Bryce Ridgen teaches high school Social Studies and Math and regularity has his students participate in Social Studies Twitter chats. His students each have a student Twitter account (for school purposes only) where they can routinely participate in chats with experts, ask questions, post selfies and descriptions that summarize what they learned about a specific topic, along with many other things.
Along with being a great way to assess learning (formative assessment), there are many opportunities to teach online etiquette and generally how to have an online presence. This is something that I firmly believe in - teaching students how to have an appropriate online presence. What better way than to actually have them participate online in a somewhat "controlled" environment with the teacher as a moderator?
One of the really important things about using 1:1 is giving students choice on researching topics and showing what was learned. This helps to foster creativity in the students, as well as makes it easier to differentiate to different levels or abilities of learning.
Using videos, vines, and applications like storify, popcorn maker, thinglink, and chatterpix are things students can create to show learning, and applications like padlet and schoology are ways for students to contribute to discussions, post their ideas online, and gain feedback from other students and from the teacher.
All in all, having a classroom with a 1:1 ratio for students and computing devices opens the door for so many possibilities for the teacher and students. As long as technology is used as a tool, not an event, the students will benefit from it. I hope to be able to use technology in this regard in my classroom.
I'll leave you with a great video made by one of Bryce's students:
I really like the idea of giving students choice, I was the type of student who would run with the possibilities if we were given the chance, so I think this is a great way that students can explore and create amazing ideas! Great post Kelsey!
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