Six months ago we had a great #edchat discussion about making a difference in education. We were specifically addressing the need to influence the education world outside of our classrooms. I suggested the idea, as did others, of inviting politicians and district leaders to our classroom to demonstrate the efforts we are making to change education.
I strongly believe if we want to make a difference in education we must start with ourselves and the students in our classroom. So here I am, a couple days away from having 2 state senator, district leaders, members of the Nashville Technology Council, school board members, and Tennessee Department of Education leaders visiting my room to see how we use Twitter in education. I’m even expecting some ISTE board members to stop by.
Currently, I have five live twitter chats setup with scientists and other classrooms across the country and one www.todaysmeet.com chat.
Chat topics include:
- characteristics of life,
- how are political and governmental decisions affected by science knowledge,
- meteors and asteroids and how they affect the planet,
- high school life and how students can affect/influence a school,
- should we spend money on space science/exploration.
The goal is to demonstrate the power of social media in education. If local education leaders are able to witness how Twitter can be a benefit in the classroom, they might be more willing to open up social media to the rest of the state or district.
I am aware that students need training for internet behavior and social media use. It is up to teachers to make it happen. Students need to learn digital responsibility and the importance of building a positive digital footprint. Fortunately there are many tools on the internet available to help accomplish this goal. Simply finding YouTube videos that demonstrate good and bad digital citizenship is the first step to teaching digital responsibility. There are web sites out there that train students in the skills needed to earn a “digital passport” for a “digital drivers license.”
I must to give kudos to my principal, Dr. Pelham, who’s been supported the use Twitter to engage students from the beginning.
Hopefully next week at this time, I will be writing to tell everyone that the demo was a great success.
Here is a my plan and topics for the adventure. https://sites.google.com/site/scistuchat/
Great cause. Tell me when and where.
Reblogged this on Taking Science to the People and commented:
Need to spread the word. We need to change education!
Thanks for the support!