Follow Hashtags to Learn

by Tara Seale
Twitter is one of my mainstays for communicating and learning from teachers around the world. I may not know their cell phone, their email, converse with them on a regular basis, or even live in the same country, but Twitter connects me to educators who are willing to share and connect using technology. When I first started tweeting, the constant stream of communication made me feel guilty and overwhelmed. First, I worried about my responsibility in responding to anyone who tweeted me or replied to one of my tweets, so I continually checked my twitter account to see if I needed to respond, which later led to an overwhelmed feeling, making me want to give up on Twitter. I realized that I needed a new perspective about how to use this social networking tool without becoming so overwhelmed.
Now, I see Twitter as a large flowing river with many twists, turns, and side streams which, unfortunately, I do not have time to explore, but because of the potential, when I can, I jump in and swim around immersing myself in a depth of discoveries. Hashtags assist me in my swim so that I narrow my exploration instead of dog paddling without direction.
What are hashtags? The first hashtag I want to introduce is #engchat. I am hosting an #engchat Twitter discussion on Monday, November 14, 2011. A hashtag is proceeded by, of course, a hashtag, plus an acronym or abbreviated topic. This allows Twitter followers to zone in on their area of interest and follow the conversation and add to it. In regards to the conversation on Monday, Twitter users need to log in to Twitter and follow the conversation that is marked with #engchat. It is helpful to use an app to follow a hashtag; I use tweetdeck so that I can see the posts related to the hashtag in one column, but Meenoo Rami, founder of #engchat, advises that followers of the Monday night #engchat conversations use Tweetchat. Regardless of which app you use, hashtags are instrumental in connecting tweeters with topics they want to understand and know more about.
As you can probably discern, followers of the #engchat hashtag are English teachers, and I would like to direct you to a great video and description about how #engchat began at the Digital Is National Writing Project Blog. I encourage you to read the blog post, but also view the Bud Hunt video.
Besides #engchat, there are other hashtags that also help to connect educators. The best list is probably compiled at the Cybrary Man Blog. In addition, the Edudemic blog claims to have the full list (nearly) of educational hashtags.
Although hashtags are great for connecting teachers on a daily basis, they are also dynamic in convention settings. Take for example the NCTE Convention. If you were at last year's NCTE in Orlando and followed the convention hashtag of #NCTE1o you would have learned about potential tweetups - when people who have the same interests and follow the same hashtags meet F2F (face to face). For example, #ecning tweeters - English Companion Ning followers and contributors - were able to meet face to face and get to know each other beyond the cyberworld, which I believe everyone enjoyed. Additionally, those who followed ncte10 last year were able to learn about excellent presentations by following the hashtag ncte10 even if they were unable to attend those presentations. Therefore, I encourage you to follow #ncte11 so that you can keep up with NCTE convention happenings on Twitter.
This post has highlighted only a few of the potential connections that hashtags create in the 21st century. I plan to introduce and discuss more on Monday, November 14th at #engchat, so if you have never participated in a Twitter hashtag discussion, I encourage you to join in on Monday to see what it is all about.

Project for Awesome

by Tara Seale
Have you ever wondered how YouTube chooses the videos that are featured on their website? I just visited YouTube, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out.
Look at the bold titles: Trending, Most Popular, Featured Videos, and What's New.
What would it take to create a YouTube video and have it featured on the front page? Who would even endeavor to have their video featured on YouTube's front page? I can tell you who. The NerdFighters and their Project for Awesome (P4A).
On December 17, P4A will once again try to take over YouTube and the trending topic of Twitter by promoting videos that represent charities. This is truly an awesome project because it brings attention to the needs of our world. I first learned about this project from Lee Ann Spillane, a high school English teacher from Winter Park, FL. At NCTE's National Convention 2009 in Philadelphia, she told me that her class was participating in P4A by creating one video that they would promote on December 17th. I didn't really understand what she was talking about, but when December 17th rolled around, I found myself remembering our conversation as I followed her numerous tweets and shout outs that proclaimed something great was happening, so at this year's NCTE National Convention 2010 in Orlando when Lee Ann and I both showed up to an early Sunday morning session to hear Kelly Gallagher, Penny Kittle, and Jeff Anderson present, I asked her about P4A again. I paid closer attention to the details this time. This year, each of Lee Ann's students is creating his or her own video to promote a charity on the P4A day. The students will embed the P4A logo into their video to designate it as part of the P4A project. She is also working with the technology department to gain access to YouTube for a day so that her students can participate in commenting, viewing, favoriting, and promoting their videos to propel P4A to the top of the YouTube and Twitter trending lists.
What an incredible experience for these high school students. Congratulations to Lee Ann for creating a genuine authentic audience that brings attention to worthwhile causes and involves students using 21st century technology. Imagine the connections the students will feel as together they unite to take over cyberspace for a day with something they have created.
Lee Ann first became involved in P4A when she realized that one of the founders was a former student, Hank Green. Hank and his brother John grew up in Winter Park, FL, and John is a young adult author of several books including Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns. The two brothers are responsible for the popular VlogBrothers Channel on YouTube and for creating the Nerdfighters.
What are Nerdfighters? They do not fight nerds, they actually promote nerds and fight World Suck which they explain in the video below. I encourage you to watch their video because I learned so much. For example, I now know the difference between an acronym and an initialism. They also brought to my attention that I sometimes have a high puff level, which I knew, but I just didn't have a phrase for it. Thank you John and Hank for putting this all into perspective for me, and thank you Lee Ann for being a teacher who takes risks to engage students in something as amazing as Project for Awesome.
Project for Awesome Website (This website will update to the 2010 P4A in December).

Updates for P4A: Video Announcement about 2010 P4a

The Year of Twitter

by Tara Seale

So did you try out Twitter in 2009? If you didn't, then apparently you weren't one of the 18 million who did. Several websites claim that 2009 was the year of Twitter.

Mashable's How Twitter Conquered the World in 2009

Yahoo! News: The Year of Twitter and Facebook

and Time Magazine explains "How Twitter will change the way we live"

I tried Twitter in early 2009, and I really didn't get it. I left a few measly tweets and thought there was nothing I could possibly say in 140 characters that anyone would want to read. I picked it back up again after a few months, and I lucked out by finding and following teachers who shared links to great resources that I could use in my classroom, so I began to share my ideas and to learn how to abbreviate and convey what I wanted to say in 140 characters. I currently use Twitter to keep in touch with teachers from all over the world @tseale.

As I began to use Twitter effectively, I wanted to share this powerful communication tool with my students. Luckily, I am in a school district that allows me to experiment with Web 2.0 to enhance my classroom curriculum. I created a teacher account @bryantenglish, next my students signed up for a Twitter account, and then we followed each other. We began by tweeting about outside reading, and I used Twitter to send out homework reminders.
I decided to use Twitter to engage my students while we read Edith Hamilton's Mythology, required for 9th grade students at my high school. Some students love the book and enjoy mythology, and some students think I am trying to torture them by forcing them to read about Greek gods and goddesses, so my hope was that students would want to read about Greek mythology if I connected it to a fun web tool, and I also decided it could help me teach one of our 9th grade required literary terms: persona.
I began by creating a list of mythological characters spread throughout Edith Hamilton's Mythology. I did not use any of the major gods or goddesses because they are all covered fairly quickly in the front of the text. I then gave the list to my students and asked them to look up the characters in the index and decide who they most wanted to be on Twitter. Students picked their top three, and I used their preferences to assign each character to one student. The students were sworn to secrecy to not share the identity of their Twitter persona. Students, over a period of ten days, created ten tweet clues in character as if they were their actual Twitter persona. They even changed their Twitter photo to match their character. The first student to correctly guess everyone's identity received the incredible award of sitting in my big comfy rolling chair for the day. I was surprised that this award was so appealing and inspired so much competition. By the second day, students were already on to me though. They claimed that I came up with this assignment so that they would have to read through the whole book to discover everyone's identity - busted- but it didn't matter because they kept participating. Plus, students learned how to create a persona. In the beginning, student tweets were rather weak. See some examples below:

I am the master builder.

I made the god's angry.

I labored long and hard.

Students tried their best to follow the rubric I provided in class, but I realized I had to create better models of a Twitter persona. I became Apollo and added my tweets to the rubric as an example. I also have to recommend the book Oh My Gods! by Scholastic for example tweets. The book even provides example Facebook pages for the Greek gods. I began to post my favorite student tweets on our class blog page to inspire students to create better tweets. See a few of my favorites below:

Shoot...you think you have a big mouth... you apparently haven't seen what I have eaten. (Cronus Persona)

Ha Ha King Minos you can't catch me now. (Icarus Persona)

Hey Theseus you know I am a better hero than you. (Hercules Persona)

I am so selfish...How could I have let it get this bad... a war over me... It's really not that worth it. =( (Helen Persona)

I can't wait to open my gift! (Pandora Persona)

I used a Google spreadsheet to create a list of each Twitter account and a word bank for each persona that students had to research. Students filled out the spreadsheet as they guessed each identity, and they shared the spreadsheet with me when it was complete. If you are interested in seeing the links to my rubric, spreadsheet, and the directions I gave the students, visit the link to the Twitter Assignment on our class blog page.

I am considering how my students might use Twitter next. I like NPR's recent use of Twitter. They asked people to tweet about the year 2009 in one word; participants could also Facebook the word. Then NPR created a wordle out of the words they received. In a wordle, the most repeated word is the largest. I am going to steal this idea because I am Hermes, the God of Thievery (all of the good teachers are Hermes), so I think I will ask my students to tweet the one word that sums up 2009 for them, and maybe they will also find 2009 full of change and challenge, but somewhat awesome and hopeful too. See the NPR wordle below:

Read the NPR article here: NPR's The Year 2009 in one word.