Tweeting During Class? No Way!

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I recently received a question in a comment from Jesse Scott (@twowaystairs) about a topic I have been meaning to write about for some time. He is wondering how I Tweet while in the classroom.

I find it amazing that you, Jabiz, can tweet and teach at the same time because, while I love the Twittersphere and understand and appreciate what it has to offer, I find a huge disconnect when I try to tweet in the middle of things happening. I feel like I disengage from the moment, for a moment, while I post a tweet and things lose momentum. More so when I’m part of the conversation but even when I’m not, I feel like I’m missing part of the conversation and not giving people their due respect. How, in your opinion, do you keep that balance?

Great question! Before I get to it, however, let’s consider the larger context in which the question is set. Really he is asking about being distracted by alternative conversations during real time events, in this case with the use of Twittr, at a PYP exhibition or some other conference. The short answer, I think, is that we are all engaged and distracted by different thing and at different levels. If something is truly engaging then no amount of white noise can disengage us from it.  Even if we are Tweeting it, we do so in the hopes that it is enhancing the event and adding a layer of complexity. But sometimes it is just best to shut it down and allow ourselves to be truly absorbed.

For me, like most people I assume, it is difficult to turn off my brain. My constant Twitter stream of thoughts is always on. So even when I am experiencing a talk or presentation, my brain is firing on all cylinders. I find it useful to house these thoughts in my Twitter stream. Partly because I just want them stored somewhere, remember Twitter was originally called a micro-blogging site. I still see it as short form blogging or public note-taking. For better or worse, Twitter has become my online public stream of consciousness. Since I cannot turn that off in the midst of reality, I choose not to turn it off on Twitter. I Tweet what I think, when I think.

This is nothing new, before Twitter I always had a small journal into which I would scribble these random thoughts. The beauty of life now, is that my little black journal talks back! This talking back, however, is what I think Jesse sees as distracting. And he is right, it can be. When the back channel becomes more interesting that the main event, what is one to do? Here is the scene, you are at a keynote speech and the conversation about what is being said is more engaging than what is being said! What do you do? Not sure I have an answer for that. Hate to sound like a broken record, but these are personal negotiations about balance and priorities. I  believe in giving people respect when they present and affording them as much of my attention as I can. As I do more and more speaking and presenting, I expect that much from an audience. That is a personal thing for me. Even at meetings, I try to have my laptop down, when I know the person speaking wants my attention. I see so many teachers, the same ones who always complain about distracted kids, checking Facebook at a staff meeting when they should be doing something else!

So in the case of the PYP exhibition, the question is does Tweeting add to the experience? Or is it a gimmick to appear to be using technology? Not sure I can answer that, but if technology feels wrong then it usually is. Put down the tweets and give those kids the wonder and engagement they deserve.

Sorry abut that tangent…back to how I Tweet in class. I have touched on a lot of the points already, so I will refer back to them in the next few paragraphs. I know many people are a bit aghast and put off when they here that I usually Tweet my way through all my classes. “How can you be teaching and Tweeting at the same time.” or “The kids deserve your full attention.” or “If you have time to Tweet then some kid is not getting enough attention!” Fair enough.

To start I guess we need to define some basic terms: teaching, classroom, attention. I don’t feel that my students are getting a traditional classroom experience with teacher talking at them and delivering content. There are seldom times when I need undivided attention. More and more often,  I am realizing that whole group delivery of instruction is a waste of time. So much of my actual teaching comes through 1-1 chats or small group interactions. It is when the kids are busy with actual work or creation or production that I sit with them and re-teach whatever it was I taught at the beginning of class. So I usually deliver major concepts or skills or ideas at the start of class. Laptops down. Old school. Listen to me. I am the sage on the stage baby! I know some things about (X) and I want to share these ideas with you. I know how to do (Y) and you need to listen. Of course there is discussion and hopefully an open line of communication. I never Tweet during these times. These lectures usually happen at the beginning of a unit and I try to keep them short.

Once kids have listened, it is time to get on task. This is when laptops flip open, mine included. I have very few, if any rules, about who can use what and where they should be online during class. I allow cell phones, sometimes kids need to text. Sure go ahead. You need to check your Skype, fine, as long as you stay on task and do what you should be doing. I seldom have any issues with kids being distracted, because when the time comes to have their laptops open most kids know the task and are into it before I say a word. A five minute text is no big deal. If someone were to spend the whole time texting during my class, then we would chat. This has never happened.


cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by mgjefferies

Kids usually work alone or in groups and I hover. I stop and sit and talk. I redeliver content. I make sure the skills are there. I chat about things that are relevant. I stop everyone, “Laptops down please.” I make a point to the whole group. Back to work. I go to each group, each student and check for understanding. There is usually music playing. Instrumental Beastie Boys is a nice touch.  We had Korean Pop yesterday. The mood is light.

During these times, Twitter is just another student. It sits there. As I hover, I share my thoughts or Tweet what kids are saying or doing. Remember I cannot turn of my thought;  I have some of my best ideas when I am with kids. Sometimes people respond, if it is not taking too much energy I respond. If it will take me too far from my kids then I say, “I am in class catch you later.”

We would never tell a teacher not to have Google open during class, because it is too distracting. I see Twitter in the same way. I like that my kids see I am on Twitter. It is not a secret. I want them to know that we have the power of a huge network at our backs. If they have questions I don’t know I say, “Let’s ask Twitter.” The other day, kids were editing their films and they needed footage of an old school bell. I suggested we ask Twitter. An hour later Adrienne sent us a 45 second clip of a bell at her school. I want kids to see that things like this are possible. I want them to understand the power of Twitter.

After a few seconds hovering over Twitter, I go back to a group that is working. It is a system that works for me. Now I am lucky to work at a school that is 1-1 with small class sizes and great kids. They work hard and are usually on task. I like to think I design units and assessment they find fun and engaging. If I find that things are not working, I improvise and we shake things up. I do not sit at my desk Tweet away, while kids fill out worksheets!

Are there times when I do get too absorbed with something that is happening on Twitter? Sure. I would be lying if I said no, but that is where that balance and personal negotiation comes in. I move away. I stop. I learn to control myself. Isn’t the biggest lesson we could model for kids. How to know when to be present and when to connect someplace else?

This post is already too long, so I will not talk about why I do not really use twitter with kids. That will be coming soon…

A Day in the Life- The Making of Time

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“How do you have time to all of this?” This is the first question most people ask me after I give a talk or present a workshop on networked learning and the use of technology. By “all of this” they most likely mean: blogging, checking RSS feeds, Tweeting, or any other of the million things I most likely prattled on and on about during the previous hour. To them my life must look something like this:

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by porschelinn

Or maybe this:

There is probably some truth to both images, but the reality is quite different. I have written before about what ubiquitous daily technology use looks like for me…

…She said, “Yeah Jabiz but you seem to spend a lot of time on the computer. I want to have a life.” I am paraphrasing what she said. I know this teacher fairly well, so I didn’t take offense to her comment. I am quite certain that she wasn’t implying that I don’t have a life, and this post is not a defense of my behaviors, but it really got me thinking, do people really think that using technology is a choice to be made that opposes having a life? Do people think that tech-geeks choose the vacant lifeless draw of their screens over “real” life?

You can read the post in its entirety here. Scary to think that it is over three years old, but still somehow relevant. In this post, however, the one you are reading now, I have tried to do things a bit differently. Sure you can repeatedly read about the many ways that people use technology as a tool to enhance their daily lives, but sometimes it helps to actually get a play-by-play visual.

That is what I tried to do. I have created a fifteen minute film about my daily workflow. Exercise in ego? Maybe. Come on Jabiz who the wants to watch fifteen minutes of your daily life. I know, I know, but making the clip has been a very eye-opening experience for me. Perhaps it is a bit much, but I hope that people find it useful when thinking about their own technology use. I hope you can use it, or parts of it, to help talk to your staff about different ways that people use technology. It is not the model, but a model to help you think about the ways you organize your day.

“We don’t have time, we make it.” Nothing can be more true in the digital age, when there is so much pressure to do so many different things. Kudos to anyone who actually watches the whole thing. I hope it gives a balanced and accurate view of a typical day in my life. I’ll meet you on the other side for some reflection and closing thoughts.

As I was watching myself go through the day, I couldn’t help but think of a passage I recently read in a post by Alan Levine:

I find even the terminology strange– to “go online” as if it were a place. Do we sit down on the couch, press the remote, and say we are “going TV”? Maybe that’s a poor analogy, but using the “go” makes it suggest we are having some sort of out of body experience.

Part of this seems historic, because in the previous decades of networked technology, we had to go to a place- first it was some special building with a mainframe computer, then maybe a computer lab, then as microcomputers hit the home front, we were picking ourselves up from the living room, and going to some other room to be connected.

But with tablets, ipads, internet connected phones, we can go online almost where-ever we are.  It’s my personal contention that a suggestion of ourselves moving from “offline” to “online” is a false binary construct. We are who we are, period. Read more

I have no idea how to answer when people ask me how much time I spend online. In a sense, I am never offline. Like Alan mentioned, the web is not a place I go; I don’t go online, I live online. We can discuss how this type of connection can be problematic and unhealthy in the comment section below, but I hope my video and previous post illustrate that I am not having a consistent Clockwork Orange experience.

I am a father, a teacher, an artist…blah, blah, blah, you have heard it all before. The point of this video and post, if there is one, is that how we incorporate technology into our lives is a very personal experience. Your school is most likely demanding that you use more technology in your classroom, but until you are using technology in a comfortable way for you, in your daily life, it will not make sense.  The comfortable way is crucial. No one is saying that you need to get up at 5:00am and check Twitter. You simply need to find how much time you can make to try new things and adjust your time appropriately. We all want balanced, rich, interesting lives, so we should try to find out how and when technology enables these ideal lifestyles, and when it inhibits us from experiencing reality. Finding this balance is an ongoing personal negotiation. It does, however, have large implications for how we view and interact with students, as they are in the process of their own negotiations. I recently wrote more on that here.

After making this video, I am finding places that technology is infringing on my life too much for my taste. I can see that some of my no screen times are becoming tainted with the occasional Tweet, or checking if I “missed anything” glances at my phone, but even your friendly neighborhood tech coach is still figuring it all out. Taking inventory of every minute of my day has been a great way to see where my negotiations are headed.

I would love to see more videos by people who read this blog. Would be cool if we could post them all somewhere for others to watch. After all, the lack of time is the number reason most people give for not being connected and part of a network, so let’s create a bank of models for people to look at for ideas.

Feel free to take this conversation anywhere you like, but I would love to hear what you have to say about how you balance your life. When and how does technology become intrusive? When does it enhance your reality?

Final note: You maybe asking why I am never marking or planning. The main reason is that I am currently in what I like to call the “meat” of my unit. The planning has been done and kids are working hard. I hover and poke and prod and get kids on task, but the planning and teaching are all but done, and the assessment has yet to begin. In a more stressful marking period, I would use my time at home to mark (sometimes till midnight) or some time during school. I also try not to assign too much work that is marking heavy. I balance out long essays with assessments that are easier to mark. I rarely give homework. (I find it useless, more on that topic in another post) I find if I give kids less busy work, I have less busy work to monitor and mark. I try to keep most of the work I expect from students to be mostly longer unit project based assessments.

All music from CCMixter:

Feeling Dark (Behind The Mask) by 7OOP3D
Goodbye War, Hello Peace by teru
Kids then Age by Fireproof_Babies
Myxtery by Pitx

Be More Interesting!

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Disclaimer: This post is not directed at any one person or even group of real people. If anyone from the lunch room is reading this, I am not referring to you. I enjoy our lunch time chats tremendously. This is simply a rant and a lashing out at forces that may or may not exist. There is an obviously a flip-side to these thoughts, one which I tried to  articulate later in the comments.

Face to face relationship are overrated. Yup I said it! I am sick and tired of everyone placing so much value on the real world and face-to-face connections. I am tired of being forced to believe that just because I have to deal with people in a physical space that subsequently the connections and relationships I form are more genuine and authentic than the relationships I create online. Have you ever noticed that it is usually people who have never made strong bonds with people online, who bemoan the fact that we are somehow losing our humanity, simply because we no longer have to suffer through small talk and chit chat.

“Kids are losing social skills because they are connected to their screens.” They cry. Really? And what social skills are we talking about exactly? I am tired of pretending that the pre-screen generation had somehow mastered social etiquette, just because they weren’t distracted by these pesky screens.
“Do you ever talk to real people in the real world?” I want to ask. They are often scary. They come in all shapes and sizes. They crowd your space. They spit when they talk. They say the weirdest things and fidget uncomfortably when they realize they have little in common with you. Their eyes dart back and forth nervously as they lie. They pretend to be people they are not. They wear masks. Oh yeah and they are sitting right in front of you. So what? The fact that they grew up without screens does not make them any less annoying or awkward than the generation of kids growing up today.

We are collectively suffering from Golden Age syndrome. We are fooling ourselves into believing that just because we didn’t have screens, we raised generations of people free of angst and social awkwardness. Correct me if I am wrong, but even as we sat around campfires singing Kumbaya, the world was still filled with rape and murder and dishonesty and general disregard of social skills. The lack of screens is not what will bring people together and help us build communities. It is not Grand Theft Auto or the fact that junior is on the phone during dinner that will somehow create world peace.

Social skills, the generic term we throw about which I assume means the ability to authentically and effectively communicate ones thoughts, charm, wit, and humor, the ability to look people in the eyes and show respect, have little to do with a person’s ability to look away from a screen for five minutes. It has everything to do with how we parent, educate or govern. Building sustainable, peaceful, socially skilled communities is about the verbs we choose to focus on….not the one noun (Screens)

While it is unfair to romanticize the past, it is also dishonest to vilify the present. I am tired of people thinking that when I am looking at my screen, I am mindlessly entering some bizarre world where my mind is made numb and that I become a zombie. The opposite is actually true: Most of the time, when I am staring at my screen, I am creating! I may be editing a photograph that reflects a certain shade of my soul that no chit-chat in the lunch room will ever touch. I might be recording sounds to add to a digital story about a poem I wrote. I am most likely chatting with friends on different continent about things that matter to me, instead of nodding my head mindlessly as you prattle on about some topic that I have been forced to sit through just because we are in the same room. You want me to look away from the screen? Be more interesting!

Are you mad enough yet? Have I rubbed you the wrong way? Are you bursting with a bundle of refutations? Good. That was the point. Hyperbolic and instigative? Of course. I know there is value in face-to-face connections. Of course there is a visceral element of life that no screen will ever touch, but I am here to say that we can no longer romanticize the pre-screen past or vilify our current experience.

It is not fair for us to assume that our students are disconnect morons, who will drool at the next dinner party we force them to sit through, hoping they will impress our friends with their social skills. I remember being ten years old and curling up in the corner of my uncle’s house for hours with one of these:


cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by unloveablesteve

Why? Because I was ten years old and social skills were not my priority. How about we teach kids when and how to put the screen down, instead of devaluing what they do when they are on the screen. How about we share with them the things about the real world that will help them shine. How about we show them how to merge the two worlds. How about we help them learn to express themselves in ways that absorb others. There are hybrid worlds that exist between tech and the real world:


cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by giulia.forsythe

That is where I want to play. I for one am choosing not to insult my students when they use tools I do not understand. I will ask them to show me. Explain to me what they are doing? Why they are doing it? I will offer them vistas beyond the screen, but I will not devalue how they socialize or connect or create, simply because it is not the way I did it. How about we stop referring to screens as an ailment to be cured and start looking at how they fit into our lives- All of our lives! You might be surprised at what we find.

Giddy Enthusiasm

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Sometimes things are happening in your class that keep you excited at all hours of the day. You see kids fully engaged during class time, and BIG AND- they are participating in an ongoing month long project outside of class as well. You watch as pieces of this project come trickling in at all ours of the night, on weekends, during other classes. You know you are not meddling and teaching too much; you can feel your scaffold strengthening as the students produce content that exceeds what you thought they were capable of.

I am engulfed in such a unit! It is wonderful. It has little to do with tech really, but the tech knowledge, skills and tools we have in place are making everything run smoothly. When people ask me how I use technology in my classroom, I am always a bit stumped. I use it the same way I do in my everyday life- to gather, create, share, capture life around me with a community of people.

In grades six, seven and ten we are in the middle of a viewing text unit. Grade six is watching How To Train Your Dragon, grade seven is watching E.T. and grade ten is watching The Wall. We began by discussing the idea of reading a film.  After deconstructing each respective film, we looked at various types of shots. Last week we moved onto looking at scenes as shots and students have begun to create their own 8-12 minute films.

It was at this point when I realized that we needed a quick detour into photography. I wanted the kids to realize the similarities between basic photography concepts and film making. After a quick lesson on how to take Great Shots, we began our Daily Shoot! This experience is what has me so excited. Over the weekend I was in Hong Kong for a conference, but I was thrilled to see at least 80% of my students participating in the exercise. They would go to this page, find the prompt, take their pic and post (with tags and titles) to their appropriate page.

Some highlights:

I am hoping that they will see that shots like these will make great openings to their video scenes. We have already discussed music and camera movement to heighten suspense and creating mood.

The Posterous gallery has been great as it teaches them how to sort and tag their pics, and it allows everyone to see what everyone else is doing.

Giddy is the best word to describe how I feel about this unit so far. Giddy and proud and excited and …..well seems like there are many words. But, what does the tech look like? How can I teach other teachers to do this? Not sure. We are using iMovie, Keynote, Posterous, cameras, blogs. We are filming, shootings, tagging, writing, drawing. It is hard to know where the tech starts or stops. It is hard to know if this is Art, English, or Film. We are simply caught up in a storm of creating. Unaware of where we will end up, we use whatever tools we need, we learn skills as they become necessary and hopefully we will have some pretty amazing films to share, but if not…if the films are only mediocre, we already know we have learned so much. And that is all that really counts.

Film Tips From Grade 7

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My grade seven class is in the middle of a viewing text unit, where we are deconstructing E.T. We began by looking at different types of camera shots. After we spent a few hours outside, gathering different types of shots, we began to make tutorials. I wanted the kids to experiment with different tools and to blend the media.  They created a standard Keynote slide with the information (Type of shot and purpose for using it) and inserted an example of the shot as a movie file. They recorded the slide and imported it into iMovie where they added the voice-over commentary using green screen.

I like the idea of trying new things and techniques that spark their imagination on what can be possible. The sound in this clip is terrible, even though we had a microphone, but it is a taste of what is possible. The problem is this task was just one step in this unit and we have to move on, so we were not able to perfect these clips. I just wanted to give them a taste. I want kids to see that they control the tools, and they can usually create whatever they imagine. I want them to understand they don’t need to be limited by what they think a tool is used for. Overall, not bad. I was pleased with the comfort that they could understand instructions like this:

  • Create a slide in Keynote which includes a movie clip.
  • Add a green screen voice over in iMovie
  • Share your clip with me in a shared Google Doc collection called Shots

Next, we are identifying various elements in the film E.T. which include camera shots, but also lighting to establish mood. They have isolated their scenes and are adding a Directors Cut commentary over the scene. Those should be ready soon. Final step is creating their own scene using the techniques they have learned.