The Center: Connecting California's Community College Educators with Social Media

The Center: a new online community, connecting California's community college faculty, staff, and administrators

Google+ Community:  http://gplus.to/TheCenter

Twitter:  @center_ed

This month I began an exciting new project for @ONE, a professional development program for California's community college system. @ONE has a longstanding history within the system for providing valuable technology training programs for faculty and I have enjoyed working with them in the past on other projects including the development of their Online Teaching Certification program, the development of their Introduction to Online Teaching and Learning course, and the course, Building Online Community with Social Media, which I developed and taught for several years. @ONE is a treasure in California's community college system, as most faculty have very limited support resources available to them on campus to assist them with teaching with technology and many faculty today find themselves without funding for conference travel.

The exciting program that launched this month is called The Center and it is designed to improve communication, sharing, collaboration, and innovation across California's 112 community colleges. To achieve this lofty objective, The Center is leveraging the power of social media to bring faculty, staff, and administrators together in weekly conversations about meaningful topics.  I am thrilled to be part of this exciting endeavor and can't wait to meet more of my CCC colleagues and learn from you fabulous, creative, dedicated individuals!  :)

Ideally, topics for The Center will be suggested by the community but it takes time for communities to develop.  Cultivating community is like harvesting a crop.  We are in the early stages and spreading the word is like planting the seeds (we need your help!).  Until we have our roots, I am reaching into The Center's active group of members to identify volunteers who have practices and stories to share (links are set up in the Google+ Community to volunteer for a Hangout and submit/vote on topics).

Each topic will engage The Center for a period of two weeks. First, it will take the form of a Hangout on Air and then a Twitter chat.  The Hangout on Air and Twitter chat are bridge by Center Challenges which offer CCC colleagues an opportunity to try something new and reflect on their new experiences by sharing a post (via a blog, Tweet, or Google+ update) with the community.

How The Center's Conversations Foster a Learning Culture

Hangouts on Air are live, online video conversations launched in Google+. In these Hangouts, I interview a small, invited group of individuals from CCC colleges to discuss the topic at hand for a period of 30 minutes. The Hangout on Air is broadcast live to a public, online audience and members of the audience are encouraged to Tweet questions using The Center's hashtag, #CCCLEARN. I moderate this feed of questions during the Hangout on Air and share any incoming questions with the participants. After the Hangout is over, it is archived to YouTube (see below), providing for direct viewing access for anyone who was unavailable for the live event.

After the Hangout, Tweets (tagged with #CCLEARN) and a G+ update is shared in The Center's Google+ Community to encourage participation in the related Center Challenge.

The week after the Hangout on Air, the same topic is discussed in a #CCCLEARN Twitter chat. The Center's Twitter chats are scheduled for every other Thursday at 3pm Pacific (join us this Thursday, October 18th!!). The day and time of the Twitter chats was collaboratively decided upon by the community using a poll in early October.

An Example!

Last week, we held our very first Hangout on Air. The topic was coordinated in support of Connected Educator month: "Stories from CCC Connected Educators: How Social Media Has Improved My Teaching & Sense of Community." In this Hangout, I was joined by +Jennifer Garner, who teaches Biology part-time at Pasadena City College and Glendale Community College and +Mark Lawler  who teaches Geology online part-time at Lake Tahoe Community College and West Hills College, as well as three other institutions outside of CA and he resides in New York.  You are warmly invited to view the conversation below (my apologies for it being cut short due to a technological issue on my end!).



The Center Challenge for this topic is for community members to share how participating in social media has impacted their connectedness as an educator.  Members are encouraged to share these reflections in a blog post (and Tweet the link using the #CCCLEARN hashtag) or share a post in the The Center's Google+ Community (filtered into the category "Center Challenges").

We are holding a #CCCLEARN Twitter chat this Thursday, 10/18 at 3pm on the topic of "Becoming a Connected Educator."  Please join us and bring a friend!  This is a terrific opportunity to learn how to use Twitter in a supportive, academic environment.

To participate in the Twitter chat, you need a Twitter account and this should be created prior to the 18th to be sure you are ready to go. At the start of chat, you may either go to Twitter.com and enter #CCCLEARN into the "search" box to view the flow of the conversation.  OR you might want to try going directly to the #CCCLEARN Twitter Chat room, which provides a more focused (less distracting) experience for Twitter chats that many users prefer.

The #CCCLEARN Tweet Chat room is accessible at: http://tweetchat.com/room/CCCLEARN

Please share this post with your circle of CA community college colleagues and meet me in The Center! Join the Google+ Community today and follow The Center on Twitter @center_ed.

Hangout! Using Twitter & Facebook to Improve Critical Thinking in an Online Graduate Nursing Class

Hangout On Air!

Using Twitter & Facebook to Improve Critical Thinking
in an Online Graduate Nursing Class

Wednesday, July 10th

9am-9:30am PST/ 11-11:30am CST

no registration required
View Live at: http://facultyecommons.org/learn-with-michelle-hangouts-on-air/
Tweet questions during the Hangout with hashtag #learnwmpb

In this Hangout on Air, I will interview Dr. Sabita Persaud, of the Notre Dame of Maryland University School of Nursing who will discuss how and why she facilitated a 7-week nursing case study by dawning a fictitious patient identity.

Throughout the online course, students followed and responded to Facebook updates and Tweets from the patient, “Cee Veeay,” who shared evolvingly complex symptoms and reached out for advice through social media exchanges.  Students actively engaged in lengthy discussions with “Ms. Veeay,” offering her advice about her symptoms, leading to greater student engagement, critical thinking, and increasing the relevancy of their learning experience. These interactions prepared students for their exams. Dr. Persaud will also share how this teaching approach refreshed her own engagement as a college instructor!

I am so excited to speak with Dr. Persaud about this inventive teaching approach and I hope you will listen in and ask questions via the Twitter backchannel! 

Archive: Twitter for Increasing Student-Student Interactions

The 30-minute video archive, "bag" of resources, and presentation slides from my Learn with Michelle webinar, Twitter for Increasing Student-Student Interactions are available at:

http://facultyecommons.org/twitter-for-increasing-student-to-student-interactions/

By the end of this webinar, you will be able to:

• Consider an online learning case study suggesting the efficacy of Twitter in improving student-student interactions.
• Identify how and why hashtags are helpful when teaching with Twitter.
• Identify suggested guidelines for integrating Twitter in online courses.
• Evaluate a collection of useful tools for teaching with Twitter.

Learn with me! Twitter for Increasing Student-Student Interactions

Ready to learn more about what Twitter is or how it can be used to improve your students' social presence in your online class?  Join me for a free 30-minute webinar this Friday, June 7th at 9am Pacific/11am Central/12pm Eastern.

Increasing student-student interaction in an online class makes learning more social, interactive, and relevant.  While there are many ways to foster interaction within a learning management system, today’s social media tools provide new ways to engage students from anywhere at any time with mobile devices.  This 30-minute webinar will examine how social media opens new opportunities for reflection and inquiry and present options to get started with using Twitter in your class to increase participation.

Click here to register!

Yes, it will be archived and viewable on the Faculty eCommons.

http://facultyecommons.org/professional-development-registration-form

To receive news of future Learn with Michelle events, follow the Faculty eCommons on Twitter @APCommons or sign up for the newsletter at www.facultyecommons.org.

Teach with Twitter? Read This!

Twitter holds many opportunities for increasing student interaction and engagement.  But many instructors don't realize until it's too late that Twitter doesn't automatically archive your students' tweets. That is, once your students get active and you're tracking their tweets with a hashtag in Twitter, those tweets will disappear shortly (note that I use the term "disappear" loosely -- digital footprints are permanent, live by that rule).  That's because Twitter is intended to be a method for tracking the current pulse of the web's consciousness.  And with millions of tweets flowing into this consciousness every minute, archiving the past isn't a priority.

There are many methods, however, for archiving tweets, including applications that have been developed especially for that purpose (see this ReadWriteWeb post for many ideas).  But I had an "ah ha" moment this morning while reading a new post over at ProfHacker.  Mark Sample shared a simple way to "hack" an RSS feed for a particular Twitter hashtag.  I had always wondered if it was just me that couldn't figure out how to locate an RSS feed for a twitter hashtag.  Whew.  Apparently, I'm not alone. 

Follow the simple process below to locate the RSS feed URL (http://...) for a hashtag.  Once you have it, plug the feed URL into an aggregator (like Google Reader, or Feed Reader) and BAM! you've got yourself your own archive in your own aggregator.

Here is the simple recipe shared by Sample which was construed by academic librarian Valerie Forrestal (thanks, Valerie!).  Copy the url you see below and simply replace the bolded "hashtag" with the hashtag you want to follow in your aggregator.

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23hashtag

As Sample explains, "to follow the #MLA12 stream, this is the URL you need: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23mla12.  The '%23' takes care of the actual hash (pound sign), so you don’t need to include an “#” in the URL."

If you don't already use an aggregator and use Google apps (like Gmail, Google docs, Sites, etc.), give Google Reader a try.  It's very simple and you'll find a handy link to it at the top of your Gmail page which makes it convenient to access on the fly. 

 

Once you have Google Reader open, you simply click on the "Add a subscription" button in the upper left corner (see image), paste your customized Twitter RSS feed, and then click subscribe and you're done.  All the tweets sent with your class hashtag will be fed into Google Reader and you can keep track of them there.  The additional benefit to this process is that Google Reader will allow you to link back to the original tweet, even if you can no longer find it in Twitter.

Thanks for sharing Valerie and Mark! 

I hope many of you can benefit from that simple trick.

Lifelong Learning with Twitter

Two years ago, I reluctantly began to use Twitter.  I was curious to understand why so many found such a superficial, ridiculous tool so compelling.  After all, why would I care to read a description of "what you are doing" in 140 characters or less and why would you care "what I'm doing?"

Today, I am continually amazed and exhilarated at the vast resources and support my Twitter community provides for me around the clock.  I has become my own personalized professional development program and I despite the fact that there are more than one billion tweets sent per week, most educators are not engaged and have not realized the significance that Twitter holds for student engagement, digital literacy, research, and professional development.

Recently, I shared a success story on my blog about another reluctant part-time college professor, @Bio_prof, who says Twitter has helped her foster her own community of educators and she now feels more supported and less alone in her teaching endeavors.  Given that most college classes are taught by part-time instructors, I'd argue that this is a relevant conversation to have.

This month, in my GETInsight blog post, I reflect on Lifelong Learning with Twitter.  I invite you to read the blog post and contribute your story or thoughts about Twitter in the related VoiceThread (which is also embedded below).

Maybe summer is a good time to start curating your own Twitter network?  Follow me @brocansky.

Tweet

Twitter for Social Presentations & Information Curation

I am reaching new levels of understanding the significance of Twitter on education. 

Keeping in line with my interest in leveraging social media to make learning more, well, social, I've been intrigued by some ideas I've seen shared on Twitter and other blogs that highlight the importance of participating in a Twitter backchannel while you are presenting.  I fully agree that this both stimulates greater discussion and breaks down the formal hierarchy between "presenter" and "audience" (an important element of social/participatory learning).  The question I've had is "how"? 

I was really thrilled when I found Keynote Tweet back in January, a simple script that a user can download and integrate into a Keynote presentation which allows for tweets to be sent automatically when a slide is played in presenter mode.  Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful at using it and have since read that a recent Twitter API update has rendered the tool dead.  Boo.  Powerpoint users have more options (double boo, as I'm not a PP user) and you can check out those options on Jane Hart's blog.

While I really like the idea of auto-tweets being sent in sync with slides, as it is more likely to promote relevant discussion in step with the thoughts brewing in the room at the time, I'm going to have to shift gears until I find a replacement for Keynote Tweet.  If you know of one, please share!

As an alternative idea, I'm going to schedule tweets using one of the many free tools that provide this service.  The two I've played with recently include Twuffer, twAitter, and LaterBro.  The concept is simple.  Sign in with your Twitter account, type your tweet (remember, 140 characters or less), and select the date/time you want it to be sent.  That's it...really.  The only other critical thing to remember is to include the appropriate hashtag in every tweet and share that hashtag in your presentation (in the corner of every slide, for example).  The hashtag ("#" followed by a sequence of letters/numbers) is needed by the audience members to search for your tweets and reply to them. 

Now this isn't a new concept in the cutting edge circles of social media but it is new to education (at least from my viewpoint).  I see a lot of potential for this practice in presentation-driven environments like conferences but also in large lecture settings.  I think about students who are unable to attend a class and how these tweets could keep them connected at a distance and even provide them with an opportunity to participate, in some way.  The scheduled tweets could be questions you'd like to pose to students that may link back to earlier material or probe for opinions about topics. 

Information Curation
What I'm not sure about right now is how successful this is going to be if the audience at the conference doesn't use Twitter.  So, perhaps stressing the relevance of Twitter as both a popular tool and a path to developing an essential 21st century skill is a good approach.

Mashable reported yesterday that 450,000 new Twitter accounts are being created daily.  177 million tweets are sent each day or 1 billion each week.  Twitter is more than annoying, superficial updates about banal activities.  It's a rich resource for sharing resources with your peers, having resources sent to you, following interesting people and organizations -- ultimately, curating your own information feed.

Historically, a curator is a person who is granting an important role in a museum, designated as the one who will oversee the selection process of art works that will be included in a particular exhibition.  Moving forward, living independently in the 21st century will require us all to be our own information curators.  I always find it intriguing how much more relevant art-related skills are becoming in our digital, global society. 

Encouraging or requiring our students to use Twitter to curate their own personal learning networks is one of the greatest contributions we can make to their toolkit of 21st century skills.  But, first, we must step up, participate, and learn to curate our own.

Wanna play?  Here's a good, basic "Getting Started on Twitter" overview written by Dave Fleet.

Leveraging Twitter in Large Lecture Classes to Increase Participation

I'm curious to hear from more educators who are experimenting with using Twitter to increase participation in large lectures or using Twitter in other ways in higher ed.  Please chime in and share your great ideas!