The New Facebook Messages

This week I started using the new Facebook message. This new messaging system keeps all your online chats and messages between you and a friend in one long chain as opposed to separate messages. The new Facebook message also allows you to create your own Facebook e-mail address where messages get uploaded to your inbox. The new messages also has a "Send to Phone" option that lets you send and receive messages from your cell phone.

My first impression? I think it's a huge improvement to the old messaging system. While I don't think I'll use the "Send to Phone" feature or set up a Facebook e-mail address, I think they're pretty good features for those that want to keep all their online communication in one place. What do I like most about this new system? That all of my messages and online chats between myself and a friend stay in one place so I don't have to track through tons of messages if I want to read a message again. Sometimes messages get buried and it's a hassle sorting through all my messages to find what I'm looking for. I also like this feature because the timeline tells its own kind of story; whether it's the story of a friendship, a partnership, a collaboration, etc. All of this, to me, makes social media a little more meaningful.

Final Texas A&M Meeting

My final meeting with my Texas A&M group went better than expected. Learning from my 2 previous meetings, I felt as though I had nailed down organizing my group. This time around I gave them plenty of time to respond and sent a follow-up e-mail reminding them of their deadline. This wonderfully as every student responded by the deadline and setting a date and time quickly set. 

Of all the discussions we had, the last one was not as involved as the other previous two. It may have been because the students were coming back from Spring Break or the novelty of Second Life was beginning to wear off for them. Realizing that early on, I was glad I had prepared questions ahead of time to keep the conversation on target, questions that got a quality conversation going. What was good about the meeting was the level of comfortability we had developed as a group even though we couldn't see each other face to face. In the end, it was sad to see this collaboration come to an end but it was encouraging to hear how much the group enjoyed working in Second Life. This collaboration showed me how much I enjoyed managing an online group and I hope to do more of that in the future.

My Second Virtual Meeting with Texas A&M

The preparation for this meeting began the week before in class. My classmates and I got together and talked about our experiences with our groups. It was encouraging to hear that other people ran into some of the same problems I did and how they handled them. We all shared our lessons learned, which gave me new perspectives and ideas going into planning and organizing the second meeting.

After the huge success of my first meeting with my group in Second Life, I was genuinely looking forward to our second meeting. However, organizing my group proved to be more difficult than the time before. Following my lessons learned from our last meeting, I set a deadline to reply to the poll I sent of possible dates and times. I was surprised to find that after the deadline has passed, only one student had taken the poll. I found this to be discouraging because I thought my new organized approach would have made a difference. I informed the students that I was extending the deadline and that night I would make a decision based on those who replied. I'm not sure if that was the best way to handle that. Was I rewarding an inability to follow through by giving them more time? In the end, everyone showed up, which is what I really wanted.

For our second conversation, I encouraged the group to really listen to each other's response before responding to make comments more insightful and prevent the chaos of our first meeting. The students did well with it but I noticed that it slowed down the conversation considerably. There were more gaps where several people were typing but nothing was showing up because they were trying to take turns. I didn't like that but their responses were better and there weren't as many repeat comments so it worked. The biggest difference between this meeting and the last one was the level of preparedness of the group. The group didn't participate as actively as they did last time and they didn't seem to give the pre-discussion work as much attention as they did the first time. I asked them to write down any questions or comments they had about the videos they watched but none of them did it. As disappointed as I was, we were able to have a fairly good conversation.

Lessons learned from this meeting:

1. Be flexible! Unforeseen issues can arise (we ended up with two groups in the same location) and it's always good to have a plan B in case your original plan needs to change.
2. Be prepared! Make sure you know the material and have extra questions and talking points for those moments when conversation falls flat to keep it moving.
3. A learning community is a powerful thing. The ideas, suggestions and shared experiences talked about in a groups of learners can make you better prepared and you'll have some "tricks" up your sleeve if you need them. 

Texas A&M Collaboration

My second online collaboration was with a group of undergraduate students from Texas A&M. I was more nervous about this conversation than my first one because I was in charge of organizing the date, time and location of our first meeting.Organizing the group proved to be challenging as it was difficult getting replies from students. An error that I made was leaving things open-ended, which may have held up proceedings. 


Once the scheduling was figured out and everyone showed up, it was time to begin our discussion. I found the best place to start was by asking the group what they wanted to get out of our discussion; that made it easier for me to steer the conversation. As the conversation got underway, I quickly discovered that part of my job would include keeping the students on topic because it didn't take long before they went off on tangents. A difficulty with online chats is that it's difficult to tell how people are reacting to the conversation because there are no facial cues to reveal what people are feeling. I just had to use their replies, or lack thereof, to help me facilitate the conversation. In the end, our conversation went well and I was very pleased when the students told me that after this, they were prepared for their assignment; I had done my job. Now that this first meeting is over, I am more confident moving forward with our second meeting.


Here are the lessons I've learned after doing this collaboration:

1. Keep the time difference in mind. It sounds really simple but it's easy to think in terms of your time zone, which can make scheduling confusing.
2. Provide deadlines. If you allow people to respond whenever they like, they usually respond slowly which makes it hard to get anything done in a timely manner.
3. Keep the groups small. With larger groups, it's difficult to agree on a time that accommodates everyone's schedule.
4. There is no such as a stupid question. It's always good to keep the lines of communication open because it prevents any surprises and you're less likely to forget anything.

Glendale Community College Collaboration

My first online collaboration in Second Life took place this week with a student from Glendale Community college. I was mildly nervous going into this collaboration because I wasn't sure if I was comfortable enough navigating around Second Life. But this collaboration was actually a good one to start out with because most of the "behind-the-scenes" work was already done, which allowed me to focus on preparing for the conversation. 

The conversation that I had with my partner was an interesting one. I knew that there were issues of gender in education but I had never sat down with someone and talked about them in-depth. My partner asked me a lot of questions pertaining to stereotypical gender behavior in students that I've worked with. It was when I was answering his question that I realized that many times when I witnessed children playing, the girls were playing house or were a princess that needed rescuing while the boys played sports or they were soldiers. I had never given thought to how children play in terms of societal gender roles. The big question that really got me thinking was when he asked me if I felt I interacted better with one gender over another, which is something I haven't thought of. As a future teacher, I wanted to believe that I got along with all my students equally but as we continued talking, I realized that I identified more with girls because I "spoke their language." It was good to come to this realization before I enter the classroom because I know that I'll have to be conscious about building relationships with all my students and not the ones I feel more comfortable with. 

In the end, the conversation between my partner and I was mutually beneficial. I got to see how gender played a role in interactions between myself and my students, my students and each other and student learning. My partner was able to take his theories of gender and bias and put them in a classroom perspective. 

The Battle Over Social Networking

Does social networking have a place in the classroom? This question has been at the center of the heated debate over the use of social networking in the classroom. Some believe that social networking should be welcomed into the classroom with open arms while there are others that believe that it should be banned and never heard from again. Which way best serves our students?  

I think that a classroom that fails to utilize social networking fails to adequately prepare 21st century learners and citizens. Social networking doesn't look like it's disappearing any time soon. In fact, with each passing year, it is becoming more and more ingrained in our society. When used correctly, social media teaches students about communities, respect, organizing groups and working with others. Teachers can get students to see the value of social networking besides talking to friends and posting pictures. Not only that, but it opens up the classroom beyond its four walls. It allows students to collaborate with students around the world, which can bring learning to life. As teachers, we should be encouraging students to leverage online tools to improve and refine their learning. Banning social media teaches our students that they cannot be trusted on the Internet when they should be learning to create and appropriately manage their online identities. 

Social networking should be welcomed into the classroom but it needs to be done carefully. Before engaging social media, teachers should take an opportunity to talk to their students about what is and isn't appropriate behavior in online communities. They should also stress the permanence of anything they post online by reminding them that what they post is a reflection of themselves. It is the teacher's job to model for students how to act professionally on social networking sites. To that end, teachers can make online behavior part of their grade for any assignments involving social media. If students can learn social networking in the safe environment of the classroom, they can go on and use it responsibly in the years to come.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! This blog was created for EDT 502- Emerging Technology and Global Collaboration that I am taking at West Chester University. My hope is that this blog will become a place of learning and sharing. I am not currently a teacher but I am part of a professional learning network on Twitter, which gives me the opportunity to learn how teachers are using technology in their classroom and to talk with them about the success and challenges that they're having. As I continue to learn and collaborate more, I will share my experiences in this blog.