Fakebook is a great way for users to demonstrate their understanding of a person, place, thing, event, etc. The way users use Facebook to tells stories about themselves, places they’ve been, accolades they’ve achieved, events they’ve experienced, and thoughts they have is how Fakebook can be used to describe all these things in an educational space that is fun and engaging for users. Fakebook.com provides a template almost identical Facebook. Students can upload images, video

Who remembers pen pals? For those that don’t or those who’ve never heard of it here’s a quick synopsis of a pen pal from my school experiences. I distinctly remember having two sets of pen pals. My first pen pal was another student at a school across town from the school I was attending in Fort Riley, KS. During my second grad school year, our teachers tasked us with writing a letter to some kid at another school that we would one day meet. I don’t remember how I felt about i

A study at Mahasarakham University in Thailand, surveyed 31 lecturers about their attitudes towards using social media for instructional use in their classes (Seechaliao, 2014). The results showed that YouTube, Facebook, and Slideshare are used regularly in instruction (Seechaliao, 2014). In addition, lectures believed social media sites were valuable for instruction, especially videos, podcasts, and wikis (Seechaliao, 2014). The lecturers also believed social media was valua

During professional learning workshops, I often ask participants how they learn new things today. The top responses are always Google and YouTube. Another quick survey I take is by asking participants to raise their hand if they do not use social media. Normally in a room of 25-30 participants 2-4 participants raise their hands. Unknowingly, almost all of them use social media in some form or another on a regular basis. For instance, most agreed to using YouTube to learn some

In the year 2007, I worked as a teacher for a school district that was extremely conservative and had a no social media policy for district business. During that year, I remember a student asked me if I was on Facebook. I told her no, knowing that I was. She kept pushing the issue while I kept ignoring and redirecting her. Eager to solidify her claim, she called me by my Facebook nickname I used for my profile. My heart dropped and I immediately loss my breath. I was worried

I recently read an article about a study on college students' use of Youtube to support academic learning. According to Alexa (2015), Youtube is the third most visited website in the world (as cited by Moghavvemi, Sulaiman, Jaafar, & Kasem, 2018). The study explored students’ usage and their perceptions of Youtube’s effectiveness as an academic learning tool. Out of 312 respondents 71% stated they used Youtube for academic learning purposes (Moghavvemi, Sulaiman, Jaafar, & K

Educreations is on of my favorite teacher tools to use to model for students. Its an online interactive whiteboard that allows users to record and screencast their work, such as think-alouds and other procedures. Users can annotate on the whiteboard in real-time and audio record as their writing. Users can also upload images to be annotated on as shown in the Math example below. Also, this is a great resource for students to independently or collaboratively model their thoug

Lets Recap is a digital chat tool where the user can post a question and participants, like a class of students, can respond by using a pin to join the group. Participants can respond with a text or video post. Responses are posted immediately after submission for other participants to see. Additionally, users can create journeys that allow them to provide additional resources, such as images and videos to provide context and introduce topics for questions participants will a

I created this site over a year ago and the development of it has been slow to say the least. I have allowed everything possible to get in my way from school to work to laziness. These were all excuses I used to hide from my truth. The reality is I was worried about peoples' perceptions. Its a strange notion to me when I think about it. I'm on several social media platforms where I share personal content and have developed an online reputation that has changed over the years.

Linoit is a digital sticky note website where users can post memos, create list, share photos and more. Users can collaborate with others in real time and immediately read their submitted post. In this post, I will provide four ways to use Linoit to enhance classroom instruction. Back channel Linoit is a great resource to use as a back channel/digital parking lot for students or participants of a professional development workshop. For example, teachers may use a canvas page f