5 Reasons to Use Video Production

A growing number of youth use video to communicate and express themselves. In Hani Morgan's book, we learn that video production projects can lead to many postive academic outcomes, more opportunities exist for educators to incorporate these projects into their classroom, and students tend to enjoy viewing videos and seem to be viewing them more often.

 

• One of the most important aspects of video-making projects involves the power videos have in engaging and motivating students.
 
 
• Educators can use video production as a method to tap into pupils' interests and engage students to learn across the curriculum

• Videos allow some students to learn a concept more clearly.

• Participating in these projects will encourage students to develop multimodal literacy

• Learning outcomes from video projects include the development of reading, speaking, and writing skills, and well as teamwork and organizational skills.

Multimodal projects will likely benefit students in many ways, in the near future. When teachers use student-created videos effectively, they promote critical-thinking skills, content knowledge, multimodal literacy, and they help students to stay connected to their world.To see how video based projects can be used in the classroom,
click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8UpgYnGWe4

6 ways to gain Twitter followers

Now that you have created a Twitter account and you know the lingo that is used, I will teach you ways that you can gains followers. Gaining followers on Twitter helps your account and thoughts to be seen more.

1. Interesting Profile
To attract followers make sure you have a photo of just you and make sure that you have a catchy bio so when people look at your profile they are interested.
Examples of some famous educators:
https://twitter.com/judyblume
https://twitter.com/kellygtogo
https://twitter.com/TheScienceGuy

2. Tweet Well and Often
Ideally you should tweet 2 times per day about different subjects. Be interesting, post links, and post photos so that people want to follow you.

3. Follow Others
Find people that are similar to you and follow them, but don't follow too many people because that could cause others to not want to follow you.

4. Ask for Retweets
This will help to spread your tweets all over the Twitter network and might attract new people.

5. Search Tweets
Search for tweets with keywords related to things that you are interested in. This could show them that you have something in common and they might follow you back.

6. Use Hashtags
Using hashtags will connect you to people that share your interests and will increase the visibility of your tweets.

Here is  a great video where Amy Porterfield tells you places you can go to create good tweets that will maybe help you get noticed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwJrYlcwTHI

Try these 6 easy steps to help you gain more followers and hopefully you become a pro tweeter! Good luck!

Twitter Lingo

When browsing Twitter, you might see words that seem foreign to you. Don't worry, this blog will teach you everything you need to know about the art of tweeting. Here are some things you might see:

Follow/Follower - To follow someone on Twitter is to be able to see what they tweet. If someone is following you, they are subscribing to your tweets.

Tweet - A tweet is a 140 character message you post, that can be seen by your followers.

@ - The @ sign helps you to refer to another individual on Twitter, whether as a mention or a reply. It appears before someone's username.

# - The # or "hashtag" is used to group tweets by keywords. It is very useful for events.

RT - This stands for "retweet" and is used when you like something that someone else posted. When you retweet it, it is like re-sending it for your followers to see.

Favorite - To "favorite" someone's tweet shows that you like it and want to be able to view it later. When you favorite a tweet, it doesn't re-post that tweet.

DM - A DM or "direct message" is a private message that you can send to one of your followers without allowing the public to see it.

Hopefully this helped you with some of your Twitter confusion, but if you would like to watch a video on Twitter lingo, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6DP9vCKZ0A

Happy Tweeting!

9 Reasons to Use Twitter in Schools

More than one billion tweets are sent every 2-3 days across Twitter, which has become a social network of significant importance in every continent, and almost every country, around the world. Twitter isn't just all fun and games, it has many different uses. In Laura Walker's blog, she gives us 9 reasons to use Twitter in schools.

1. Together We're Better
Teachers can access a stream of links, ideas, opinions, and resources from global professionals.

2. Global or Local: your choice
It is up to you who you choose to follow, you can connect with people from around the world or you can follow local people.

3. Self-Awareness and reflective practice
Reflect on what you are doing in your classroom and see what needs improvement. Teachers on Twitter can share these ideas and support and challenge each other.

4. Ideas workshop and sounding board
Twitter is great for sharing ideas and getting instant feedback. You can get different opinions and criticisms to help you improve what you're doing in the classroom.

5. Newsroom and innovation showcase
Twitter helps you stay up-to-date with the latest news or developments in your point of interest.

6. Professional development and critical friends
Teachers can talk about what they are working on or struggling with and get helpful ideas from other teachers or professionals.

7. Quality-assured searching
Trust the people you follow so that you can value their ideas. This will provide you with higher-quality information than a Google search would.

8. Communicate, communicate, communicate
You will learn to become better at expressing your professional thoughts to others in 140 characters.

9. Getting with the times has never been so easy!
Twitter is not complicated at all! Go to twitter.com and create an account. Also, there are plenty of websites that offer advice for getting started.

Thank you for reading this blog, now go make a Twitter and tweet all your professional thoughts and ideas! Promise me, you will love that you made one.

6 Effective Tips to Improve Writing

Deb Peterson wrote a great article on tips for improving your writing. Whether you are in high school, college, or have been out of college for years now, everyone should know how to write. Writing is something that we are around each and every day. In this article, Deb gives us 6 effective tips to improve writing.

1. Keep a Journal
Practice writing short essays about the things that happen to you during the day, feelings that you experience, and thoughts you have. Journaling serves as cheap therapy and improves your writing in a place that nobody but you will see.

2. Write Morning Pages
In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron advocates writing three pages long hand first thing every morning, without stopping. This kind of writing is called "stream of consciousness." The idea is to keep your hand moving even when you don't know what to write.

3. Read
Read. Read. Read. Read the newspaper in the morning, magazines in waiting rooms, fiction, nonfiction, whatever you want. The more you read, the more easily you will recognize good sentence structure, proper grammar, and punctuation.

4. Browse Writing Books
Books on writing can inspire, teach, and boost your confidence. If you are worried about cost, browse the books in your local library. You can try several different books, choosing the one that speaks to you the most. It's okay if not all of them do.

5. Choose a First Reader
A first reader is the person you choose to be the first and only one to read your work before you do your editing. You need to choose someone you trust that is honest and kind. Choose someone that knows good writing and will give you feedback. When you get feedback from them do not be defensive, take it as constructive criticism.

6. Join a Writing Group
Sometimes people choose a "first reader" that doesn't want to hurt feelings. This shows that they are a good friend but it doesn't help your writing at all. Find a group of people that are honest but respectful and will help you grow as a writer.