How to Become a Digital Leader : Tips & Tricks
Summer is approaching, and this school year is quickly coming to a close. It’s the perfect time to reflect on Digital Leadership: how have you inspired your class and your colleagues to move into the digital world? Eduspire’s mission is to help teachers move in this direction by providing a variety of courses that provide teachers with essential skills to become digital leaders. As we end the year, I’d like to share some strategies I’ve used this year that may help bring your digital leadership skills to the next level. Eduspire would also like to add your success stories to our blog (more information at the end of the article).
1. Break down the walls: Create a Twitter and YouTube account for your school today!
Gone are the days of publishing solely for the teacher. With the continued growth of Twitter and YouTube, projects can be easily be published for a worldwide audience! This year our third graders created a My Story digital book as a final project for a Black History Month project. All students were told that they would be tweeting their book directly to their famous person. Talk about buy-in and motivation! One boy tweeted his book to Muhammad Ali. The next day world-famous boxer Riddick Bowe had favorited this boy’s story and followed us on Twitter! Create a YouTube account to store and publish all kinds of video projects! I have created playlists for ChatterPix, Adobe Voice, iMovie and Touchcast projects. When kids finish projects, send the playlist link home to parents. Break down those walls and publish for the world!
2. Get students broadcasting the news!
Touchcast is a simple, amazing app that I’ve used to create weekly video-newsletters this year. Every 4th and 5th grader had the chance to report the news. With the help of staff members who stepped up to the plate every week to provide a variety of content, students loved being the news reporters! Every video was uploaded to a Video Newsletter playlist on YouTube. Parents and staff look forward to this video every week, and every 4th and 5th grader became the star of the show this year!
3. Google Docs!
Google docs have been an invaluable tool to collect and share a variety of student projects this year. If the app you are using publishes projects to a specific URL (such as the apps Story Kit and My Story) you can collect all the individual URLs and put them all on one Google Doc. Then you can tweet, email or put the link to the Google Doc on your website. This is a very simple way to take a multitude of projects and put them all in one place to save and share.
4. Go digital with powerful apps and share your success
Some of my absolute FAVORITE apps this year were ChatterPix, Story Kit, My Story app, Tellagami, iMovie, Touchcast, Adobe Voice, Colar Mix, Puppet Pals, Aurasma, Thinglink, Shadow Puppet, and i-nigma. How about creating a Digital Projects web page for your classroom or school? It’s a great way to showcase all of your hard work and provide a portal for kids to access anytime.
5. Create a SWAT team
I found this idea on Twitter and ran with is as I conducted a Technology Fair in May. SWAT stands for Students Working to Advance Technology, and my SWAT team were the stars of the show as they taught all of our visitors about the apps mentioned above. Their faces were beaming as they impressed the visitors with their knowledge and final projects.
6. Don’t wait for district Professional Development: Get your PD every day!
Create your own Twitter account to learn from amazing educators, attend EdCamps, participate in webinars, listening to education podcasts, read Education blogs, explore apps on your own, and share your new knowledge! Be excited and your enthusiasm will spread!
21st century and digital learning are exciting and motivating! What have you done this year to be a digital leader? We are looking for guest bloggers, so share your elementary ideas with Teresa Finegan (tfinegan72@comcast.net) and your secondary ideas with Carol Roth (teachtech21@gmail.com) and let’s keep this conversation going!
