by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.
I do.
I know teachers who absolutely refuse to as well. Where do you stand?
At the beginning of the year I tried different online techniques to give out information (homework, resources, etc…) and found more and more that students weren’t using the software or the applications. My facebook status updates usually looked like, “don’t forget to check the class site for homework”. Eventually I just put the homework reminder directly in the status update instead of sending them elsewhere.
I am happy that my students are comfortable enough with me to let me into their facebook worlds. I see their updates, photos, and videos and am able to celebrate or give a hug when needed.
I am the staff rep for our school’s lacrosse team and created a group for them where we talk about our practices and games and share pictures.
In the huddle, right before the winning goal was scored.
I absolutely love when I see status updates like
my house 8:00 to work on project or who is down for math group tomorrow?
I also love when students post links or videos to my wall as suggestions for classroom resources. Even especially when they ask questions about homework they are having trouble with.
At times, it is a convenient way for students to contact me about issues they are having, either with school work or socially.
At the beginning of the year I had my students on a limited profile list of some sort but I soon changed that as I realized that there was nothing that I posted on facebook that I needed to hide from them or anyone else.
So, where do you stand on maintaining a relationship with students outside of the classroom via facebook (or twitter or plurk or anything else)?
I finally had a chance to check out my incoming links and discovered Miss Teacha’s post on how she creates a podcast. At the same time I am reviewing some voicethreads made by students (actually, trying to. Forgot the reminder about making the threads public so I’m kind of locked out of them for the moment! There goes my Sunday morning grading plan because I am sure NONE of my students are up at 8 am on a Sunday morning to make the changes needed for me to view them!) and it made me think that voicethread could be a neat alternative to podcasting.
There are 60 some odd comments, mine is waaaaaaaaaaay at the end.
Getting to the point…
It got me to thinking that I could record a voicethread instead of a podcast for my blog and that commentary could come in many forms. Either as traditional blog comments or typed, audio, or webcam comments directly on the voicethread.
So. Let’s try it out. That very same Miss Teacha left a comment a little while ago on an older post of mine Why I Don’t Do Zeros. She asks difficult questions. Let’s try to address them together, shall we?
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I warned you I’d be tagging you…Please invite others you think could add to the conversation.
"Montreal Canadien goalkeeper Ken Dryden gives the "number one" gesture while his teammates hug and kiss the Stanley Cup following their four-game sweep of the Philadelphia Flyers during the Stanley Cup Finals at the Spectrum Sports Arena." (1976) Click for source.
Montreal’s hopes of winning the Stanley Cup are slim this year but I remember the jubilation we all feel as Montrealers when they do. When I think of celebration, I think of a Stanley Cup win. Can’t help it, I am from Quebec after all.
Yesterday’s post was about celebration. I learn more and more that I have so much cause for celebration in my life, especially as a teacher, and I wrote about some of that yesterday. Today I’d like to ask – what are you celebrating? The little things, the big things. What’s got you thankful for living the life you live these days?
Tracy, who’s anxiously waiting for the next 2 days to pass…
Who would’ve thought that an old standard could be given new life?
My friend Jeff Hall, fellow Human Systems Intervention MA grad, Anglican Priest, and Independent Organizational Development Consultant, turned me on to this phenomenal reprise of Stand By Me via facebook.
I am almost a week late with the 210th edition of the carnival of education. My life as of late has been rather…fantastic – in the fantastical sense. A glorious grab bag of illness – both personal and familiar – and emotion. I’ve spent much of the past 3 weeks in emergency rooms and intensive care units. I’ve been off work for 3 weeks but returning this morning, which is a good thing since I organized a good bulk of my books by colour yesterday.
Can you say obsessive?
Though I’ve been going stir crazy for the past few days, a result of too much time at home and in my head, I could not spend more than a few minutes at a time in front of this computer. I apologize to all of you who wrote these wonderful blog posts and have been eagerly awaiting this last week’s carnival of education.
At this point, I want to get this carnival out there before the last carny truck has been packed up and is rolling on to the next town, so here are the posts! Organized solely by the date they hit my inbox, they are a mix of posts for the pre-pre-pre school to the university graduate covering all kinds of topics from the political to dealing with parents, to selecting schools. There are a few that might be considered our advertisements of the week and even one post about dating. I figured I’d include it in honour of Le Saint Valentin.
