#EdCampOnline Experience 10-26-13 #ce13

Yesterday I had the exciting opportunity to participate in the first ever EdCamp to be held online. If you are not familiar with EdCamps, they differ from traditional professional development experiences in that they are organized by the participants on the day of the event. This EdCamp video gives a brief introduction to EdCamps, and this TEDxPhiladelphia talk by Kristen Swanson gives a much more in-depth story of how the EdCamp movement came to be and what it seeks to provide to educators.

I have watched many EdCamps from afar by following their hashtags on Twitter while they are taking place, but have never had the opportunity to participate in one in person myself. I am excited that EdCamp Austin is coming to my area very soon, but I was also pumped when I heard about EdCamp Online and registered for it right away. After being a part of yesterday's event, I am even more excited about the in-person experience I will be having in just a couple of weeks!

To preserve the experience, I created a Storify using the Tweets I sent out during EdCamp Online. They include general getting organized Tweets, information from the session on engagement in online learning that I took part in, and the wrap-up. Also included is evidence of some technical issues that were bound to happen with a large endeavor like this one.  I've embedded the Storify slide show below so you can see what my experience was like. You can also click here to view the Storify in a different format. 

I hope it will help inspire you to take part in an EdCamp experience at your first opportunity!

NOTE: When Storify shut down in May, 2018, I exported my Storify collections to Wakelet. Below is the original collection of Tweets I saved during Edcamp Online in 2013, now hosted on Wakelet.



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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

My Favorite Videos For Describing Educators' Professional Use of Twitter

A snapshot of the information flowing
through my Twitter stream today.

I have been actively using Twitter for professional learning for a little over four years. It has become my most valuable professional learning resource during that time.

As a result of the tremendous value I've gotten from it, I've written about and presented on Twitter quite a few times. You would think that based on my extensive use of the tool and the number of times I've presented formally on it, words which describe its value and use would trip easily off of my tongue. You would be wrong.

I am often at a loss for words when I am trying to briefly describe Twitter as a learning tool. Especially to someone who is highly skeptical of "that Twitter thing" anyway or who has only ever used Twitter to follow celebrities and friends for social purposes. For whatever reason, I have difficulty with the initial task of helping them see Twitter for the powerful learning tool it can be when used specifically for that purpose.

Fortunately, I am not alone in my quest to convince others of the value of Twitter for professional learning! There are many educators out there who are passionate about spreading the word, and a few of them have made videos which help me compensate for lacking in the ability to initially describe what the heck using Twitter for professional learning looks like.

In case you are ever in the position of trying to describe Twitter for personalized professional development, here are my favorite videos for introducing Twitter to teachers. I find that after sharing videos like these, I am able to better move the conversation forward and share tips for finding and sharing quality content on Twitter. I hope these videos are helpful to you as well!

The Videos

Twitter in D123 - A professionally done video by a school district, showing how staff members including teachers, tech coaches, administrators, and the superintendent use Twitter for professional growth. I love this video because it is under 2 1/2 minutes long and serves as a good intro to discussing Twitter.


Twitter in D123 from OLHD123 on Vimeo.


Re-Imagine Your Professional Development Experience...With Twitter! - Created by elementary technology teacher and edtech graduate student Victoria Olson, this video gives a wonderful overview of the use of Twitter for PD. As I write this post, this video is only a week old. I came to know about it because Victoria asked permission to use a graphic I had created in her video. I particularly like how Victoria breaks down three stages of Twitter participation into the Lurker, the Participant, and the Author. I love, love, love this video, and I can't wait to use it with educators who want to know more about Twitter!




Why Tweet? A Personal Journey Through the Twitterverse - University of Alaska professor Skip Via  created this video a couple of years ago to address what he saw as resistance to use Twitter for professional learning among higher education faculty. I relate to this video because it describes an experience similar to mine, where I left Twitter after trying it for the first time because I just didn't get it. Dr. Via also incorporates some graphics in his video which help explain how the connections you make on Twitter expand your scope of learning and influence.




Obvious to You, Amazing to Others - This video is not directly about Twitter, but I like to show it before the end of every gathering where I discuss Twitter for professional learning. From my earliest days of teaching, I never understood why I had to go ask other teachers for ideas all of the time. I would see evidence of projects they were doing with their students, wonder about them, and then just march right in and ask if I could know more. The teachers were never reluctant to share, but I always had to ask first. I exposed my own students to numerous impactful learning opportunities because of those conversations. This video helped me understand; we do things because they are obviously smart/right/good to us, but don't think it's worth sharing them with others because they make so much sense to us. Educators often wonder what they have to offer to other educators via Twitter (or any other medium). I use this video to help convince them to just share what they are already doing, because the rest of us need to know.

Now It's Your Turn!

Please take time to share in the comments below any other videos you have used when talking with educators about Twitter. Or, share a way that one of the videos above was helpful to you!


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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Create Short Animated Videos for Learning With the Tellagami App

Through a teacher and an educational technologist in my school district, I've recently discovered the Tellagami app for creating short animated videos. The video below is only the third Gami (the app maker's term for a finished product) which I have created. I was able to learn the app very quickly this weekend in preparation for introducing it to secondary fine arts teachers from my school district this morning. I won't take time in this post to teach you how to use Tellagami, because the app gives you a very nice tutorial the first time you launch it. There are also good instructions included on the Tellagami website. 

Check out my Gami (it's only 26 seconds!), then scroll down to learn more about what I like about the app and some ways I think it could potentially be used in teaching and learning.

What I Like About Tellagami

• The app is free  for both iOS and Android mobile devices, which makes it ideal for both 1:1 and BYOD learning environments. I created the Gami above on my Galaxy Note II Android smartphone.
• You do not need to create an account to use Tellagami.
• The app has a few choices for customizing your avatar, which helps keep a focus on the final outcome of the product.
• There are a few backgrounds to choose from in the app, but you can also doodle your own background,  select a photo stored in the photo library on your device, or take a photo while you are creating the Gami to use as a background.
• There is an option to directly record your voice or type what the avatar says and let Tellagami add the speech with a computerized voice.
• The maximum length of a Gami is 30 seconds, which lends itself to succinctness.
• There are numerous ways to save your Gami, including directly to your device as a QuickTime (iOS) or MP4 (Android) or sending a link by email without saving to your device.
• An advantage of sending by email without saving is your Gami gets uploaded to the web, and you get a link that you can Tweet or share on Facebook or in a text message. You can follow the link to get an embed code if you want to post the Gami on a website. This is the procedure I used to add the Gami above to this blog post.
• An advantage of saving the Gami to your device is you can then upload the movie file to a website of your choice such as YouTube or a blog. Here is the Gami I created as a demo during a fine arts teacher inservice this morning, saved as a a file to my iPad, and then uploaded to YouTube.

Ideas for Using Tellagami in Teaching and Learning

• Any teacher or staff member could create a Gami to add to their website or blog with a brief welcome/introduction message.
• A foreign language teacher at one of our high schools lets students speak via Gami because it is less intimidating than standing up in front of the class.
• Create a public service announcement (PSA) on a health, wellness, or safety topic.
• Create a book teaser/trailer to get peers or students interested in reading a book.
• Explain a problem, process, or procedure. This Gami uses a screen shot created with the Educreations app to explain a math procedure.
• Create a news report recounting the important facts of a current or historical event.
• A possible advanced use could include recording several 30 second Gamis and then editing them together into a longer video. This might be a way to get students to create a collaborative presentation, with each student recording a Gami for their part.

What Other Ideas Do You Have?

Have you used Tellagami before or had an idea spark from the examples above? If so, please share your ideas in the comments, and please include links to any Gamis you have posted on the web!

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.