Lutheran Educators' Guild » Twitter

Crossing Over

Coachburk — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 22:19:40 +0000

Last week I got to participate in my first ever LEA convocation, something that only happens every 3 years. At first I was overwhelmed and didn’t know what to expect. I got in a day early. As I was walking to familiarize myself with the lay of the land, I ran into Terry Schmidt. It was a refreshing face to run into. Terry is such a great guy with full of excitement for Lutheran Education.

As LEA started I knew there would be people I would know and I ran into some of them. I was able to listen to Dr. Bull’s presentation on Media Literacies and then that night got to sit next to Dr. Bull and another college friend Jeremy Pekari a pastor. The Skit Guys are always funny!

Later that night I decided and was urged to go to the Rock Bottom Brewery for the tweetup. This was a bunch of Lutheran Educators who are on twitter (and a few others). It was great to meet some of the individuals that I have converse with for the first time in person. @kevcreutz @gilmorekendra @karacornejo @alhelmy are all great people and I am glad to get to know them better in person. As always it is great to see @dawblack.

Friday was actually a nervous day for me, as I was going to be presenting also. I really enjoyed sitting in the two sessions before mine and hear some twitter friends talk and even learn a thing or two. Then came my presentation on Podcasts, I am always self-conscious about stuff I do, but I guess I did an ok job for some, I had some said they enjoyed it afterwards. Here is a link to my presentation – http://prezi.com/_xptfwzaiay0/broadcast-your-podcast/

Both night the food was good, the speakers and other stuff was great. The key to this conference though was the background conversations going on in the twitterverse world. Which comes to the bad part of the conference, the lack of WiFi. Connecting and conversing during and after the conference is KEY to a successful conference. Even now, a week later we have new Lutheran educators on Twitter and we are still sharing thoughts and ideas.

This is just my thoughts, I liked LEA, and can’t wait for the next one in 2014!

Web 2.0 Weekly: TweetDeck

jbiddle — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 01:16:11 +0000

As many of our regular readers have already noticed, I am a huge proponent of the need for Lutheran educators to have well-developed personal learning networks (PLNs). My PLN is the bread and butter of my professional development plan because it allows me to tap in to the knowledge and expertise of so many educators, administrators, and technologists around the world. PLNs are also highly interactive, meaning that I can go to my PLN, ask a question, and have a reasonable expectation of receiving a response within a few hours or, usually, much less.

As the years have gone by, my PLN has been constantly evolving. At first, it consisted mostly of a handful of blogs, but now, it includes blogs, podcasts, Facebook friends, and Twitter followers. Keeping track of all of this can be something of a chore, which is why I rely on a collection of software programs to help automate the management of my PLN. Blog updates are tracked with Google Reader, while I organize my podcasts with Apple’s iTunes. Facebook and Twitter, though, presented me with quite the challenge until I made some changes to the way I interact with them.

The first change was using the official Facebook and Twitter clients on my Blackberry smartphone to receive immediate notifications of any messages coming to me via these services. This allows me to immediately reply to those communications no matter where I might be, but it’s less than ideal for keeping caught up on the continuous flood of normal updates and tweets that come in from my friends and followers (i.e., the main reason for including Facebook and Twitter in my PLN).

For several months, I was accessing my Twitter accounts (more on that in a bit) from the web interface. This was workable, but I lost a good deal of the power of Twitter because I was only getting updates when I was looking at the Twitter webpage and I always had to keep a tab open in my browser for Twitter. Then, I discovered the subject of this week’s article, TweetDeck.

TweetDeck is an Adobe AIR-based application that allows a user to receive and make Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Google Buzz updates from one integrated client. Using TweetDeck, I can instantly receive new tweets, status updates, mentions, and direct messages, and easily reply or retweet as needed. The major feature that TweetDeck has over any other Twitter client is the ability to manage multiple accounts. I currently have two Twitter accounts, one for my personal use and one for the Guild. TweetDeck lets me see and use both accounts simultaneously. TweetDeck also offers other useful features such as automatic URL shortening with numerous providers, short URL previewing to avoid accidentally opening malicious links, scheduled tweets, and many, many more.

I haven’t explored the Facebook integration, yet, but I have been very pleased with the Twitter options. My only complaint, really, about TweetDeck is how much screen real estate it occupies.

As you can see, the TweetDeck interface is very clean, but there isn’t a way to control how much space each of the columns uses. There also isn’t a way to display the columns in a grid-like fashion, which would allow you to display more information at the expense of vertical scrolling within each “cell”.

The desktop version of TweetDeck is free and available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Any computer that can run Adobe’s AIR 2 framework can run TweetDeck. Unfortunately for Mac users, this means that TweetDeck cannot run on a PowerPC Mac. The low PC and Linux requirements means that the vast majority of classroom PCs should be able to use the program. It might also be a good use for an older, “retired” computer. My solution to the above mentioned screen real estate problem was to setup a dedicated TweetDeck computer using an old PC laptop I salvaged. I also use that same laptop to access my Google Reader account, so it’s really helped me to streamline how I access my PLN.

TweetDeck is also available for free for iPhone/iPod Touch, iPad, and Android users.

Twitter, Facebook…?

jbiddle — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:46:43 +0000

As I was looking through the followers’ list of one of the Guild’s Twitter followers (and after doing some searching of my own), I came to the conclusion that many of our Lutheran schools are missing out on some great opportunities to spread the word about their ministries online. I’ve spend several hours over the last months scouring Twitter for Lutheran schools with little success in locating very many. Of the ones I have found, several have tweeted a handful of times, with no new updates for months.

Twitter is a great way to share news and information about your school with the world. Twitter can easily be integrated with your school’s website or even manually updated. Anyone can learn to use Twitter in under an hour and updates take just a few seconds because of the 140 character limit. Best of all, Twitter is free.

In the late 1990s it became vital that churches and schools had websites to establish an online identity, but that is no longer enough. Now, it is crucial that your school have a strong Web 2.0 presence as well. Twitter is just a small part, though. Social networking sites like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc seem to be appearing daily.

Does your school need to make use of all of these? Probably not, but some consideration should be given to each of them. Perhaps YouTube would be a good way to share PR and marketing videos with the community or maybe some students or classes could post a series of video Lenten and Advent devotions. Flickr could be use to share student work with families. There are an infinite number of possibilities.

What’s important is making it easy for current and potential families and students to find information about your school and to help them understand the ministry being done there. To paraphrase Scripture, it’s time to be the light of the world and put our schools on a hill so that all can see what is being done there, not for Earthly glory, but for the glory of our Lord and Savior.

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Update: Friends and Followers, Podcast?

admin — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:58:50 +0000

We didn’t meet our goal of 100 friends and followers each on Facebook and Twitter, but we did reach 74 Facebook friends and 46 Twitter followers. That’s just amazing! Let’s see if we can add another 30 to each by the end of February, so 104 Facebook friends and 76 Twitter followers.

Also, we here at the Lutheran Educators’ Guild have begun talking about creating a Lutheran Education-focused podcast. We’d like to know how many of you listen to podcasts on a regular basis as well as how many of you might be interested in listening to one focused on Lutheran education. What would you like such a podcast to “look” like and what topics would you want to have discussed? Please, let us know in comments, on the forum, or via email.

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Update: Facebook and Twitter

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:30:12 +0000

As we approach the end of the month, I’d like to thank all of our new friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter for helping us as we strive to reach our goal of 100 friends and followers on each of these social networks. Currently, the Lutheran Educators’ Guild has 74 Facebook friends and 40 Twitter followers. I believe we can still reach our goal with your help. Please tell your friends and followers about the Guild and ask them to consider following us.

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We need your help!

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:47:21 +0000

A major reason for the existence of the Lutheran Educators’ Guild is “to create a community of fellowship and encouragement for Lutheran educators.” One way to do that is by spreading the word about the Guild to others. If you haven’t already, please take the time to become a fan of the Guild on Facebook (follow the link or use the Facebook Fan box on the right) and follow us on Twitter (@luthedguild). Please let your friends, followers, and PLNs know about us as well. Let’s see if we can reach 100 Facebook fans and 100 Twitter followers by the end of the month!

And while you’re here, please create a user account on the main Guild site so you can participate in our new forums.

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No Greater Moral Imperative

Coachburk — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:56:54 +0000

Michael Fullan states in “The Moral Imperative of School Leadership”,

“There is no greater moral imperative than revamping the principal’s role as part and parcel of changing the context within which teachers and students learn.” (p11)

What does that mean? I mean I know what it is trying to say, but what does that mean. What does it mean by a moral imperative? Or revamping the principal’s role? Or part and parcel? Plus what does this have to do with Jim Collins’ five-levels of leadership, as Fullan is making this statement about? Lets take these important key words in this statement; Moral Imperative – a principle originating inside a person’s mind that compels that person to act, Revamping – revise or restore, and Part and Parcel – “a portion” and “something integral with a whole.” Ok maybe that doesn’t make it any clearer. In laymans term, “We must act! We must revise and restore the role of a principal within the schools to help the teachers and students learn.” I hope that makes that statement a little bit more clearer.

SO WHAT? What about the 5 Levels of Leadership?

Jim Collins talk about from being good to great. He states that although a leader may fit into his first four levels of leadership they are only qualify to be good. You must be in the 5th level to be consider great. It is then you can change the context you are surrounded in. It is then you can best help teachers and students learn.

Personally, this takes away accountability on each teacher and student. They should take action for their own learning. At my school as mention before, we are in a freeze, no money for conferences. I debated with our school board that this is bad because our teachers do not do anything else for their own professional development. Our yearly conference was it for most of the teachers. I told him luckily, I am responsible for my own learning, although I want to go to the conferences for many different reasons. But, I am my own barrier if I do not learn. Writing this blog, is one way I am taking my learning into my own hands. Taking Master classes is another, reading blogs another, following educators on Twitter is just another way.

We do need to change how we look at teachers and students learn and how can we reach them in more efficient and effective ways. What are you doing to reach your students and teachers?

Connecting Across the U.S.

Coachburk — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:16:50 +0000

I just wanted to share quickly with everyone something that happened today in my classroom. A teacher from a Lutheran School in MO needed someone to interview for their school paper about the fires in California. This teacher conntacted me by Twitter and we set up a time to Skype. He had a student that was going to ask the questions and I got an 8th grade student to answer the questions. It was a great time and thing. I mentioned it to my principal and she stopped by and thought it was amazing and great. It only last 10 to 15 minutes, but we connected two students that do not know each other who live thousands of miles away from each other.

If you do not know what skype is, it is a free way to talk with anyone from the world (who has skype), you can call landlines for a price.

My student never got to do something like that and was very excited. We are moving in the right direction.

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PLN Starters

jbiddle — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:53:28 +0000

Here is a wiki-ed list of resources for educators who are creating or adding to their Personal Learning Networks. Resources that begin with an “@” are links to Twitter pages.

Because this post is a wiki, approved users have the ability to add or update resources. Please use the “login” link under “Site Functions” to the right to create a user account. Then use the contact form under “Contact Us” to request access to the site’s wiki functions.