Becoming a Connected Educator

The phrase “reflective practitioner” when used properly can propel each of us to greater heights. As educators we should continuously reflect on our work. We should continue to consider our options to further integrate 21^st century technology and best practices into our everyday work. Here are several tools, practices, and procedures that I’ve implemented over the past year to help streamline, organize, and further develop my communication skills:

   ·   Flip your Faculty Meetings and PD:  Screencast-O-Matic and other tools are available to develop the flipped presentation. This is a premium way to model the flipped model for your staff. It also allows both you and your teachers greater freedom with creating and accessing the faculty meeting information and Professional Development materials.

·        Remind101: This tool will help the administrator streamline direct communication with multiple stakeholder groups.

·         Create a Chat for your community: Start small and then slowly grow your chat forum and followers. We followed @Joe_Mazza and @jackson_carrie and developed our own chat. #FHMchat entered the chat arena in October of 2013. We hold chats the first and third Monday of each month.

·         Blog: Begin to blog or further develop your current blog practices. Once you establish a regular Blogging routine others will be able to regularly read your blog posts. Blogger and WordPress are two blogging tools that can help you begin this journey.

·         Streamline Twitter: Use HootSuite or TweetDeck with your laptop and TweetCaster with your iPad to organize or tweets. You can also use www.tweetchat.com to create a greater focus when participating in individual Twitter chats.

·         Archive your chats: www.storify.com is an excellent tool to save chats for future PD opportunities of for teachers, parents, and the greater community. By archiving your chats you can reference them later. You can also direct your teachers and parents to the archived discussions (based on the topic they request).

·         Backchannel: This will empower your teachers to further engage during collaboration time. www.todaysmeet.com is the tool that I use for faculty and PD.  Teachers are also using this tool in the classroom with great success.

There are a multitude of additional ways to become a connected educator. As Social Media continues to move forward we will learn about other tools that will help us in our continue journey into the 21^st century.