Social Media has overtaken my life. I wake up and participate in Voxer discussions. I moderate a Twitter chat (#slowchatpe) where I post one question a day about various education subjects. My students use kidblog to push their voices out to the world.  I also run a wordpress blog that gives the background for the questions of the week. There are lessons of mine on education skype where teachers from all over the world can connect with my class and my lessons.  These all push my teaching and professional development to the next level.

This is all well and great but it is not enough. It is a lot of talk and reflection. Talk is cheap and reflection only matters if you do something with your new-found enlightenment. I want next level. That level is collaborating and creating new projects.  The greatest example of this occurred in the @voxer physical education and health teacher group last week.  One teacher (@NicholasEndlich) threw out an idea he had using rock, paper, scissors as a game in physical education.  Within 5 minutes there were 15 voxes (voice posts) giving him other ideas using the rock, paper, scissors theme.  That right there is a pretty cool concept. A ton of teachers bouncing ideas off each other to come up with something new.  The story gets better though. Twenty minutes later Nick showed pics of his students playing the new games he had just learned!! That is mind blowing!! No more of going to conferences and waiting to implement new materials. The new pd uses social media and can be used immediately. That is the future of education.

Another great example of creation and collaboration is the project that @nicholasendlich,@mradampe, and I created.  The project is entitled #soyouthinkyoucanbalance.  Follow this link to start the project. The best part of this project is that we used students to create the balances and social media to plan how this was going to work.  The combination of twitter, voxer, and google hangouts can not be beat. We talked about it on voxer and then went in depth on a Google Hangout.  This allowed us to come up with the plan and how we wanted it executed. Voxer allowed us to keep the project moving because voice messages are so much more efficient than phone calls or twitter.  Twitter was the way we were able to push out the finished project.  So far students in the US, Saudi Arabia, the UK and Vietnam have participated in this.

This week I want us to think how can we stop talking about education and start collaborating and creating. We start out on social media lurking, then move on to participating, some go on to moderate different social media groups.  That is not enough! How can we continue to grow by creating, collaborating, and connecting ourselves and our students?  Let’s stop talking and start doing!

Q1: How have you used social media to create something? #slowchatpe

Q2: What different social media platforms have u smashed together to use the 4 C’s? #slowchatpe

Q3: When was the last time u implemented a new idea you saw on sm? How long between learning and implementing did it take u? #slowchatpe

Q4: Does your state/district give pd hours for sm? How does that work? #slowchatpe

Q5: What do people need to know about social media that they don’t know already?