Facebook and Summarization

The difference between using twitter and facebook is that Facebook statuses can be longer than 140 characters.  But keep in mind that facebook statuses should not be paragraphs of information.    Facebook posts are written to express your thoughts or opinions to you friends so a post should not read as if it is a report written for your teacher.  Most students have a facebook account or have at least seen or heard of facebook.  While using facebook is not advisable, you can take advantage of it's draw to motivate students in your classroom.  This can be done with one computer and a projector or with multiple computers.

 Here are some ideas to have students summarize with using facebook in mind:

• Write a status update from a historical perspective or from the perspective or a character in the novel or an element in science


• What would Columbus have posted after landing in the New World?


• What would Robert E Lee’s posts been during the Civil War?


• What would Peeta have posted after the first day in the Hunger Games?

 Other ideas using facebook:

• Respond to a status update – Show a sample status update on the board and have the students respond to it from different points of view:
  
  
  
  • Read King George’s status update after the Boston Tea Party – how would Samuel Adams have responded?
  
  
  
  


• RolePlay - have students/classes assume different characters and interact with each other in a facebook like environment such as edmodo - or in a forum within moodle.

Ways to play this out in the classroom:

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  • Roles assigned to each class period - As a class look at the postings on the screen and decide the best response
  
  
  • Roles assigned to different teachers  - Interact with different classrooms as a class - partner with teacher who teaches your same grade level/subject in the building or find classes outside of the building who will assume a character adn interact with your classes
  
  
  • break the class into groups and have the groups assume a character and decide together how to interact
  
  
  • Roles assigned to different students
  
  
  
  

 

Resources to make this happen:

• Create a non-interactive fake facebook wall for a character http://myfakewall.com/


•  Secure Social Networking Site for schools - http://www.edmodo.com/ - Create your own facebook like environment and have kids use the characters name as theirs to make posts.

Twitter Part 3: Taking it a Step Further

So far the talk has been about composing a summary statement.  What about having a conversation?  Twitter is a place where ideas can be thrown out to the world and others can respond.   So how can be that used in the classroom?

Ideas for twittering in the classroom:

• Role Playing Tweets: Have the class take on the role of a famous person or literary character and then compose tweets from that point of view.
  
  
  
  • What would the framer's of the constitution have tweeted while negotiating the Bill of Rights?
  
  
  • What would the states have tweeted as the Union began to fall apart leading up to the Civil War?
  
  
  • How would Scout have reported on the trial in To Kill a Mocking Bird?
  
  
  • Choose a pivotal point in a story and have the characters send out tweets  reflecting on the events and/or predicting events to come
  
  
  
  


• Class Discussions:
  
  
  
  • Summarize lab results
  
  
  • Discuss examples of a scientific theory in real life
  
  
  • Discuss math in real life
  
  
  • Class could discuss a novel, an event, or topic
  
  
  • Have people choose sides of a debate and send in tweets to promote their side
  
  
  • Students could ask questions about the unit being studied and others could post answers.
  
  
  
  

Scaffolding (easing it in)

• Have the entire class create the tweet and post it.


• Have each class period take on a character and post from that point of view to the other class periods.


• Tweet between classes in the same class period.  If Mr. Jones and Mrs. Smith have classes 2nd period studying the same topic, the teacher could have the chat on the projector screen and as a class you can decide what messages to send.  This could also include classrooms outside of your own campus.


• Divide students into groups and have the groups compose statements and responses to send.


• Have each student assume a character and post responses

Tools to Make it Happen:

• TodaysMeet - temporary chatroom - free no account needed: http://www.todaysmeet.com/


• Edmodo - a secure social networking side for schools - http://www.edmodo.com/


• Twiducate - a twitter network for classrooms - - http://www.twiducate.com/

Twitter and Summary - Part 2

So yesterday I shared the idea of using 140 characters or less to summarize on paper.   If you would like to continue this thought using technology here are a few ideas:

• If you want to create the look of a actual tweet check out:  http://www.classtools.net/twister/ - enter in the given info and it creates apage that looks similiar to an actual twitter page.  This could also be a great writing prompt.  have the Tweet posted on the screen and have students respond to the tweet. 


• If you have access to computers check out TodaysMeet:  http://www.todaysmeet.com/ - you can create a temporary chat room and have the students go to the url and enter their summary in the chatroom.  each response is limited to 140 characters.   This way students can see each other's messages.   You can decide if you want the chat room to last a few hours, a few days, a week all the way to a year.   No email address is required.  Chat rooms can be saved in transcript form to have a record of who said what.

Summarization and Twitter

Summary is a skill that crosses into every subject area.  As a history teacher I wanted to have kids summarize, but I needed some tools to get started with.   As an ITS I am still looking for ways to help kids learn to summarize that is relevant to them, which is what brings me to the topic of this post:

  

Twitter and Summary

 

Background on Twitter: Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging site that lets informal communication happen in small snippets…it is like e-mail, but you have followers that you can keep up-to-date with "tweets" of 140 or less characters. 

Over time twitter has been adapted to meet the needs of the user including the "@" symbol to reply to someone else's tweet or a hashtag "#" to add labels or tags to tweets to allow users to follow topics or to find tweets more easily. #summaryidea

Ask students to compose a tweet to summarize a concept they have learned or a passage they have read in 140 characters or less. Can they do it? Can you do it? I've attached a template that contains 140 squares that can be used to compose the summary statement.

   Summarize in 140 characters or less

 Think about this activity as a ticket out the door activity with a note card you turn in on the way out or a sticky not you place on the door for others to see and review.

Getting Social - in Social Studies and Language Arts

After a week at TCEA, I came home with lots of new ideas.  Here are some of them - Introducing social networking into the classroom, safely.  In this prezi i ahve a few ideas on how to integrate Twitter and facebook types of applications into the social studies and language arts classroom.



Resources:  http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2009/01/teaching-with-twitter.html;   http://www.myfakewall.com/w/Ben+Franklin_1

Web Wandering Wednesdays - Videos

60 Second Recaps - http://www.60secondrecap.com/ - provides sixty second clips about various parts of classic literature.  Nice way to give an overview of what is being read, or to inspire students to create their own 60 second overview of a book they are reading.



Life in a Day - http://www.youtube.com/lifeinaday?x=explore - View videos of a "life in the day" or people from around the globe.   The day is July 24, 2010 and people were asked to video their lie and submit it to this project on Youtube.   The websitea has a nice global navigation that allows you to watch videos from all over the world.  Here is a video explaining the project far better that I can:

Web Wandering Wednesday - Jan 5

This week's web Wandering Wednesday is focusing in on a few maps that track diseases:

Google Flu Trends:  Google tracks who is searching for information about the flu and then maps that information to estimate where the flu is hitting around the world.   Click on the United States and you can see more information about each state.

Health Map - health map brings together information from various resources to try to pinpoint outbreaks of infectious diseases around the world.  You can hover your mouse over a pin on the map and see what disease is currently affecting the area and any relevant information on it including links to the sources of the information.