Net, working.

This week has been busy so far. I presented a training session on Using Twitter and Edmodo in the Classroom with Jason on Monday. The plan to have participants backchannel using Cover It Live failed, intially, when we couldn't get the chat, which Jason had embedded in our session wiki, to load. Jason made some quick adjustments, and we ended up using Today's Meet instead. This worked well, and led to some good discussions among participants, including the ever-present fear that students will post something innappropriate if given the opportunity to backchannel, especially anonymously. Later in the session, Cover It Live was working again, and many of our participants were happier with the way Cover It Live requires all comments posted in the chat to be approved by the moderator before they appear in the discussion. There is certainly a balance between convenience and control, between the freedoms of a site that allows students to post in real time vs. the security of a site with added control on the teacher's end.

Participants used the backchannel to discuss questions and respond to short video clips. We asked them to think about how many more students would be able to participate in a classroom discussion when everyone has the opportunity to backchannel as well as raise his or her hand to comment. Participation and engagement are greatly increased over traditional discussions where only one speaker at a time is able to contribute.

The teachers who participated in the training saw immediate use for backchanneling, and also seemed comfortable using Edmodo for classroom communication. Many created Edmodo accounts during the session. Jason gave an overview of Twitter as an educational network, showing his Twitter stream and the great collection of educators from across the country whose posts he is able to read and with whom he is able to collaborate.

The Academic Integration Coaches also visited two schools so far this week, Knapp on Monday and Nash on Tuesday. As we have been doing with every elementary school we've visted, we worked from the faculty lunch room during all lunch periods. The purpose of these visits is mainly to meet and make connections with the teachers, to set up future meetings, collaborations and co-teaching opportunities. Thanks to advance messages to the group telling them we would be in their schools, we were also able to answer some specific questions teachers brought to us.

The connections we've made with teachers in training sessions and during our school visits has been leading to constant requests for our help through emails and the help request on our website. As of today, we've logged 165 instances of tech integration work with teachers, and have worked with hundreds of teachers in our after-school training sessions.

In fact, if you are reading this blog, you might be interested in having one of us out to your classroom to work with you and your students to integrate technology into your lessons. What can we do for you?