#MACUL15

It took me a while to get excited for the 2015 edition of the MACUL Conference last week.

I've been to several during college for psychology (including presenting at two) and another for AmeriCorps last year in Lansing, and I've mostly enjoyed them every time. Conferences seem very relaxed for me--the way learning should be--and are excellent opportunities to meet other individuals who share my passions. MACUL was my first specifically about education, and was an chance to visit my favorite city on earth on a Friday.

However, I wasn't really thinking about it in the days prior; I had lessons to plan and papers to grade and another one to write. I was busy. It didn't really occur to me that I was excited to be there until I arrived.

My favorite part of the conference was the first session I went to called "Ideas for Creative Projects." The gentleman who was presenting was a "tech guy" from a school district in the Upper Peninsula who, thankfully, is not a Packers fan. He had all kinds of humorous quips throughout his presentation that made it engaging enough to sit through, but I was even more impressed with how much he was able to demonstrate in his short hour-long time slot. Whats more, he modeled how to use them and created several project examples on the spot. This guy was great.

My favorite tool he demonstrated was "ThingLink" because it is something I can really envision myself using in a history classroom. It's kind of like having students make an infograph or poster about something, but where you can actually click on parts of the image to take you to different links. He recommended using Soundcloud to create links to voice recordings about the topic. The best part was that it did not take much time at all to use.

This has been such a concern of mine throughout the year having just come from a school where most of the students could not type the amount of text in this post in less than 3 class periods, and often using a finger at a time. How could I trust students to take time messing around with digital projects? Well, ThingLink makes it easy to create the links so students can focus their time on the content rather than the technology. As we have often said in class, the goal is for the tech to be in the background--a seamless vehicle or medium through which students engage with the subject matter.

Other things I really liked at the conference was the Maker Space, which had ideas for hands on learning (including board games), and digital textbook project. Unfortunately, the latter is not fully completed yet, but the creators will be making something for high school this year. The project focuses on highlighting the voices of minorities, and looks very promising as a resource for my future classroom.

It may have taken a while for me to get excited for this conference, but I can't stop thinking about ways to apply what I've learned. I only went to a few sessions, though, so I'm even more excited by the ones I did NOT get to. The sheer number of people at the conference both attending and presenting is really encouraging as a new educator who constantly gets asked why I want to be a teacher or told "good luck" by people I respect and love. Educators who are passionate and willing to learn and improve can do anything. I'm starting to feel ready to become one.

Technology Teach-In

Twitter is my friend. 

I was extremely hesitant of the social network when it went live for the first time several years ago. However, I distinctly remember hearing a news report in which the Twitter creators were interviewed to talk about the upcoming launch. As the reporter (whose name and network now escape me) introduced them, he said that Twitter would revolutionize the internet and news industry. 

I thought that was a load of crap.

However, I was curious and probably getting a little bored of Facebook, so I reluctantly conformed with the bold revelation and signed up for my first Twitter account. Admittedly, it took a while for me to appreciate it; the first users in my circle of friends used it to post status updates similar to those on Facebook. Interaction with others didn't seem very social and the site as a whole just felt kind of dead and useless. Fast-forward several years later and Twitter has, indeed, revolutionized the internet and news industry. Furthermore, it has changed the way humans interact with each other and consume information, making for a more globalized and interdependent society.

That said, a lot of people still abuse the liberties of being able to talk to one another behind the protection of a keyboard. I have struggled with how to use the site in the classroom for this very reason; I simply cannot control all of what students see and say.

But then again, should I?

I believe in free speech as much as the next guy and truly appreciate the power of ideas--especially since I have the privilege of teaching how they have transformed human history. While I certainly think a lot (most?) ideas on the internet are stupid, who am I to censor my students when there are possibilities for learning and for students to engage with classroom material. So, instead, the question becomes whether or not Twitter is a useful platform for students to engage with academic content. Can Twitter's strengths (access to information, organization of ideas, global connectedness, and simplicity of infrastructure) outweigh the danger of students being able to access things we as educators might deem inappropriate?

Considering the biased phrasing above, I hope my answer is transparent.

One idea that I have been wrestling with for how to incorporate Twitter into the classroom involves using it in cooperation with other, more traditionally academic sites to create historical accounts in "real time." In other words, students would create their own primary source materials through their understanding from research.

The idea is still very much a work in progress, but in my head it looks a little something like this:

• The project is ongoing throughout a week-long unit. It does not necessarily need to take up the whole time, or even quite as long. It could be done in a single class period if all of the time was devoted to it.
• Students would begin by gathering information. They could each be assigned a different person from a given historical era (i.e. American Civil Rights) to research.
• The amount of time allotted for research would depend on what the teacher wants to assess. I would create research questions to guide students' searches. The assessment would be students tweeting from the perspective of their designated person to show what that individual might have been thinking and experiencing in "real time." Hence, they would essentially be creating primary sources.
• Students would also interact with one another by tweeting replies, favoriting, and retweeting each other. They could track interactions through the use of hashtags to organize information. This could be made competitive if students had a minimum that they must interact with each other and the person with whom the most people interacted won. I could be persuaded to designate some kind of prize.

Clearly, there are a lot of moving parts including the most basic of factors such as time. If I am to use this lesson for my own educational purposes, I may need to reduce the length and involvement of the project to be able to complete it in a single class period. Still, I think the idea warrants consideration and I am very interested to know what my other teaching interns and colleagues would think about the practicality of doing something like this (or using Twitter in the classroom at all).

#Thanksforreading