weekly12-6-10


 * Weekly Activity - Dec 6, 2010**
 * Twitter and Micro-blogging**

__Activity #1__ - Twitter is the most popular client for the technology of micro-blogging. It is based on the idea of sharing information in 140 characters or less. It is an extremely powerful tool to add to develop your own professional learning network (PLN). By following leaders in the field of educational technology and librarianship, you will put yourself in the forefront of gaining knowledge that you can use to benefit your students. It's instant nature allows you to detect new platforms, websites, and resources before many of your colleagues. When you have crafted a network of persons whose opinions you value, you will have your own personal system of getting feedback about these resources to judge their usefulness with your students. When you begin to tweet your own experiences, you will be giving back to the profession and helping others. Due to the interactive nature of Twitter, I do not recommend having your students use it at school.


 * 1) If you do not have one yet, create an account at Twitter - http://twitter.com. Then, add your Twitter ID to your directory page at this wiki.
 * 2) Log into Twitter and set up your profile account.
 * 3) Search for leperez1 to find Lisa Perez. Follow me. That way, you will be able to read all of my tweets in the future. Also, follow CPSLibraries.
 * 4) Click onto my list of people who I follow and select 20 or more other educational leaders to follow. Pick people whose names you recognize or who seem to tweet a lot about valuable information. Search of the Twitter accounts of other leaders you follow on your Google Readers. In all, add at least 25 people to your Twitter account to follow. (Like the Google Readers, Twitter is very fluid and you can follow/unfollow people easily.)
 * 5) Optional: You can magnify the benefits of Twitter by using an aggregator client. A popular one is Tweetdeck. If possible, download Tweetdeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com) to your laptop and as an app in your smart phone. We will spend time in our next session looking at the highlights of using this client.
 * 6) Read this short Mashable article to learn about how hashtags are used in Twitter to organize related tweets so that people can communicate together on a certain topic. It is an absolutely vital strategy for you to use to benefit from Twitter professionally. We will talk more about this in our next session.
 * 7) Set up a time to check on your Twitter account on an almost daily basis. You don't have to spend more than 5 - 10 minutes to pick up a wealth of valuable information. It is of such value that you will want to prioritize using it.

__Activity #2__ - Micro-blogging with students - During this program, we will talk about several ways that you can use microblogging with your students to create a back-channel for your class while students are doing work. One free site that we will look at is Today's Meet (@http://todaysmeet.com). With Today's Meet, you can set up specific URL to enable your students to talk to each other, you, and your collaborating teacher in a back-channel conversation during class. In this way, you can get more instantaneous feedback about what students are learning during a session and they can help each other. You can add the URL on the fly within your electronic pathfinders immediately before working with a class. Some safety guidelines for working with students:


 * Use first names only and no personally identifying information
 * Speak only about the educational topic at hand
 * Librarians and teachers should keep the "room" open for only the minimum allotted time needed (usually two hours) and supervise the chatstream during the entire time

Take a look at Today's Meet as one tool that you might use to enhance your students' learning.

__Activity #3__ - As part of our meeting this week, create a library glog in Glogster and embed it into your library wiki.

__Activity #4__ - Write a journal entry this week about your experiences in using Twitter.

__Activity #5__ - Attend the face-to-face training session about Glogster at Medill on Tuesday, Dec 7th. See the meeting agenda for more information.