Teaching Students Self- Branding (If not now, then when?)

As educators we need to begin to teach students about branding...NO, not that kind of branding!!! To clarify, students (and teachers) need to be aware that their online image is an important part of being an effective communicator and participant in the digital age.

Jeff Utecht of The Thinking Stick blog recently wrote a blog post entitled, "When to start teaching self branding," about the importance of teaching students to consider their online image. I agree with Jeff that these are the conversations we need to be having with students. Since information on the web is persistent (it stays around a long, long time) and searchable, students need to consider what they write and produce online is an extension of themselves that will be around for a long time and be findable by people that may play an important role in their life (future bosses, coworkers, and friends).

The persistence and searchability of the web is a powerful argument for why schools (and parents) need to be discussing with students how they portray themselves online. This portrayal, or branding, begins with a safe, consistent, and simple username. Next, any image associated with them should positively portray their individuality. Keeping a consistent username and profile image makes it easier for people to identify with them by making it easier to find and remember their work.

Of course, the openness of the web creates concerns for schools to protect the identity of students. The tension between protecting student identity, while having students create authentic work that is public and theirs is becoming more real. Schools can partly get around this issue by creating generic usernames incorporating a student's first name and other identifiable information, like graduation year. This will at least allow students the opportunity to create school assignments that are published to the web. This published content can then become a student's public learning portfolio that can be used to show future schools and employers how they have used their writing and creative skills to lobby local officials to build a nature trail, or how they collaborated with students from around the world to assist in tsunami relief efforts in Asia, or simply to design an effective video demonstrating how the pervasiveness of modern-day slavery.

Just think how effective a consistent and positive self-brand can be if the nature trail, tsunami relief, and video were packaged in such a way that made the anonymous student a real person with a consistent, simple, and unique online image (or brand)?

This all leads to another interesting question that was asked by Jorgie in a comment on The Thinking Stick blog post, "(Students) want to be recognized and heard and be noticed, but what if they are recognized and noticed?"

Where do we draw the line between student self branding and online safety?

When and How do we teach self branding?

Photo credit: Keeshu, at Morguefile

Text Flow: A way to read digitally

I just found out about Text Flows from the weekly email from the Educators Group I belong to at Diigo. Text Flow has a collection of speeches, poems, and other written works. The beauty is that lines of text appear on screen at the rate that you want--15 words a minute, all the way to over 500 words a minute. The ability to introduce great works of literature to students and have them read it digitally at their own pace, or pause it at any time, seems like a great way to adapt instruction to the individual reading level of the student.

Here's the Gettysburg Address in Text Flow:




What do you think? What ideas do you have for utilizing Text Flow in the classroom?

Backchannel Engagement in the Classroom

Backchanneling in the classroom seems to be a hot topic recently. A March 18th blog post entitled Backchanneling in Middle School Social Studies caught my attention because 1) I teach Middle School Social Studies, and 2) I just had my students backchannel for the first time during a movie.

My main concern about having students chat during class is that it could divide their attention and cause students to miss important information. According to Dr. John Medina people are incapable of effectively multitasking. Medina's Brain Rules book and website illustrate that multitasking raises error rates. If this is the case then should we even consider having students backchannel chat during class? Another point that Medina makes is that people do not pay attention to boring things. My question then is--Can backchannel chats in the classroom help prevent boredom by engaging students in thinking about class content as it is presented?

To determine if backchannel chat will work I used it with the movie Great Journey West about the Lewis and Clark expedition. Instead of forcing students to backchannel during the movie I let it be an option. This allowed me to see how many students would freely participate, as well as to allay my concern about students dividing their focus. My observations show that some students are more adept at dividing their attention and being able to refocus than other students. I also have a concern that students who have poor typing skills will spend an inordinate amount of time typing to the exclusion of actually watching the movie. I used Coveritlive as the platform for the backchannel chat since the students and I were already familiar with how it works. I created a couple of polls and found a link to the Journals of Lewis and Clark prior to the event. My only instruction for students was to use Coveritlive to ask questions they did not understand during the movie.

The results impressed me. I had about a 1/3 of each of my classes actively asking questions during the movie. All of the questions were genuine and were answered right away either by me or another student. A majority of my students participated in the polls, while nearly all my students at least kept track of the chat periodically while they watched the movie. Some of the deeper questions that were asked during the chat were then discussed as a class after the movie. These class discussions led to the students asking even more questions. I have not had the chance to backchannel during a movie since this time, but I have had a number of students ask when we can do it again.

Whether one can effectively multitask or not I believe that it does have a place in the classroom. If done properly I believe it can lead to students becoming more engaged in the content by being encouraged to ask and answer questions in real time. This real time, active participation by students is what they do in their own time when they IM and text, so why not incorporate it into the classroom if you can. With every student having a computer in my class every day, I have the ability to use this technology to encourage students to think in a way that is natural for them.

I would love to hear other ideas for using backchannel chat in the classroom to engage students. What ideas do you have???

photo credit: serkaner at stock.xchng

FORA.tv: My New Favorite Thing

I love TED, but my new love is FORA (as in FORA.tv). Now before anyone gets any weird vibes, I am not referring to people. Of course, TED is the website that shows videos from the annual TED Conferences that brings together the world's greatest minds in technology, entertainment, and design. Well, move over TED (I still like ya), but FORA has some of the most interesting, intellectually stimulating, and entertaining talks on the web. The talks are wide ranging and are hosted by various organizations. I showed the following clip to my students that elicited a wonderful discussion about what should and should not be posted on the internet:



Another part of FORA that I like, which is temporarily unavailable, is the myFORA and ThinkTank sections of the website. You can save videos and invite others to see your favorites in the myFORA section. The ThinkTanks allow you to create a playlist from various videos related to a certain topic. For example, I could have a ThinkTank on talks related to social media, or American history, or any number of specific topics. Hopefully, FORA will reinstate those features soon.

I will end with one of my favorite talks. Mike Rowe, the star of the Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs, gave a talk entitled, "Reclaiming Our 'Dirty Jobs'--Discovery, Realization, and Lamb Castration" about how modern society has a lot to learn from ordinary people who work unglamorous "dirty jobs". I did not show this to my students, even though it has a great message.



Check out FORA.tv. You will not be disappointed.

Writing4History

Four of my students took part in the Student Showcase at PETE&C today at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center. They demonstrated a project entitled Writing4History. W4H is an attempt to get my students to:

1. WRITE for an authentic audience.
2. CREATE something so interesting that someone (other than just their parents) will purchase it.
3. THINK creatively and be persistent in solving ambiguous problems.
4. COLLABORATE with their classmates so the collective talents of the class allows the creation of something that no one student, no matter how talented, could create on their own.
5. OWN the process and outcome.
6. BENEFIT others by contributing all proceeds to charity.
   

Now, understand that I realize that#2 is a lofty goal. However, we need to have teachers and students THINK BIG.

If only parents and grandparents purchase the books then at the very least students will get a sense of accomplishment for publishing their own book, the book will last years longer than typical school work, and a charity will get a few extra bucks from the mental perspiration of teenagers.

Here is the slideshow that was used at the Student Showcase.

Writing 4 History

View more presentations from atitzel. (tags: technology middleschool)