Vicki Davis Interview Karen Lirenman on Bam Radio Network

Every Classroom Matters With the Cool Cat Teacher (Vicki Davis): Bam Radio Network - Twitterati Channel

Posted in iTunes on June 4, 2013 under the title " Savvy Use of Edtech in Early Ed Classrooms " This has been clipped with author's permission.

Transcript: Hello it's time for “Every Classroom Matters” where we talk about the noble profession of teaching. This is Vicki Davis the Cool Cat Teacher. Let's talk about what matters.

Vicki: I'm so excited today to get to talk to Karen Lirenman. She has just won the KL Better Vision Award for ISTE. Karen thank you for being with us today. This award recognizes a pre-k -second grade educator whose work has a significant impact on the positive use of technology in the classroom. Karen, one of the things that intrigued me, you said you joined Twitter in July 2011 and it changed your life. And just a few hours ago you said “I'm a different educator because of the people I met here on Twitter”. How?

Karen: When I joined Twitter I ended up in an online conference with Aviva Dunsiger within the first 10 days of being on Twitter and she was showing how she was using technology in her grade 1-2 class in Ontario. And while I thought I was doing good things I realized there were many more things that I could do. And just by being on Twitter I've met so many amazing educators doing so many amazing things that they just push my thinking and change the way I think about things and how I can get technology into the hands of my students in meaningful ways.

Vicki: Well it's so exciting and I'm intrigued. You said you have your students create hashtags. Give me an example.

Karen: Just in math just not too long ago we were working on two and three dimensional shapes. And so in my class they have a whole bunch of choice when they do math. So one of the choices they had was Twitter, so we decided we wanted to just give clues on how to make a two or three dimensional shape. So my kids created a hashtag #2D3DShape where they would tweet out clues. So they could say: I have two faces, my faces are circles, I look like a can. What shape am I? And so using that hashtag they could tweet out their learning to the world.

Vicki: That's so exciting but you know there are some people who the thought of having their grade 1 students tweeting directly through Twitter scares them to death. Are they tweeting? Are they going through you? How does that work?

Karen: So we have a rule in our class. Sometimes the tweeting is done as a class and I do the typing. Sometimes they actually tweet to a specific person or to a specific hashtag, but they are not allowed to push the tweet button until I have actually seen the tweet. So I am moderating. I mean, it is my account . They are too young to tweet on their own. So every tweet that goes through does go through me before it gets sent.

Vicki: Now you also communicated with an author through Twitter. What's that story?

Karen: Ame Dyckman writes the book “Boy + Bot”. And we had read the story and I tweeted there my class enjoyed her book. So she DMed me, direct messaged me, and she said I'd like to send your children some things. So she sent us in the mail bookmarks and stickers and bracelets. And we wanted to thank her. So individually every student wrote her an individual tweet. Some of them asked questions about her story. And through that she got all of our tweets and then she actually responded back and tweeted back to all of us.

Vicki: That is so exciting. And thank you everyone for listening to “Every Classroom Matters”.

This program is produced by Accretive Media with the BAM Radio Network.