I just read the BEST book.....let me tell you about it!

The research is clear, students need to read, and they need to read a variety of genres.  And, the research is also clear that we (adults and children) are not reading enough.  And of course, it is  clear that middle school students value the opinions of their peers almost more than anything else.

Keeping all of this in mind, we can find some ways in which technology can promote the love of reading and help students to find books that they, too, will really love.  Here are some ideas that require different amounts of time commitment from students and teachers.

Smaller Time Commitment- One Minute Book Reviews

Sometimes less is more.  In one minute book reviews, the students can use a tool like Flipgrid  to quickly share what they thought about the book.To get ready for the book review, you'll want to provide some kind of template, or sentence starters  that the students could use. They can prepare thoughts about: 

• A quick overview of the book (no spoilers)?
• An idea of who the main characters are?
• What genre of literature it is
• Why they liked the book? 
• "If you liked....you might like this book"
• How the book made them feel

The students could also show the cover of their book, draw a picture of the book, or show some illustrations of the book (if they book has illustrations).

Here are some examples of book reviews that other teachers have tried on flipgrid. 

• Koalas Book Talk (Elementary students share their favorite books from the library)
• National Reading Month Book Talks- 6th grade book talks 
• Summer Reading Book Talks - Middle School 

Medium Time Commitment - Book Blogs 

Just as students can speak about their books, they can also write about them.  Book blogs are similar to book talks on Flipgrid, and you would use the same type of question prompts.  

Probably the most comprehensive resource I've found to help prepare students for book blogging is by Julie Esanu, Amy Blaine, and Greg Chapuis who created an entire lesson plan, including rubrics and templates to help you prepare the students for creating book reviews. 

Here are some examples of  book review blogs that students have made. 

Bryan Book Blog- Written by 4th and 5th graders at Bryan elementary school 

Mr. Boylen's 7th Grade Book Blogs

Longer Time Commitment- Book Trailer 

Another fun way for students to entice others to read a book they enjoyed is by creating a book
trailer.  A book trailer works exactly the same way as a movie trailer, in that its goal is to encourage the viewer to be more interested in learning more about the book, while at the same time not giving away too much information. 

Book trailers do take a little more time, because they  require the students to storyboard and plan their trailer, search for fair use pictures, and then create the actual trailer by combining words, music, and pictures.  That said, if done right, the results can be very powerful! 

Here are some resources that you can use when creating book trailers. 

Book Trailers for Readers- This is a great place to start, with lots of tips and resources!

Book Trailer Planning Document

Book Trailer Planning Document

In the past years, students here at Holmes have created book trailers, here are some examples from former Hornets!

An authentic audience and purpose

The beauty of all three of these options is that they can serve a real purpose and have a real audience.  Students often come down to the LMC saying that they don't know what to read,. The blogs, videos, and trailers all can be used to help others choose books that they might like. 

There are various ways that we can use these resources and get them to the audience they deserve. 

• Link them to the end of the "What's the Buzz" (our weekly update that gets sent to the students)
• Tweet the links to the blogs or videos, or trailers so that others can see them
• Embed links to the blogs, videos, or trailers into Alexandria (Library Management Software)
• Create QR codes (especially) for the Flipgrids or trailers.  These QR codes can be left at the end caps of sections in the school library, or even sent to the public library for them to use in the Young Adult section
• Connect with other classrooms using #comments4kids and Kidblog connections. 

Clearly, there are plenty of options for the students to say "I just read the best book, let me tell you about it"!

What is this Twitter Thing?

With the Twitterverse chirping about the big change from 140 characters to 280, I thought this might be a good time to review what "this Twitter thing" is and why it can be so powerful in schools and education.

What is Twitter and how can it help me? 

Twit

Lurking 

I spend a lot of time on Twitter, simply scrolling through tweets to see what catches my eye.  But in order to do that, you need to figure out who and what to follow.  Luckily there are tons of ways to discover accounts.  Take a look at these blog posts:

• 50 of the Best Education Accounts to Follow 
• 15 Top Educators to Follow on Twitter in 2017
• Top 10 Twitter Accounts to follow for Education Technology 

These should give you an idea of Twitter power users; soon you'll notice who they follow, which will help you to grow your "personal learning network". 

In addition to following individual accounts it is very useful to follow hashtags.  Hashtags are basically category groups of tweets, so by following them, you will naturally find accounts and users to that would be of interest to you. Some of the hashtags that I think are the most useful for us as middle school teachers are: 

• #21learns -  This is the hashtag that most teachers in our district use when posting.  It gives you an idea of what is going on in the district.
• #artsed
• #mathed
• #socialstudies
• #scienceed
• #middleschool
• #wuos  (Writing Units of Study)
• #connectedmath (The CMP Hashtag)

Each of those hashtags help us to create connections with other educators and educational resources across the Twitterverse.  And, if you're looking for even more educational hashtags to follow, you can check out this Complete Guide to Education Hashtags on Twitter

Connecting 

The next step after lurking, bringing it up a notch, is connecting.  There are lots of different ways to connect, both for your own professional learning and to bring in resources for your students. 

Twitter Chats-  

Many of the same groups that were listed above as a hashtag, also run Twitter chats at certain times.  These chats are real-time conversations in which educators with common interests discuss topics or ideas that are pertinent to their classroom.  Some of the most active Twitter chat hashtags are:  

• #edchat- Tuesdays from 12:00-1:00 and 7:00-8:00 EST
• #engchat- Monday from 7:00-8:00 EST
• #sschat - Mondays at 6:00 EST
• #msmathchat- Monday 9:00 EST
• #mathchat- Thursday 8:00 EST, 8:30 PM EST on Mondays-
• #mschat- Thursdays 8:00 EST
• #pbischat- Tuesday 9:00 EST

And that's just some of the chats that you can find online, if you want to dig even deeper you can follow this up to date list of education chats. and this video gives you some tips for chatting in these groups.  An additional benefit of these chats is that even if you miss them during their "live" time, you can follow the discussion later by just searching for the hashtag. 

Connect Students with the Real World

In addition to using Twitter to enhance your own personal learning network, you can also use it to allow the students to learn from real experts by tagging the accounts of experts or companies, or posting students' work and sharing it with someone who might be interested. For example, if a student is writing about the time they met a favorite athlete, you could tag that athlete with the hope that he or she might respond. Or, if you are learning about the constitution, you can have the students come up with questions for your local member of congress and tweet him or her with the hope of getting a response. 

Sharing 

Finally, Twitter can be used for sharing.  Both you and your students can share expertise.  When students create projects or blog posts, Twitter can be a tool used so that a real audience can see it.  My favorite hashtag for getting a real audience is #comments4kids.  This is a hashtag that was set up so to it wold be easy to find posts looking for an audience.  

We are all experts in something.  As you are teaching each day, consider sharing what you are doing.  Take pictures, share screenshots, upload videos, and be proud of what you are doing each day.  Try to use a hashtag that will help find you an audience, (for example #21learns if you are in District 21).  Twitter is an excellent way to "show and tell" what you are doing each day so others can learn from you too!

Ways to share!

One of the most powerful ways technology can be used to is to share information with a "real audience"or with each other.  There is a myriad of  ways that  we can allow students to do this, but here are a few fun ways for students to share with each other, with their parents, and/or with the world.

Flipgrid

Flipgrid is a a website where teachers create "grids" of short discussion-style questions that students respond to by creating videos.  The site lays out like a message board, and students can see respond to the discussion question and then even comment on other students' responses.  It offers a free account option, which allows you to have one "grid".  I found that to be enough, because you can have multiple topics in one grid.

When I first heard about Flipgrid, I tried it out with a general question, just to see how it worked, and I found that it was very easy to set up for the teacher and easy for the students (and teachers) to respond to.

Uses

I see this as a great tool for students to use when explaining their answers.  It could be given as an option for students who have a hard time with writing, or with students who need to work on their oral language skills.  It could also be a fun tool to use in an foreign language class or even with instrumental music students who could share parts of a song. 

There are tons of resources out there that help you to think of ways that Flipgrid could be used in your classroom. Here are some links to get you started!

17 Ways to Incorporate Flipgrid Fever in Your Classroom

10 Ways to Enhance Math Lessons with Flipgrid 

Flipgrid Ideas (Padlet) - You can add your own ideas too!

Final Tidbits

Being a middle school, I do see a students sometimes a little hesitant to video record themselves.  I know elementary school teachers that have much success with the video recording, so it might be just a question of getting them started.  Flipgrid gives you the option to set the visibility to public or just classroom, so perhaps if the students knew that the topic would only be seen by their classmates, it might bring down the apprehension. That said,  I think that once they try it, they will definitely like it. 

Flipgrid allows interactions such as commenting, emojis, "likes" , and drawings, all of which can be fun, but also a little dangerous if you have a "spirited" group of students.  Fortunately, all of these options are controlled in the teachers dashboard, so you can set up the grids at the level you are comfortable with.

Flipgrid provides a teacher and student guide that help you get started, as well as varied resources!

Padlet 

Padlet is basically an online bulletin board that students can collaborate on.  It is a resource that has been around for a long time, but fortunately the company seems to keep updating and adding new features.  With the new updates, the benefits mentioned about Flipgrid apply, but because students don't have to record their actual image, they might be a little less hesitant. 

Here are a few of the newest updates, and a few of my favorites: 

Templates:  Sometimes it is nice to start with a "fresh slate" but sometimes there is no need to recreate the wheel.  Padlet provides various templates that can get you started with. 

Reactions:  Students can vote on different posts. For example, let's say you were having the students brainstorm on ideas for an investigation, or for a field trip. Students could "like" or vote on these options.  Obviously, since everyone can see these votes, you would have to set the expectations so that students are kind and fair in their voting. 

Formats-  In the past, when we have used Padlet, students have been able to post all over the bulletin board.  Sometimes students would cover up other students posts, or maybe a post would be off screen.  By using layouts, it is easier to control how and where students post their ideas.  There are wall, canvas, stream and grid layouts, and you can choose the layout that works best for the activity you are doing.  Finally, the new "shelf" layout is perfect for word sorts or tables! 

There are numerous updates to Padlet, all of which are listed on the official Padlet Blog.

Uses

Padlet can be used as an online bulletin board in any of the ways that you would use a physical one.  From brainstorming, to collaborating, to vocabulary boards, the list goes on and on! Looking for some more ideas? Here are a few creative ways to use Padlet for teachers and students!