Jump Start your 2011/12 School Year

With some summer PD opportunities! Click through to see the complete descriptions.

23 Things: Independent Study (self paced)

SMART in Social Studies (August 15th)

Moodle - Not as Scary as You Think (August 16th)

Better Together - Social Media Bootcamp (August 17th - morning)

Blogging 101 (August 17th - afternoon)

Learning Coaches - Get a Jump Start on Your New Role (August 18th)

SMARTboard 101 (August 22nd)

Want to Engage Your Students - There's an App for That (August 23rd)

Google for Educators (August 24th - morning)

Web 2.0 - Create, Collaborate and Critically Think (August 24th - afternoon)

 

 

ASBOA: Better Together

When the Association of School Business Officials of Alberta (ASBOA) was looking for presenters for their annual conference and approached myself and Sandy McDonald, from GPPSD, to do a session on Social Media it was an easy sell. 

Sandy getting things started!

Better Together: Connecting School Business Officials
The benefits of learning how to navigate social media, and to take advantage of social networking, are many. Sharing and learning with others inside and outside of your organization is easier than you might think. Come join Jen and Sandy and learn about new tools of the trade to help widen your network and make new connections to support your personal and professional growth!

While the topic, social media, was familiar to both of us, the audience and the location were new.   Instead of teachers and administrators the room was full of financial officers, executive assistants and a few occupational health and safety folks.  We went through the whys and how-tos, you can see all our resources here, but the conversations went a little more in depth around safety and privacy.  All in all it was a great day and a fabulous opportunity to connect with another group in Alberta Education.

Just out the backdoor!

Jasper was also fabulous and gave me the opportunity to photograph a few of the beautiful sites and critters...

The view

Mountain goats on the way back to GP!

Connected: PWSD Trustee's

A presentation at the Peace Wapiti School Board meeting today on using social media to connect and build relationships.  While the conversation was mainly twitter, we did touch on blogging, Facebook, geotagging photos and much more!

Connected

View more presentations from jenclevette

Make sure to give a follow our PWSD Trustee and Central Office Tweeps!

Stacey Pelland @StaceyPelland
Wendy Kelm @wendykelm
Richard Lappenbush @RLappenbush
Dana McIntosh @DanaMcIntosh
Kim Moodle @KimMoodie1
Sharilyn Anderson @pwsdsanderson
Christine Schlief @Christinepwsd


Sheldon Rowe @SheldonRowe
Brian Shields @JBrianShields
JoAnn Vanstone @JoAnnVan

Facebook...how could you use it?

A number of our schools have been unblocking Facebook and other social media sites, but now what? 

For some initial ideas look at  100 Ways You Should be Using Facebook in Your Classroom

Consider using Facebook as a communication tool with parents and students.  Take a look at how a grade 1 class uses Facebook and consider how it could be modified to meet the needs at your school.

1st Grade Facebook on Prezi

If any of the above resonates with you here are some steps to consider:

Step 1: What account are you going to use to set up a school or classroom Facebook presence?  You can use your personal account or you may want to consider creating a "teacher" Facebook presence.  Using a personal account simplifies login, you just need to ensure that all of your privacy settings are set to "friend only".  Creating a professional Facebook presence allows you to separate the two.  Either way, everything you do online must be professional. 


Step 2: Create a page or group? This does an excellent job of explaining the difference. In the case of PWSD Ed Tech Page, I chose a page because I did not want to have a place for discussions and I was not worried about keeping people in or out, both things creating a group can do.

Privacy via alancleaver's
photostream

Step 3: Double check your privacy settings and check them often. Facebook has a habit of updating their settings and changing everyone back to default, which is wide open to the public.

Step 4: Create your group or page, put up some meaningful content and monitor it frequently!


This is by no means a complete guide to how to use Facebook but some ideas and suggestions for where to start.  If you have any suggestions or resouces please add them in the comments below.