Unit 7

Reading Assignment (book): Chapter 5 in Grabe and Grabe.

The next two chapters were written to address student use of the Internet in what I would consider more traditional ways - communication and search. (Online tools for communication and Online inquiry)

Online reading assignments:

Adolescent communication with technology

K12 online courses

Argumentation

Kuhn, D., Goh, W., Iordanou, K., & Shaenfield, D. (2008)

Social networks in education

Twitter chats

As a technology tool experience for the week, we will try a mini edchat. You will need to have an active Twitter account. Create and account if you have not already done so. I will act as chat moderator so all you will need to do before class is to make sure you have an account. Because of the way an edchat works, TweetDeck is one of the better tools for participating in an edchat. This tool allows you to create a column to follow a specific hashtag.

Analysis task (2): Edchats are popular “professional development” activities for educators. I have some concerns that the chats are not time-efficient in accomplishing actual “development” on the part of teacher participants. I would like you to take a look at the archive of an actual chat or two and see what you think. I think reviewing an archive is the most effective way to do this. From time to time I participate or at least watch ndedchat and I know that you can locate the archived chats for this group by searching. You can use other chats to make your observation if you wish (identify in your report).

I would like you to create a simple coding scheme (count a couple of things) and use these data in arguing your conclusion. How many individuals appeared to be involved in the chat and how often did the things you were looking for happen? Is this frequency impressive or not?

Here is a list of edchats you can search - https://sites.google.com/site/twittereducationchats/education-chat-official-list. You should be able to identify one that is active by using the designated hashtag to search Twitter.