t be reading this if that weren’t the case.

But too often, the stories we hear about schools aren’t about the awesome; too often, they are told from outside and biased perspectives; and too often, they are told from those without any real understanding of what it means to be an educator. Through social media, we can take control of the narrative about education and share our awesome.

Using social media with students allows us to share with our schools, community, and the world with transparency, immediacy, and power. You want to know what goes on in my classroom? Check out #SchoenTell on Twitter and our class hashtag will tell you. No lesson plan or summary will ever be as effective as a student sharing a video or image of what they are learning or doing in their school.

For more about why I want students using social media, read Reason #1: Community and #2: Crowdsourcing & Connecting.

What if every teacher tweeted one thing a day they did in their classroom to a school/district hashtag? #edchat pic.twitter.com/FfV80GMzeU

— Dr. Justin Tarte (@justintarte) August 28, 2015

This quote really inspired my social media journey. I knew I was doing great things with my students and I wanted to share that to connect, to inspire, and to share our awesome. Even though I shared on Twitter often, having students do the sharing makes it so much more powerful. The posts and connections became more authentic and represented the voices of the students, not just the teacher. Whether you Tweet from personal accounts or a class account, there are so many ways to have both students and teachers share their awesome.

Check out my post, Automating Tweets From a Class Twitter: An Updated Workflow, for some ideas about setting up a class account.

Hashtag Your Awesome

Creating a hashtag to use on social media not only helps to collect and curate your content but helps to build community. I have my class hashtag that we use for all social media posts but we will also tag our school--#OssiningPride when it related to the school or community.

This provides a title or vocabulary to link our Tweets, content, and media so that what we share with the world can be found easily. As long as I search one of these hashtags, I can find all of the things my students and colleagues are sharing.

Today, we had our first every #EdcampOHS and took it to the next level. Teacher shared on Twitter and on Today’s Meet using the hashtag. We collected ideas, pictures, and videos, and discussed the value of social media in education. In my opening remarks, we told our staff that the day was about celebrating the great things we already do in our schools, and using these hashtags to promote, curate, and share about the day creates a living artifact of our awesomness.

Your Challenge

Share your awesome on Twitter with a class or school hashtag. Start small--maybe once a week, and work your way up. Social media can be overwhelming at times, but it’s not an all or nothing--do what works for you. Then, encourage your students (if appropriate) and your colleagues to do the same. Take control of the story of your classroom and school by sharing the great things you already do.

Here are some of the ways I ask students to Tweet and share regularly, Below, find some of my recent favorite examples.

Assigned Tweets: I ask two students to Tweet each day, sharing something they learned, liked, or questioned. They need to include #SchoenTell and are encouraged to add an image or video. I organize this with a Google Sheet and use Form Mule to send them automated reminders. Find the assignment here.

Backchanneling: Students will Tweet during lessons like the reading of a play to share their ideas and annotations. As the actors perform, the students in our audience will backchannel on Twitter, Google+, Today’s Meet, or other platforms.

Sharing Products: We share all of our finished products with the world. Search #SchoenTell and you will find students’ recent Book Review Projects. For more on this project, check out last year’s article, Students Must Create: Rethinking My Book Review Projects.

Exit Tickets: Sometimes, we have too many ideas and not enough time. We want to share favorite quotes, examples, or character traits for an audience, or the lesson changed authentically. In those cases, I often ask students to Tweet out their ideas or questions as a form of exit ticket. Sometimes we come back to these ideas the next day and they remain as a permanent reminder of where the learning paused.

Today in English we acted out the play Fences and discussed Troy's role as a father. #SchoenTell

— Steven C. (@schambers216) March 1, 2016

Having fun with #AugustWilson's #Fences this week #SchoenTell pic.twitter.com/nUibYWhCtD

— Adam Schoenbart (@MrSchoenbart) February 29, 2016

#Schoentell Today we acted out part of the first scene of August Wilson's play, Fences. pic.twitter.com/wAjODMnPJ9

— Jimmy Alvear (@JimmyAlvear2) February 24, 2016

How do you use social media to share your awesome? How could you? Share your ideas in the comments on on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

All of us are smarter than one of us. I feel like a broken record with that line sometimes, but I think it’s one of the most important lessons I can teach my students. In a world where we can basically connect with anyone anywhere at anytime, knowledge takes on a new meaning. We are no longer restricted by the resources available to us when everyone is an expert in something. Reason #2 for why I want my students using social media is to connect with the world and crowdsource knowledge. For more, read last week’s post on Reason #1: Community.

There’s still value to memorization because there are simply things we have to know. It’s when students use that knowledge for application, synthesis, and creation that the memorization pays off. But when the world is at our fingertips and Google has become a verb, we need to teach students how to use these tools effectively so that they aren’t only relying on technology, but are doing so in meaningful and purposeful ways. Additionally we need to teach students how to sift through the bad information, the white noise, and repetition of the world wide web along with the valuable skills of digital citizenship. Using social media is an authentic and powerful way to help teach these skills and responsibilities.

As a professional, I always try to improve my practice and have often used Twitter to help me do so. When I have a question, I ask it online, use relevant hashtags, and connect with experts, colleagues, and strangers to try to develop my knowledge further. The power of connection is exponential in this regard; my followers might see my tweet but with a strategic hashtag or retweet, hundreds of views quickly become thousands or more. I’ve done it right here on the Schoenblog on more than one occasion--see Crowdsourcing Memes for Student Feedback, Crowdsourcing #Edcamp Advice: Building a Better #edcampMVille, and Crowdsourcing #Edtech Advice for New Teachers.

Need reccs for texts to pair w #AugustWilson play #Fences. Fiction & non-fiction #CCSS style excerpts mostly. Help? #ELAchat #engchat

— Adam Schoenbart (@MrSchoenbart) February 4, 2016

Does anyone have research abt positive effects of #20time #geniushour? @JoyKirr @TeachingFactor @mr_isaacs @brookhouser @DonWettrick Thanks!

— Adam Schoenbart (@MrSchoenbart) October 28, 2015

What to Value in Social Media

In my first post in this series (Reason #1: Community), I mention the challenges and struggles in asking students to use social media, and here is one of them: in our instant gratification culture and social-media obsessed students, followers, likes, and retweets are often confused with popularity and quality.

In my experience, however, teaching students to learn how to navigate the world of social media and hashtags to enhance their connections is the most valuable tool to making expert connections. For example, 100 retweets from random followers might generate views, but 3 retweets by tweeting at experts or using the right hashtags has much more power, effect, and potential for learning. We can’t forget about these aspects of social media literacy and digital citizenship in building these skills and connections into our schools and practice.

Additionally, we have to teach students to evaluate sources in both traditional and new formats. Critically evaluating the objectivity of an article or primary source is a typical skill in our classrooms and also needs to be applied to the world of web 2.0. If anyone can create and add supposed knowledge, it’s more important ever to be able to identify accurate and meaningful sources across all mediums and publications, both print and digital.

Image courtesy of annaisd.org

The Connection Conundrum

So far this school year, my students have not really made these connections. There are many reasons why: some resistance to my emphasis on social media; a lack of authentic purpose; scaffolding other skills, and more. So far, I’ve focused on having my students explore social media to share their learning, telling our story, and building community. Now, with our #GeniusHour projects, students will start to seek out those connections to find experts to guide their research and progress. Maybe I’ll return to this topic in a few weeks and readdress its successes, challenges, and how I’ve addressed them.

Still, like with any learning, scaffolding is essential to build new skills. To set my students up for making purposeful and powerful connections, I model this constantly. When my students ask a question in class that I can’t answer, sometime I’ll Google it, but other time I’ll tweet the question. Once in a while, I’ll ask them to do the same. I also make constant references back to past connections student have made, like the student who asked an astronaut questions on Twitter about life on Mars for 20% Time last year. I use these past examples to promote brainstorming, model examples, and hopefully seed future success. Together, we are crowdsourcing our own knowledge and contributing to a body of knowledge that wasn’t possible previously. Next, I hope students can explore this to further their individual interests and studies to find chats, experts, and resources through the power of social media.

As a starting point, I’ll ask students to tweet out an example of our learning with both our class hashtag (#SchoenTell) and a relevant hashtag for the lesson. Last week, students tweeted out their passion project topics with the hashtag #GeniusHour. This small moment of sharing builds community among them all--we can search #SchoenTell and see the different passions and interests of all of my students--but also helps make connections to the larger world of passion-based learning for teachers and students. Next, I’ll organize links to student blogs and share them with hashtags like #GeniusHour, #20Time, and #engchat to find classes and teachers to share with to make these meaningful connections.

I am thinking about focusing my project on learning more about architecture and the way it works. #SchoenTell #GeniusHour

— Kelsey Quain (@kelsey_quain) February 10, 2016

#schoentell I will be doing me genius hour project on the impact of surfing on Hawaiian culture

— Thomas (@ThomasO1110) February 9, 2016

#SchoenTell #GeniusHour I'm interested in learning about the mindset of teens who have depression and how to help them.

— Sam Gill (@Gruntmuffinz) February 9, 2016

Why Connect?

We are all geniuses in our own right and experts in different ways. Through social media, I want my students to connect with the world (and with you!) to help develop their genius and to learn more. When students think they can Google anything--and often can--it’s important that they learn how to connect with real people, ask meaningful questions, and seek out resources beyond the first page of search results.

By leveraging students use of social media for learning and connecting, we can make their learning more meaningful and create more learning from a variety of sources and resources faster, more efficiently, and better than ever before, as long as we don’t forget the essential skills of evaluating, critical thinking, and digital citizenship that come hand-in-hand with curation, connection, and crowdsourcing.

How do you use social media in your classroom? Follow our social media journey with @SchoenTellOHS or #SchoenTell. Share your ideas in the comments below or on Twitter.

This school year, I’ve made a purposeful decision to bring social media into my high school classroom as a regular part of our learning. From the first day of school, I’ve used Twitter with students, tweeted about school, and encouraged them to participate in connected learning. And while it’s usually been fun, it hasn’t always worked. This week, I reflected back on my plans in an effort to better communicate the power of social media to my students and colleagues. I want to sell them on becoming connected but had to better consider the value for myself, first.

Social media, like Twitter, Voxer, and Google+, helps me to connect, collaborate, learn, share, promote, quench curiosity, and so much more. In this post, and a series to follow, I want to investigate the reasons why I want my students to use social media in my classroom and share our challenges and successes. Each post will include a short rationale with some examples from my classes. Throughout the next month or so, I plan to focus on community, connection, promotion, collaboration, and digital citizenship.

#SchoenTell

I use my Twitter account--@MrSchoenbart--for everything. For me, my personal and professional online lives are basically one and the same. But I tell my students they do not need to follow me. Instead, they follow @SchoenTellOHS, our class account where I retweet anything any posts in, for, or about our class. I track this all with the student created hashtag, #SchoenTell. Right there, the community building starts.

First, credit where credit's due. In this post, you will find my workflow for creating an automated Tweeting process that allows students to submit Tweets via Google Forms and have them automatically moderated and Tweeted through a class Twitter account. While I certainly didn’t invent this idea or process, I did update the workflow to add some power to the automation based on some blog posts and great ideas from other valuable sources. Jump to the bottom of this post for Episode 2 of the SchoenCast, which walks you through the process, if you want to get right down to it.

First, thanks to John Calvert for his session on this topic at a New Jersey conference last year, and for his blog post, Using FormMule and IFTTT for a moderated student twitter feed. Alice Keeler has a cool workflow using Google Sheets to set up Tweets at Class Twitter Account: How Your Students Can Tweet, but it’s really her article, Google Forms: Get a Pre-Filled URL in 5 Easy Steps, that added the magic to my process. Finally, thanks to Dan Gallagher for asking great questions and getting my brain turning on this project. He writes about his process at Great Ideas Are Started With: “Is there a way…”

Bruce Tweets: @MrSchoenbart is testing his awesome automated Twitter system! #SchoenTell

— #SchoenTell (@SchoenTellOHS) October 19, 2015