Thoughts on my Digital Community

Last week I flew to Omaha to meet with my cohorts. During the full day of keynotes I looked around at the other teachers cheering "Good job! Good job! Good Job Good Job! G double o. D, J-O-B, Good Job, Good Job!" and thought, yep these are my people. I prefer the term cohorts to 'tribe.' I remember conjugating the word during Latin 9 in high school. It really resonates with me because we had a group of four of us who supported each other. We worked in a group and each person had their job. We were a latin cohort. My cohorts are the people who get me and together we encourage each other to learn. After reading the articles written by Goins I immediately related to the person who cut their tribe way down. I prefer a few quality contributors to my blog comments or Instagram feed as opposed to a legion of followers. I think the best way to grow your following is to lead by example. If I am an active contributor of meaningful comments I am adding to my community. What about you, do you want a big tribe or a few quality followers?

Twitter PD

Last week I was in Omaha for a teachers' conference. Working in a small school, I miss out on collaboration and I always look forward to hobnobbing with my kindred spirits. But, we only get together once a year. Twitter is a great way to quickly connect. I am most likely to crowd-source ideas with twitter. How would you use twitter?

Kahoot!

Last week I stumbled upon Kahoot! If you haven't heard of it, Kahoot is an web based program for every student response and is device universal. My class tested it with a Social Studies review. I split the class into multi-age groups. I set the timer for two minutes to encourage scholarly peer discussions. Each student participated. Each student discussed with their peers. The class had a great chance to review when they talked to each other. Twitter reminded me of other great uses for Kahoot including flashcards and vocabulary review. Kahoot is a great classroom tool that I hope will stick around.