Today we finished optimizing our site for use on most popular mobile devices. While traditional browser users will not notice a difference, mobile users will receive a streamlined site that still contains all of the key features. As mentioned earlier, this is an overdue design move. We believe this will provide a better experience for our users that prefer to visit EDBuzz on their favorite mobile device and help us move into the future.

Take a minute to check out the experience and let us know what you think, both good and bad. We’re anxious to get your feedback and suggestions. If you like what we’re doing feel free to friend us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter (Shawn/Daryll).

This is the perfect time to look back at 2010. Several events stand-out in 2010. Here’s a quick walk down memory lane.

Shawn’s post Using Facebook to Improve School Communication continued to be of great interest. The great reception of this article led to several opportunities. One of the more interesting of these being chosen as guest contributors to Clara Shih’s revision of The Facebook Era (2nd Edition). Our collaborative rewrite of this article provides a streamlined guide to leveraging the communication power of Facebook for schools. The Facebook Era (2nd Edition) continues elaborating on the phenomenon of Facebook and its implication in all areas of life (business, education, and leisure) and is a great read that we recommend (Note: We have no financial interest in your purchase, we just like it!).

In March EDBuzz.org delivered a very well received conference session at the 17th annual California Charter Schools Conference Web 2.0 for Teachers. In this session we highlighted several current Web 2.0 tools and illustrated their benefits for both teachers and schools. In addition, teacher’s and administrator’s were excited by our examples of their successful implementations.

In June, teachers were urged to look at the 2009-2010 school year and reflect on their craft. The popular article End of School Reflections provided a process for teachers to assess their performance. Identify opportunities for change, and create a growth plan.

2010 has truly been a great year here at EDBuzz and we look forward to the next year. The shear amount of  innovations and entrepreneurial spirit directed at education is incredible. Implementing this knowledge and the opportunities provided will continue to be a great challenge for education as a whole.

At EDBuzz.org, we realize that our current projects have a great impact on our future direction. We would like to share the areas that have attracted our attention and energy. Both currently and moving into 2011, we are focused on a variety of projects, the largest of which include creating a new hybrid school (online and traditional classroom learning) and creating a open high school Economics course that demonstrates Layered Instruction (personalized learning path).

The hybrid school project is a joint-venture between a San Diego based education foundation and the Pollinate group. Its focus has been to deliver twice the education at half the current average price. Our focus of this project has been to identify key areas that can be transformed to achieve these goals. Among these are the teacher’s role, the way students spend their time on a topic, and Web 2.0 tools, as well as other technology tools, to better accomplish these goals. This project will provide numerous posts and opportunities for community discussion.

The Economics project focuses on three key concepts. The first is the implementation of differentiated learning and options for students. The second is to incorporate current Web 2.0 technologies to improve collaboration. The third is to provide an example of how an Open Course (available for all to be used) can be constructed and implemented. This project is ongoing and should be available to all in the second quarter of 2011.

Now it’s your turn. Where have you been? What are your reflections of 2010? In what project are you engaged? What trends do you see? Are there any goals that you would like to share? Where do you want to go in 2011? Take a minute today to join our community and share where you’ve been and where you’re  going. You can post here or reach out to us on Twitter at @darylljohnson or @sroner. We look forward to hearing from you…

Social Books Unlock Reader’s Voice and and Provide Opportunity for Conversation– The Innovative Educator

Learning Styles Theory Versus Sustained Hard Work– Steve Hargadon

New Electronic Devices Could Interest Schools– eSchool News

Netbooks All Around– Bridget McCrea, THE Journal

Top Ten Free Resources for Digital Learners– Online Learning

Top Five Web Trends: Personalization– Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb

Open Courseware Gains Momentum– Maya T. Prabhu, eSchool News

Five Reasons Why RSS Readers Still Rock– Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb

Teachers’ Digital Use on The Rise– eSchool News

Man, I guess Twitter really is a brain drain! By the way, I just woke up, and I guess I should do some work…

How to Run a Meeting Like Google– Carmine Gallo, Business Week

Digital Textbooks Open a New Chapter in the History of US Education– eSchool News

Twitter for Teachers: A Collaborative Effort to Teach Teachers about Twitter– Twitter for Teachers

R2D2, Where Are You?– Shawn, edbuzz

Start the New Year Off Right with the Essential Tools for Educators– Steven Anderson, Blogging about the Web 2.0 Classroom

8 Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2010– Sarah Perez, Read Write Web

Student Learns Homeschooling Can Be a High Tech Lesson– SnoValley Star

November Hotlist– Judy Brown, mLearnopedia

Follow me on Twitter!

Twitter for Teachers

For several months, Shawn and I have been receiving requests about how educators can effectively use Twitter. After sorting through emails and responding to requests, we realized the best way to answer these questions was by creating a video tutorial for educators.

After much hard work, we are proud to announce the launch of  “Twitter for Teachers in 15 Minutes” . The first in a series of video training with easy to follow instruction, specifically designed to help educators use Web 2.0 tools more effectively. In fifteen minutes we’ll teach you how to become Twitter Savvy. This product also includes more than twenty-five minutes of advanced material that will help you become a Power Twitter User. Of course there are some very cool bonuses as well!

We are holding a special contest and giving away two copies of “Twitter for Teachers in 15 Minutes“.  There are two ways to enter:

1. Add a comment at the end of this post, explaining how you’ve found Twitter useful as a teacher.
2. RT this article on Twitter. Be sure to use the hashtag #edbuzz

The deadline for entries is 9 p.m (PST), Wednesday, December 30, 2009. We look forward to hearing from you. See the full sales page here…

Twitter Trends

A powerful function of Twitter is its immediacy. Twitter provides immediate access to a wealth of information. Updates from friends, news, educational topics, and even professional development are but a few of items that are constantly streaming through the Twitter timeline. Today I’d like to focus on news and explain how taking advantage of trending topics can provide great benefits for teachers.

Since there is so much information being exchanged on Twitter, looking at Twitter trends is often a powerful research tool. Even if the trending topics don’t contain much information a simple keyword search can provide a wealth of information. We’ll take a look at how a teacher can apply this information and then explain the some of the research methods available.

Teachers are constantly looking for new topics or additional information about a subject they are teaching. By using Twitter, a teacher can find additional topics for classes they are currently teaching, as well as a class that is being designed for next semester. If a teacher has the opportunity to consistently teach the same course year-after-year, reflecting upon the success of the methods used and value of the information provided becomes increasingly important. It is very interesting how a Twitter search will uncover additional topics that may never have been considered, as well as links to valuable resources.

Twitter trends reflect current topics. Part of being a good teacher is the ability to make a classroom concept come alive to the student by connecting it to the outside world. For example, President Obama’s $4 billion education program,  Race to the Top was and still is a Twitter topic. This trend provides a wonderful opportunity for the economics teacher to look at education spending and the potential impact this program may really have. In addition, easy access is provided to many educator’s opinions regarding the plan. This provides a nice starting point for class discussions, debates, papers and many other learning opportunities.

Sometimes a lesson just needs the right information to help reinforce the concepts. Perhaps an article, video or other tool will be just what is needed. Twitter does an excellent job of providing links to resources as well as a great platform for asking questions. A quick search may reveal just the right item. Furthermore, if you followed our tips in Twitter Tips for Teachers – Who Do I Follow?, you will have variety of followers or people to ask your pressing questions. The benefit of using Twitter versus a traditional search engine is the immediacy/currency of available information.

So how do you put this into action? The easiest place to begin is by using the trends area of Twitter. Twitter lists trending topics on the right-hand side of your account page. The top ten currently trending topics are listed below a search box and your lists (another useful tool). These are followed by ten other topics that have trended earlier in recent history but are not as current. Remember that while these topics are not the hottest current topics, they may have had more tweets connected with them than the currently trending topics. This can provide great information for an initial search.

There are a number of other interesting tools to analyze Twitter trends. Tweetstats (http://tweetstats.com) provides an interesting combination of graphs and a cloud (trending terms listed in varying size according to the related number of tweets) of trending topics. Other interesting tools include: Collecta (http://collecta.com), Trendistic (http://trendistic.com), and Twitterfall (http://twitterfall.com). Take a look at some of these applications and see if you prefer their unique options.

Locating trends, while helpful, provides a very limited access to the immense trove of information available on Twitter. To dig deeper you will need to search the Twitter timeline for keywords. Twitter, as many of the trend tools listed above, provides search functions to enable the location of tweets containing specific keywords. Locating the posts containing your specific keywords is very straightforward. Staying on top of future tweets containing these keywords is more challenging. There are several tools to alert you when new tweets are posted to the Twitter timeline containing specific keywords. Some of these tools will even email a daily digest of your specific keywords so that you can view them all at once, at your leisure. Tweetbeep (http://tweetbeep.com) is a simple to use interface that will send hourly updates via email. A couple of other services of note are Tweetscan (http://tweetscan.com) and Tweetalarm (http://www.tweetalarm.com). Using one of these services will help you save time while easily staying in touch with keywords of interest.

By putting these tips into practice, a teacher can leverage some of the incredible power offered by Twitter. They take very little time and will provide tremendous benefits to you as well as your students.

As always we look forward to you sharing your comments and experiences. Feel free to reach out to us on Twitter (@darylljohnson or @sroner). Don’t wait! Go put these tips into practice and let us know the results.

• Take time to fill out your profile and add a picture. People like to see who they are communicating with and knowing some information about you will help them identify with you.
• Share the items that are capturing your attention. Be sure to add links (use URL shorteners) so that people can learn more.
• Don’t be shy about sharing information about your institution and your student’s successes. Be sensitive to privacy and how your post will reflect upon you and your school.
• Use hashtags to keep up with what other’s are doing. Twitter can provide a virtual classroom for your professional development, as well as identifying tools and techniques other teachers are using.
• Remember that like email, not every tweet needs to be read. There are just too many.

If you implement even two or three of these ideas, you will be ahead in the game. Most people don’t realize that twitter is much more than a Facebook status update. The ability to scan trends and search for hashtags is very powerful. Additionally, people get stuck tweeting in either work mode or personal mode, but don’t really balance the two. Strive for a strategy of balance.

In my next Twitter article, I will look at ways to connect via Twitter. Feel free to share your comments and ideas.

10 Internet technologies that educators should be informed about– Emerging Internet Technologies for Education

New thoughts on getting started in e-learning– Clive Shepherd, Clive on Learning

Google Maps Knows Where You Are– Adam DuVander, Programmable Web

Free online course helps students plan careers– Laura Devaney, e-School News

Task force tells how to keep kids safe online– Maya Prabhu, e-School News

NECC 2009 looks at education’s future– e-School News

Tommy J’s Crib Is 18th Century Place of Gadget Geekery– Jim Merithew, Wired

Google vs. Microsoft: What You Need to Know– Ryan Singel, Wired