Westlake Experiments with Twitter

It's been over a week now since Westlake High School launched it's Twitter account, and it's already been a topic of conversation in the local newspaper, The Austin American Statesman. The Statesman mentioned our account in it's blog portion online and the comments have been insightful. http://tinyurl.com/chhdjt.

Our following continues to grow, and we've gotten a lot of very positive feedback from the community.

It was our original intention to use it as a reminder of activities on the campus, but as we get in to the process, we're finding that it's also a very useful tool to communicate effective learning practices and links to great thoughts on education, and more specifically, technology in education.

As we approach the end of this school year, it will be a time to step back and evaluate all of our efforts to be better citizens and educators. Keeping the nuggets and throwing out the sand. It looks as if Twitter is a definite "keeper" at this point.

Facebook in the Classroom? Oh, My!

Last week, our group debated the prospect of opening Facebook inside the district for students to communicate with their teachers if they choose to do so. To the surprise of all, it turned into a lively discussion with excellent points being presented on both sides.

Proponents point out that students and teachers are already on Facebook, but teachers who have chosen to work with students here are forced to do so at home and on their own time. If we opened this up to staff, teachers would be able to use school time to do tutoring or answer questions posed by their students.

Opponents insist that while the possibilities for abuse exist, teachers would either have to have two accounts (one personal and the other professional) or monitor their own activity on their page as it would be viewed by students. The monitoring that would be necessary would diminish the value of Facebook as a personal activity.

Many teachers have already seen the value of connecting with their students in this manner and are already assisting their students and others in the arena the students feel most comfortable with. So the real question for these instructors is really whether school districts want to embrace the potential Facebook presents as an instructional tool.

In order to participate from school, a teacher would have to be "friends" with a school account that could monitor student/teacher activity on the teacher's account. If this initial guideline were met, the teacher could then use their Facebook account at school to communicate with students. If the teacher chose not to participate in this manner, then Facebook would still be off-limits during the school day.

This whole controversy brings to mind the argument many years ago of allowing calculators in the classroom. Our district has already moved to allowing cell phones in school and even in the classroom at the teacher's discretion. I see this as a move in the right direction and the logical next step in integrating technology in the classroom. I would be very interested in your comments on whether you think this would be a good move or one that should be put on hold until more controls are in place.

How Can I Make a Difference?

We tend to find our inspiration through a lot of different sources. If you're at a loss, you can always count on a well-meaning friend to send you that touching email that you need to forward to everyone you've ever had contact with. But all sarcasm aside, sometimes it's really good. That's why I always open those emails. I'm not saying I always forward them; I just open them and check them out. The very best get forwarded. Or, as in this case, put on a blog for idle passers-by to peruse if they feel so inclined.

This one, more than any other I've seen, gives meaning to the phrase "make a difference" and proves without any doubt that anyone can make a personal connection with others at work.

Enjoy.

Simple Truths

Making Research More Meaningful

I recently had an opportunity to work with the junior AP English classes at Westlake High School on their yearly research project centered around names that appear on the Vietnam Virtual Wall. The project in its rawest form is a research assignment, but these young people were about to learn a lesson that far transcended their expectations of the “normal” research assignment. The project began by each student reading The Things They Carried, a collection of short stories by Tim O’Brian.

Each student was given a name of a soldier, sailor, airman or marine on the Vietnam wall. With only that info in hand, they were to research the life and times of that individual and tell their story in the form of a short video clip. Students contacted the families of the departed, their friends, their schools, and their communities. It wasn’t long before information started flowing in from excited family members who were overjoyed that a total stranger was about to tell all they could learn about their loved one. You can only imagine how excited they were. Or what is more likely, you can’t really imagine any more than I could when I was first asked to get involved.

It was my responsibility to train the students on how to tell the story in video format. We used such tools as Photostory, Movie Maker, Audacity, and Producer by Microsoft. We used web tools that were designed to create bibliographies online or multimedia presentations such as Easybib, Slide.com and VoiceThread. Before I arrived at the school, Carolyn Foote, WHS librarian extraordinaire, created a wiki page to guide the students through short tutorials and valuable links for the tools we would speak of and a blog for those who saw the presentations to leave their comments.

As an English teacher, I am excited that students are becoming more personally involved with their research topics. As a veteran of the Vietnam era, I am proud of our young people who have taken it upon themselves to honor the life of one casualty of a bloody, unpopular war, and to treat that person like the hero he or she was. It was a sad time in our country when our sons and daughters returned from Vietnam to a country that treated them with disdain and refused to honor their sacrifice because it was politically unpopular at the time to do so.

To see the projects themselves and the accompanying wiki and blog, just click on the link below, but bring your tissues. You’re going to need them.

http://whs.eanes.k12.tx.us/virtualvietnam/