I love my job as the Director of Technology at the International School of Stavanger in Norway. I love the day to day interaction with teachers and students. I love working with the admin team.

I also love the network of #edtech people that I get to “work with” around the world. It’s my PLN, my “people” that I can connect with around the world that are so fantastic! Part of my personality just loves meeting new people and my PLN allows me to do that frequently. My wife, who has recently returned to Twitter after a little “time apart”, said to me the other day, “I can see why you are not on Facebook anymore, there is so much to learn on Twitter!” I smiled deeply inside and out. She’s finding her “people” again in the art world and is singing the praises of Twitter and Pinterest.

Documenting my PLN (a task we are assigned to do in this course) is both easy and hard at the same time. Twitter has been a part of my PLN for a long time. In fact I’d say that the #coetail hashtag is one that I use frequently. I used to tell myself that I had to tweet a certain number of times a week but now I just find that I naturally tweet things like this:

It’s just a natural part of how I work and learn. That’s why it is hard to document. Being asked to document a part of your daily workflow is a little overwhelming. If you are in doubt about my PLN, just have a look at my Twitter account I guess!

I find that especially through the use of hashtags the conversation is sustained, two-way. Here’s just one example of a thought provoking set of tweets with someone I have never met (via Twitter) This “chat” was about the idea of removing explicitly taught tech skills from MS and HS curriculum, something I am interested to see how/if other schools are doing successfully.

So there you have it, a little evidence that Twitter is a vital part of my PLN. So what is next for me? I’d like to be a part of a few more hosted, content-specific chats and I would like to be a little more vulnerable in my Tweets. So far I have kept things strictly work-related and I will mostly keep things that way, but I may experiment a bit with some personal/vulnerable tweets.

See you on my PLN!

image credit: http://www.stickycomics.com.

In my last post used an image of the Fail Whale just to show that I was taking the risk of the Fail Whale appearing. Well it happened. I summoned the Fail Whale.

My plan was simple yet ambitious. I wanted to get all of our faculty who did not have Twitter accounts signed up on the microblog service. Actually I had two goals. I wanted to get them all signed up but also teach them the anatomy of a tweet and how to use hashtags.

Things started out very well. I showed the classic “Book as New Technology” video which is actually in Norwegian (Our school is in Norway) with English subtitles. Several people had seen that video but many had not so it was a hit. I told them a quick story about how a teacher just this week had asked me a question about the best iPad app for mind mapping. I immediately sent out a tweet and got a reply from Jeff Dungan in Shanghai (thanks Jeff!) He had mentioned #lucidchart in his tweet and within 24 hours the product manager of #lucidchart had tweeted us both, asking for our feedback and wondering if we wanted to join the beta for the next version of the product. That the power of the network and I wanted to tell that story because people relate to stories.

We moved on to the account creation stage and things seemed okay until the fail whale appeared. His image did not actually appear on the screen but users were unable to create accounts. You’ve been there I’m sure. One person near me raised their hand and showed me their screen, “It’s asking for my phone number?!?!” I looked at their screen and sure enough there was a screen that asked for their mobile number so that Twitter could send a verification SMS. My director raised her hand and asked me for help too. She did not have her phone nearby so I told her she may not be able to make an account this afternoon. Then some people who had their phones entered their mobile numbers and got an error on the screen. Twitter was freaking out because so many people were trying to create accounts from a single IP address. I knew I was going to have to change plans.

I switched into demo mode. A few people had been able to make accounts and several people were already on Twitter so they could follow along but the majority of the faculty just watched, listened and learned while I dissected a tweet and explained hashtags. We had limited time so the switch to demo mode actually worked out quite well.

In the 24 hours since this event I have actually heard all positive feedback. I think sometimes that we are our own worst critic and while I felt bad about the faculty that were not able to create accounts, they seemed mostly unphased. Some people have actually told me they went home and completed the process of creating their accounts. I have had 5-6 teachers follow me on Twitter (and I had not asked them to do so). It was not a failure after all!

Next week I will email our faculty again and just give them a little reminder of the Twittersphere. I’m not going to let this little setback, well, set me back. I have limited time with the entire faculty and I could have just given them the “app of the week” type of session. Instead, I have given them the equivalent of a full time personal PD assistant! I did not feed them fish, I taught them to fish and I’m pretty excited about fishing with them now and in the future.

image credit: http://webtreats.mysitemyway.com/

As a director of technology I wanted to look at a final project that could influence both the students and teachers as well as parents. My project is a social media education program for all three of these groups. Let’s start with the parent piece.

I believe parents will benefit from understanding both how their children use social media and how they themselves can use social media. I plan to work with our very active parent association to coordinate morning sessions where parents can learn about how students here at the International School of Stavanger use social media. We’ll cover the biggies: Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and whatever else seems appropriate.

The second part of the parent program will be about helping parents get personally connected via social media. Our school overall has been undertaking a major initiative this year to own our social media presence. By showing parents how to use social media in a lab-style environment we will actually have a double win. Firstly we will win parents over with this type of “free education” session. Second, we will be creating patrons who can benefit from the social media the school is using to connect with the greater community.

Now on to the teacher piece. The parents and students are easier because in our community many parents will participate when open events are announced and the students, well the students are in class where we have greater control of the content they are exposed to. But the teachers are busy teaching and keeping the school running so in many cases they are the hardest to connect with. I plan to get 40 minutes in an all-school meeting where I can get the entire staff and faculty on Twitter. Before this meeting I plan to promote Twitter via email and in whatever meetings I can get into so that there is some kind of foundation for the “Twitter Creation” meeting. I’ll use our Technology Champions and those people that already have and use Twitter accounts to help during this time.

Once I get the teachers on Twitter then I will continue to connect them with each other, then lead them into their own PLNs. Of course there are many many facets of social media that they need to learn, but the scope of this project with the teachers will be limited to Twitter unless there is a demand for more training from a particular set of teachers.

My focus with students will be in the 8th – 12th grades as they are the grades that will be 13 years or older, which allows them to create the accounts necessary to learn and practice using social media. My goals with the students will be to move their view of social media from just connecting with friends and entertainment to a broader understanding of how they can share with the world. I have an idea to begin in the art department as those students would have obvious content (media) to share. I know that every subject area will have something to share in the end but the art department will be where I plan to begin.

I am unsure whether I will ask students to create personal or school Twitter accounts. I know that especially in Norway there are certain legal implications of each option. If you have any ideas on this please comment below.

So my final #coetail5 project is pretty ambitious but I am very excited about the impact it can have on our school and the greater community. I’ll touch base again later when I have made some movement on the various parts of this project.