Apace of Change

by Damian Bariexca, Ed.D.

Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category

Shifting My Sharing

Despite the periodic blog posts heralding the death of RSS, I remain a huge fan of the syndication format (not familiar with RSS?  Check the wiki).  I have been an avid user of Google Reader for nearly five years now, and I use it daily to aggregate and read, at last count, nearly 200 blogs, education-related and otherwise.

Until recently, one of my favorite features of Google Reader has been the ability to “share” (read: publish) interesting articles to my own personal RSS feed, which I cross-published to my Twitter account and on a sidebar feed on my portfolio website.  Additionally, Google Reader users could subscribe to each other’s Shared Items feeds right in Reader, which was a great way for me to read the posts my friends found insightful or useful without having to rely on Facebook or Twitter, where they would be too likely to be overlooked due to the high signal to noise ratio.

This past fall, however, Google saw fit to remove the sharing function (the generic nature of which allowed users to publish to just about any service) and replace it with a “Share to Google+” button (which forces users to use their social networking product to share stories).   This turned an incredibly powerful, relatively open publishing platform into yet another walled garden, a move I (sort of) understand from a business standpoint, but one that frustrated me immensely as a user.

Despite Google’s shortsightedness, I’ve still been able to rely on RSS to help me concoct another solution for when I want to share interesting articles from my Reader.  I have repurposed my Delicious account to be my surrogate Shared Items feed.  If you would like to read the articles I find interesting, you can now find them at Delicious.com/damian613 (or if you use RSS too, subscribe to the feed).

So what happened to the existing items in my Delicious account, the special education/school psychology related bookmarks (that I also published to my portfolio website)?  Simple – I moved them all over to Diigo (RSS feed), with tags intact.

If you’re interested in either my shared bookmarks in special ed/school psychology or the blogposts I share periodically in the areas of technology & education, please feel free to drop by my Delicious & Diigo accounts, or better yet, subscribe to the RSS feeds (while the format is still alive!).

TL;DR: Moved some of my public stuff around:

The End of Isolation

In September, I was very proud to have my first contribution to a peer-reviewed journal published.  When a friend asked if I had publicized this on my blog, I paused, then realized that in the hubbub of the start of school, I had completely forgotten.

So anyway, here goes: in “The End of Isolation”, my co-authors (Eric Brunsell and Elizabeth Alderton, both of the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh) and I explore how K-12 classroom teachers use Twitter as a means of professional networking (the research behind the article was the basis of Eric’s and my conversation at Educon 2.3 this past January).  More from the abstract:

The researchers surveyed and analyzed the public Twitter feeds of classroom teachers to determine the specific purposes for which teachers use Twitter. Study participants also completed surveys dealing with social networking. The K-12 educators in this study engaged in true dialogue, where evidence of actual conversation occurred in Twitter over 61% of the time. Additionally, over 82% of the time, the educators in this study chose to follow other educators or content experts related to their field of teaching so they were able to create a personal learning network meaningful to their professional needs. Analysis of data shows that a majority of tweets were educationally focused and were primarily in the categories of practice/philosophy, questions, and sharing of resources. Additional studies looking at how other online learning communities may be used as professional development venues would be beneficial and add to the knowledge base of online learning, professional development, and learning networks.

The article appeared in this past September’s issue of MERLOT’s Journal of Online Learning and Teaching; the full text of the article is available here for your review.  Finally, a huge THANK YOU to the participants in our survey; we truly could not have done this without you.

Reference

Alderton, E., Brunsell, E., & Bariexca, D.  (2011).  The end of isolation.  MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 7(3), 354-365.

Get Your #Chat On

It was a little over a year ago when I wrote about the weekly Twitter-based chat on special ed issues founded by Deven Black and originally moderated by me, #spedchat.

While I can take or leave the real-time chat format on Twitter (it can be maddeningly difficult to keep up with if too many people are on at once, and the 140 character limit is, well… limiting), I’ve found that hashtags are a great way to toss resources or questions out into the ether and ensure that interested parties (i.e., the people who regularly search for the hashtag) will see them.  It becomes a public archive of both discussion and links to resources, and I find that use of hashtags more valuable than the live chat in many cases.

With that in mind, I’ve started following two more education-based Twitter chats I thought I’d share with you:

  • #psychat: Moderated by high school Social Studies teacher @mrpotter, this chat focuses on issues pertinent to teaching psychology.  While I no longer teach (high school, anyway), I hope to be able to contribute from my current perspective as a school psych.  Live chat takes place Wednesdays from 8-9pm Eastern.
  • #1stchat: Moderated by @CYarzy, this chat is primarily for teachers of first grade (see their archival wiki here).  I don’t work with students this young, but I am following the chat because I’ve got a slightly more personal stake in it: my son started first grade earlier this week!  Live chat takes place Sundays from 8-9pm Eastern.  (And yes, there’s also a #2ndchat, #3rdchat, #4thchat… I stopped searching after #7thchat).

Of course, the #spedchat live chat continues to run Tuesdays from 8:30-9:30pm Eastern.  The torch has been passed to the next generation of moderators & organizers, and judging by the enthusiasm and participation of recent chats, they’re doing a fantastic job.

For more education-related hashtag chats on Twitter, see this Google Calendar by Sarah Kaiser.

A Very Special #SpedChat

It hardly seems like it’s been over eight months since Deven Black and I hosted the first #SpedChat discussion of special education issues on Twitter.  Since then, the weekly Tuesday night chat (8:30pm EST/EDT; please join us!) has developed a core community of educators and parents, given birth to a wiki of special ed resources (courtesy of Matthew Vannice), and been ably taken over by moderator Chris Vacek.  This coming Monday, May 9, it will also host its first “big name” guests – former Chancellor of DC Public Schools Michelle Rhee and current DCPS Deputy Chancellor for Special Education Dr. Richard Nyankori.

The aforementioned Chris Vacek has already posted a comprehensive overview of the whys & hows behind Ms. Rhee & Dr. Nyankori joining the #SpedChat regulars, so I won’t re-invent the wheel; please read his blog for background information and a list of potential topics for discussion.  I, for one, will be very interested to see how the discussion plays out in this unscripted venue; as Chris states, this is an open, uncensored forum in which Ms. Rhee, Dr. Nyankori, and the rest of us will be participating.  Suggested topics are there only to provide some basic structure; the participants will determine the direction of the conversation.

Please join us by following the hashtag #spedchat on Twitter, starting at 8:00pm on Monday, May 9.

Please Join Us For #spedchat

And thus was born #spedchat.

Please join us on Twitter on Tuesday, 31 August at 8:30pm Eastern.  We hope to make this a regular weekly event for educators (of all disciplines, not just special ed teachers), parents, students, and all other interested parties to discuss issues pertinent to special education.

We follow in the tradition of similar Twitter hashtag-based chats such as #EdChat (general education discussion), #SSchat (Social Studies), #BlackEd (education issues pertinent to the Black community), and #Engchat (English education).  To participate, all you need to do is log in to Twitter and search for the #spedchat hashtag using Twitter’s search engine or a client such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite.  This search will show all the tweets with the #spedchat hashtag; from there, all you need to do to participate is include the #spedchat hashtag in your comment (see the example of my tweet above).

What will we discuss on Tuesday?  The potential topics are:

  • How can parent-teacher relations be improved?
  • What do grades mean in special education?
  • Is inclusion working for general and special education students?
  • How do we get general education teachers to understand? (the current leader in the voting)
  • How have school budget cuts affected special education?

You can vote for your favorite topic here; the poll closes around 1:30pm Eastern the day of the chat.

Please join us on Tuesday for what promises to be a lively discussion.  Of course, big thanks to Deven Black for organizing and developing the #spedchat concept.