ITSC 2012: Getting Social with Students

Getting Social with Students
Presented by Jeff Utecht

• We live in a world where there is no boundary between our work life and our social life. 
• Individuals have a need to be connected.  
• We know there's no way we can tell kids they can't bring cell phones to school - almost 70% of text messages during the school day are between parent and child, not kid to kid.
• We all feel the pressure to stay connected, to stay up to date, to get things done.

How do we start using this medium with kids?

ITSC 2012: Today's Meet

www.TodaysMeet.com
A conversation site - everyone logs in and everyone can comment.  It is like a closed chat room. Super cool tool. Everyone logs into a "chat" with their name, no need to create an account just go to your chat site and enter your name to join a chat.

Make sure you kids know the rules. Students need to learn the etiquette for the internet. How to ask questions, how to direct questions/comments to one person. Close the laptop if they can’t handle it. The skills they learn here (etiquette) they can transfer to twitter and other social networking sites.


IDEAS FOR USE
-Chat with another classroom in the district
-When watching a movie have the class type the facts they learn, then you have a collection of notes by your whole class
-Notes from lectures, as you lecture have the kids type in notes, then you have a collection of notes by your whole class. You can save the notes for up to a year.
-Spelling words --- have kids type words and then all hit “say” together, great way to practice spelling words

Contributed by Julie Thompson

ITSC 2012: Celly

What is Celly?  Celly is an Oregon based Social Network Generator that allows users to create "cells" based on whatever filters you desire.