Connected Leaders: Tools to Grow Collaborative Conversations

Last week I attended NCTE, and couldn't escape the power of social media in growing my professionalism. As soon as I arrived I was happily catching up with colleagues from across the United States that continually push my thinking.  Gone are the days when we have to feel isolated in our classrooms.  While I still learn so much from my colleagues next door, my professional community has grown exponentially as a result of social media networks, blogs, and connected communities.

What do connected leaders need to consider?

As our district's elementary literacy instructional leader, I have come to also appreciate the power of social media and other digital tools to grow collaborative conversations across our fourteen elementary buildings.  While we are still finding our voice as a collaborative community, here are a few tools I find essential in communicating and growing a collaborative conversation.

Three tools I can't live without:

1.  To Share Our Story:  A Blog.  Every group needs a hub.  A digital hub helps us connect our community, curate resources, and build our narrative. Our literacy coaches are working to grow a literacy website.  On our site we share links, professional development opportunities, resources (still growing), as well as a weekly blog post.  (Need a space?  Try Weebly.)

2.  To Connect Our Community:  Twitter (or some social media outlet).  Our district has a growing number of classrooms on Twitter sharing their stories of learning and connecting with others.  We use Twitter to share professional learning opportunities, tweet blog updates, and pass along information helpful to teachers.  Additionally, we use Twitter to tell the story of literacy in our district by retweeting the celebrations of classrooms across the district.  Twitter allows us to learn from one another and step inside each other's classrooms.  (Our account:  @HCSDElemLit)

3. To Curate Links & Information:  S'more.  S'more works in a way that is similar to a newsletter, pamphlet or brochure.  I find S'more to be perfect for sharing resources around topics or for particular groups.  It is easily shared on social media or via email.  Often I create a S'more for a group conversation and then as others contribute ideas and resources we can easily add them to the original S'more.


More Possibilities:

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DigiLit Sunday: Have a Hub

When I first began taking steps toward digital literacy with my students I realized there were a few challenges; among them getting six year olds to a myriad of spaces.  When you are six typing in a URL can take a bit of time.  It was in these early days that I realized the need for a central location to make it easier to get to the places we needed to go.  It was then that I began to create, what I like to call, a "hub" for our classroom community.  In its first days, the hub made it possible for students to learn one link that would take them everywhere they needed to go.  It was possible for students to access this site from school or home.  It wasn't long until I realized there were other benefits to a hub in connecting our learning community to others.

Why Have a Hub

• Centralize Links:  As a classroom community we use Kidblog, VoiceThread, Educreations, Shelfari and other sites for learning.  Knowing how to get to all of these sites can be challenging for young learners.  To help them to locate spaces without having to wander the internet, I found creating a hub to house our important links makes it easier for students to get places.  Additionally, families and other classrooms can easily locate the work we are doing around the internet.  
• Build Connections:  Using a Twitter account (@DarbyCreekReads) to connect with other classrooms, I found having a hub helped other classrooms find out more about the work we are doing.  Additionally, during events like the Classroom Slice of Life Challenge, we have a common place to host our participation.  
• Inform Parents:  The possibilities of the internet can make it nearly impossible for parents to keep up.  Locating spaces and finding information can be a challenge if it is housed around the internet.  By including a page specifically for parents I can keep parents informed of important information.  This page not only includes important updates, but also allows me to share links, embed Pinterest boards for parents, and share other useful information in one central location.  

Choosing a Host Site 
There are many sites available to host a class hub including Google Sites, Blogger, and Edublogs (more possibilities can be found in this post from Education Technology:  10 Excellent Platforms to Create Your Classroom Website).  When creating a hub, I chose to use Weebly (here's why).  Weebly combines flexibility and ease of use.  I'm able to create webpages around topics or common information.  

Here's a very informal tour of my Weebly hub:

Each Weebly site allows multiple pages.  In addition to creating webpages with fixed information and links, blog pages can also be added.  As a classroom teacher, I have found Weebly to be the perfect place to host our class blog.  Using the class blog for shared writing of posts with students in our community allows us to share important information about our learning, but it also provides opportunities to understand the decisions we make as writers of blogs.  In addition to a blog page, our Weebly hub often houses Symbaloo collections of links for learning, how-to videos created to help when similar questions continue to arise, links to other school accounts, and much more.  Having a hub is the first step in growing a community that easily extends beyond classroom walls.

Other Hubs I've Created:
Weekly allows you to host multiple sites under one account which has allowed me to create and host other hubs for centralizing learning conversations.  A few hubs include:

• Merely Learning Together (my old class hub)
• #cyberPD (in process to connect #cyberPD community)
• New Voices, New Audiences (a site to collect and share links about digital literacy)

Sharing, Connecting, Collaborating

Today I am joining Deb Frazier, Primary Perspective, to talk about connecting students.  We're excited to be having a conversation with colleagues in our district about "Sharing, Connecting, Collaborating" with a more global audience.

Weebly: Our New Class Home

I know lately I've been raving about web 2.0 tools that make my teaching life easier.  I'm afraid today isn't any different.  This year I've moved my class webpage to Weebly.  It was awhile ago that Katie DiCesare shared her use of Weebly with me.  She talks about it here at Creative Literacy in Kids Stay Connected.  I knew this school year I wanted to work toward collaborating more with other classrooms around the world.  I thought we needed a place we could share with others, but I wanted to maintain a secure space for sharing photos and information with parents.


After meeting with Katie to see how she was using the site, I realized that Weebly would provide much flexibility for use in the classroom.  It has a variety of features that make it a useful tool for sharing and collaborating.  Weebly allows me to:

• design my layout
• link to sites using buttons
• add photographs, slideshows, mosaics
• embed YouTube videos (safely, students are kept on Weebly site)
• embed html codes (useful for Shelfari, etc.)
• attach documents
• add text and format
• arrange pages 
• have secure/public pages
• and much more!

Here's how we're using the site:

1. To share general information:  Our home page, Merely Learning Together, allows me to share general information about the learning in our classroom.  At this time, this page shares information with parents and others hoping to find out more about the learning going on in our classroom.
2. For shared blogging:  We are using our blog page on Weebly to share weekly news about our learning. At the end of each week students write a "family news" page to share at home.  On this page they share something important they learned, a new accomplishment, or big news from our week.  We use individual news to discuss all we have learned and accomplished in the week.  The class then chooses one topic to share "with the world."  Together we plan, write, and add photos to the post.  Discussing our posts and photo choices provides opportunities to discuss internet safety.   This shared blogging opportunity is helping students to learn about the purpose, planning, and composing aspects of writing a blog.  I think this will make our transition to Kidblog much easier.  Having an open blog also allows us to share our learning with others classrooms we are joining in learning. 
3. For collaborating with other learning communities:  Weebly has worked well for centralizing our learning to share with others.  I've been able to add links to Twitter, Shelfari, and other collaborative platforms we are utilizing to work with other classrooms.  We are able to follow other classrooms to find out what learning is happening around the globe.  
4. For students:  One of the things I really liked was the way Katie was using her webpage to for parents AND students.  Her students were linking to sites from her webpage.  The class webpage was a "home base" for everyone and the information that needed to be shared.  I've created Symbaloo content mixes to provide extra learning opportunities for students.  I was able to embed these mixes into our site to allow students to use these links for learning.  
5. For secure sharing:  By purchasing Weebly Pro (something I do not normally do, but was well worth it in this case), I now have the ability to have public and private pages.  I've added pages to our website that remain secure.  These pages are perfect for sharing photos and work examples with parents while keeping safety in the forefront.  
6. To share important dates with families:  Embedding a Google calendar into Weebly was a snap.  I'm able to select the calendar(s), I'd like to share on the site and the calendar automatically updates when I add new events.  
7. For individual student pages:  Weebly includes the opportunity to add student accounts.  As the class becomes more tech-savvy, I look forward to the possibility of having students add their own webpages to our site.  These pages will allow students to attach files, publish digital writing pieces, link to blog posts, link to VoiceThread work, and other examples of work to illustrate their learning journeys.  

I'm sure there are many more ways I will discover I can use Weebly.  It's been well worth the investment so far.