Our school district continues to adopt new 2.0 tools and give students a greater online voice.  A lot of excitement comes with the introduction of these new ways to share what we know.  As we roll out these tools at the elementary level, we spend a lot of time talking about online safety and etiquette.  Digital Citizenship, after all, is one of the key ideas of the NETS*S.

And unfortunately, danah boyd’s recent audience hadn’t gotten the Digital Citizenship lesson when, at Web 2.0 Expo a few days ago, the conference organizers placed a large Twitterwall displaying live Tweets prominently behind her onstage.  Unable to see what others were saying about her and her content, she felt the audience slip away from her and into their own cycles of negativity, a sort of mob mentality focused directly on her.

Backchanneling, or the process of giving live commentary on a face-to-face presentation, it was used to great effect at the SLJ Summit this fall and has, for me, been a real benefit.  I like hearing the Big Ideas emerging from other sessions and feel it gives me a more holistic sense of the value of the conference.  And in LibraryLand, the Tweets tend to be thoughtful, if not plain old complimentary.

So danah’s experience (you can view her keynote here, though the Twitterwall is not represented in the video) shook up many of us, and we engaged in a passionate impromptu conversation on Twitter.  Buffy summarizes both danah’s experience and our conversation on her blog.  Please take a look. 

And after you have, take a moment to think about these questions (Buffy also has some thoughts for you to consider):

1. What Web etiquette lessons have we not yet taught well enough in our K-12 environments so that this can be minimized in the future? 
2. The audience that Tweeted most likely had their real names affiliated with their Twitter account, so we can’t really chalk up this behavior to the oft-referenced idea of online anonymity.  How can we help our students recognize, as Steve Dembo often says, that their online life is their “New Permanent Record”? Could this situation be a teachable moment for our students to practice empathy?
3. Many of us, in some point in our careers, will sit on a conference planning committee.  How did the physical placement of the Twitterwall screen play into the outcome danah experienced? Would moving the Twitterwall so it no longer shared the stage with the keynote have changed the tone of the experience?
4. Before this month’s AASL conference in Charlotte, the AASL Forum listserv had a passionate discussion of live blogging or Tweeting from sessions.  Some saw it as a way to compliment the speaker, other speakers found it rude and a sign of inattentiveness to the moment.  I have to say that in my session in Charlotte, someone sat right up front and was clicking on her cell phone the whole time.  The nerve! I thought, in my best Nathan Detroit accent.  It was only afterwards, when I skimmed the Tweets tagged #aasl2009 in Twitter, that she had thoughtfully Tweeted what she saw as my most meaningful ideas.  It really helped me see where my presentation had resonated.  But if such behaviors hinder you as a presenter, should you have the right to request that people close their laptop lids and put their cell phones away?

Oh, yeah.  And Happy Thanksgiving.

Over the summer School Library Journal floated out the idea that many children’s authors would consider doing a free 20′ Skype author visit.  That sounded just great to a third grade teacher and me.  We scoured the list for the authors with the most appeal to our kids and sent a few Tweets to inquire.  No dice.  (But we’re not giving up!)

But in the meantime, I had also heard from Michelle Bayuk, head of marketing for Albert Whitman, that Whitman was going to launch five Twitter feeds: one for the narrator of the Boxcar Children and one in the voice of each of the four characters. 

AND, as I’ve mentioned before, I learned that the Boxcar Children (which remains a favorite with our second and third graders) is now a graphic novels series!

There was just one hurdle: how could we connect our young learners with the five Twitter feeds without having them log into Twitter (which restricts access to users over 13) and with all the feeds appearing on one page? We just wanted the Boxcar Twitter feeds, not everything else.

Leave it to my intrepid (and, sadly, about to depart) student teacher Raya, who figured out a way to get the Twitter feeds we need and embed them into our new media center wiki.  Voila! We had what we needed.

Now we had a cool opportunity to talk about how there are many ways to tell a story in the 21st century: with “regular” books, with graphic novels, AND with (a safe version of) Twitter. 

Our wheels started turning.  Would Michelle consider Skyping with our kids?

Michelle had an even more interesting idea: let Boxcar ghostwriter and editor Wendy McClure do the interview!

So we planned a three-day set of activities in lieu of the regular book talks we give when kids come to check out:

• Day One: Introduce/re-introduce kids to Chapter 1 of the chapter book, graphic novel, and Twitter feed
• Day Two: Talk about the role of an editor, with a role-play in which I played the author and Raya and the class played the editor.  (See our efforts on Etherpad - a wonderful tool! - here). Talk about what comprises a good interview question.
• Day Three: In classrooms, kids and teachers worked HARD to create great questions.  They then came to the media center for the interview!

Wow! Our kids did a phenomenal job.  Even with a double-class, they were glued to the screen, poised, attentive, and did ask great questions.  Best of all, they listened for the answers because the answers mattered to them.

We didn’t have the typical author visit, but we had something that empowered our kids to do their best and to think more deeply. And next time they get a paper back from their teacher with editing suggestions, I bet they’ll think just a bit more about how all authors have editors, even the famous ones!

Thanks so much to Michelle and Wendy for giving our kids the chance to dig into some authentic work and to feel proud of their results. There is a wonderful feeling that comes over a media center when kids are really engaged with what they are learning about, and we’ve had three great days of that.

You can view:

• our Boxcar Children Skype plans (they didn’t go exactly according to Hoyle, but it worked out OK!)
• our Etherpad page where we modeled the author/editor relationship
• our school library blog post with more details!

So imagine that you’re about to lead a professional development session, staff meeting, or workshop.  You want to use those minutes before the appointed hour wisely and get folks thinking about the topic to come.  You want to awaken that prior knowledge as richly as possible.  Oh, and you’ve got five minutes to put it all together.

Or maybe you’re doing a long workshop and you want to get some mid-workshop feedback.  Have folks Tweet their observations, marking them all with a unique (and not easily replicable) hash tag (pound sign - # - followed by letters or numbers, like #blc09 or #aasl).

Type  a Twitter search term (a username, a hash tag, or a keyword) into visibletweets.com, which generates beautiful randomized animations of Tweets that meet the search criteria you’ve implemented. How cool is that!