Tag: Social Media

Collaboration, iOS, Social Media

New #twittclasses exchange!

Lissa Layman

I was excited when @Mister_Street asked if I wanted to collaborate! My @rvhfrancais3 students were also pretty excited. They were disappointed not to be able to tweet in real time (time zones!) but hopefully they will realize how cool it is tomorrow when they see responses from @3eVictorHugo! Like my French 1 students, they will be filling out a google form using iPods. We will be tweeting from our class account and I will be discussing their mistakes with them before sending them off. Our hashtag is #rvhclv and you can find the archives here.

My French 3 class has been very interesting this year. This is my 3rd year teaching and the 3rd year in a row that I have had 5 of the students. Another 7 of them I have taught previously (French 1 or 2) and only 2 of them this is their first year in my class. This has added an interesting dynamic to the class. They know how I run my classroom and usually all is good in our world (we have developed great relationships!). However I have been struggling with them lately – they’re almost TOO comfortable (with me and each other)! It has also been very interesting for me to hear their opinions – many don’t think going 1:1 is worth the money, they want paper and pencil, they don’t like twitter…. Basically they are resistant to change! They’re only high school students and already so jaded! Part of me is sad that they are a block class so I won’t have them next semester…another small part of me will be ready to let them go.

1 Two 1, Collaboration, Google, Professional Development

Pros, Cons & Web 2.0

Lissa Layman

The teachers that have been selected to go 1:1 in January must complete 20 hours of professional development. We started yesterday morning. Our first assignment was to add at least 3 blogs to our google reader (done that!). Our second assignment was to create an introduction using google presentations. Here’s mine. (I couldn’t get it to embed 😦 )

Would love to hear any other positives or negatives to going 1:1!

Our 3rd assignment is to pick our favorite web 2.0 tool and share it. I got some really great ideas on twitter yesterday! Always looking for more to share with other teachers 🙂
Mme Nero (@MmeNero)
LeydenASCI (@LeydenASCI)
Technology in MFL Classroom (@LeydenASCI)

There are just so many to choose from now I’m a little overwhelmed. But I’m excited to explore all of it! Merci!

Chromebooks, iOS, Social Media

Life Happens

Lissa Layman

Life has been hectic lately. I don’t have time for much of anything extra. I’ll be at a Working on the Work conference in Georgia Sunday to Wednesday, but hopefully I’ll have time to get some more posts up. Too many good ideas, not enough time!

In the meantime, here is the video my district did about our Twitter project with M. Davignon.


p.s. My name is Lissa (not Lisa) – as in Melissa without the ‘me.’

Collaboration, iOS, Social Media

Twitter = Success!

Lissa Layman

We just finished our conversation with @IDEM_in_English 🙂 My students were interested to discover that they are at a boarding school in Montpellier. We tweeted in French and @freddav’s students tweeted back in English.

Here are the logistics (from our end):
*I moderated student tweets using our class account (@rvhfrancais1) and the hashtag #rvhsidem.

*I displayed the twitter feed on my computer connected to the smartboard so that students could see what was being tweeted.

*My students used the class set of iPod touches to submit their tweets to me using this form.

*Their responses showed up in a nice, organized spreadsheet.

*Using my second computer (not connected to the smartboard), I copied and pasted their tweets with their name and the hashtag into twitter. This worked really well and allowed my students to take ownership of their tweets (they loved it when the French students responded directly to them). I was able to add their tweets quickly and I didn’t have to do a lot of typing. If i noticed that students were making mistakes, I talked to them about it. If we they wanted to respond to a tweet but didn’t know how to in French, I helped them find the words. We did tweet some in English since they’ve only been learning French for 5 weeks.

*Before the conversation started, I set up a Twapper Keeper so that our hashtag was archived. This will be helpful in the future so that we can go back and see what happened in our first conversation!

My students not only were able to communicate in French with students in France, they were also able to learn about their culture. I hope we’ll be able to collaborate again so that both groups of students will be able to grow 🙂

Update: We even made the news in France!

Collaboration, Social Media

Connecting Students through Twitter!

Lissa Layman

When I first heard about Twitter, I wasn’t interested in joining. I thought it was a bunch of celebrities complaining about their lives (stupid!). Then about a year and a half ago, my husband convinced me that it could also be a powerful tool for educators. I had no idea what a PLN was and I was clueless to the amazing resources just a click away.

At the beginning of last year (fall 2010), I created class twitter accounts and a facebook profile so that I could communicate homework and other assignments with my students. {Side note: I strongly believe in meeting my students where there are (i.e. Facebook & Twitter). More on social networking & education for another post!} I also experimented with my French 2 students and twitter. They read an article and then we had a class discussion about it. Afterwards, they created twitter accounts and we used the hashtag #rvhfr2 to tweet about what they thought. The local news station ended up running a story and my students were wonderful.

Since then, I’ve tried to invest more time in my PLN (@mmelayman and this blog). I’ve gained a lot from other educators around the world and this summer I decided I wanted my students to be able to learn from people around the world too (they’re learning a world language after all!). I knew that I wanted to use twitter to find other teachers to collaborate with but I was procrastinating….until I found @TiceChampagnole and twittclasses! I was so excited to find a list of teachers in France and Canada that use twitter that I stopped being lazy and immediately contacted him. He suggested I contact @freddav and his class – @IDEM_in_English.

SO…my super exciting news is that on Thursday our classes will be tweeting together! His middle school class and my high school French 1 class will be “talking” on Thursday morning between 8:40 and 9:30am EST. My students have only been taking French for 5 weeks, but I think this will be a great experience. My students will be tweeting in French (for as long as they can with the vocab they know) and his students will be replying in English. There are still some details to be worked out (hashtag, individual vs class account, what to talk about), but I’m really excited about the possibilities of this collaboration. How COOL that my students in South Carolina will be communicating in real-time with students in France? Blows my mind 🙂

Update: This morning I told my students about what we’d be doing tomorrow..their minds were also blown. Their homework tonight is to come up with questions they can ask the French students (in French and in English). They seem pretty excited! After a trial and error this morning with twitter (student access is limited in our district), I decided to use my class account. My class will be tweeting from @rvhfrancais1 (I will be moderating their questions and responses). Our hashtag will be #RVHSIDEM.