#brewcue: How (and Why) to Make It Happen

Before we get into the how to make a brewcue happen, let’s talk about the why. Why should you bother to organize a brewcue? Thanks for asking.

Photo courtesy of @pronovost

Do you like hanging out with dedicated educators who want to make school better? Brewcue will help with that.

Do you like informal conversations about education? PD that you choose, at your own pace? Brewcue is for you.

Do you like connecting pictures on Twitter handles with actual faces? Brewcue is the place to do that.

Do you relish extended conversation, not 140-character-at-a-time conversations? Or conversations that can flow, but face to face - not in a Google hangout? Yes. Brewcue for that too.

Do you like an excuse to hang out with friends, but call it professionally developing? Yup. Brewcue. Make it happen. Now.

Now, the harder part: the how to make a brewcue happen. Okay. It’s not really that hard - it’s actually pretty easy. Another reason to organize one! Okay, on to it.

1. Find a cohost for brewcue. This person will help you publicize the event, and if no one else comes to the brewcue, you’ll get to hang out with your cohost for an hour and talk about education and whatever else comes up. Robert Pronovost is that guy for me.
2. Choose a date. Set a time that both you and your cohost can make - remember, if no one else shows you need someone else there to talk to! But don’t worry - other people always show. Also, Robert and I always try to leave about a week of time to publicize the brewcue. The more time you have to tweet out the location, the more folks will see that it is happening!
3. Choose a location. For Robert and I, as Bay Area residents, we shoot for somewhere about halfway between San Jose and San Francisco: we want as many people as possible to make it to the brewcue.
4. Publicity, publicity, publicity! Tweet out your brewcue. Use your state and/or district hashtag. My favorite? Tweeting the brewcue date and location five minutes before California edchat (#caedchat, the best state edchat) begins: at this point there are a lot of people looking at the hashtag, but there aren’t a ton of tweets going to the hashtag yet. Tweet out reminders as the day of brewcue approaches - you never know who hasn’t seen the tweets publicizing the event yet!
5. On the day of the brewcue, have a way to let the attendees know where you are at at your chosen venue. Robert has created a brewcue sign on his iPad that lets people know which table we are at. In the early days, though, we just wrote “brewcue” on a napkin and hung it on a menu. This totally worked fine.
6. Buy the first pitcher. Then, sit back and enjoy the conversation.

Not into the brew aspect? Or want to do your brewcue in the morning, when a brew is less appropriate? Throw the more staid version of brewcue: have a coffeecue at a local coffee house.

Finally, though, really why do this? Education is all about relationships. Brewcue builds relationships. And hey, usually a whole gang of #eduawesome folks show up!

Over 20 educators deep! Photo courtesy of @pronovost

Google+: Cross-post From CUE’s Blog

This post was the fourth in a series of blog posts that a bunch of my #EduAwesome buddies wrote for CUE's blog. The three earlier posts are linked in the first paragraph below - check them out! Thanks to Kate Petty for giving me the opportunity to write a guest post for CUE!

So. Now that you’ve heard about getting on Twitter to build your PLN from David Theriault, you’ve gone out and interacted - shared what you knew, asked questions, and found and shared cool resources. Nice - great first step. Then, you started blogging like Jen Wagner suggested - keep it up! After Jo-Ann Fox’s encouragement, you’ve taken your Twitter usage to the next level and started to participate in various education-related chats. Sweet! But what more is there? I’M SO GLAD YOU ASKED!

I’m here to share with you the final frontier - or maybe the next frontier. Google+. Yes, Google+. It’s worth your time. Believe me.

How? Why? I thought you’d never ask!

Set-up

Got a Gmail account? Everyone has a Google+ account associated with their personal Gmail account. If you use a school-related Google Apps for Education (GAFE) account, your network administrator determines if you have Google+ turned on. Regardless, you should be building your Google+ PLN through your personal Gmail account. (What if you changed jobs? All that work on your GAFE Google+ account would disappear…)

Get a picture up. Now. First step. Want to be super helpful? Use the same profile picture that you used on Twitter for your Google+ profile. It’ll make it way easier for people who follow on Twitter to find you on Google+. It’s the little things, right?

Next? Check out the occupation part. Write in your education-related job. At minimum, do those two things.

Want to go above and beyond? (The correct answer is yes.) Add where you live/work. It’ll help folks in your area connect with you. Also, write a little bit of an introduction for yourself. Does it need to be lengthy? Does it need to be worded perfectly? Nope. Let folks know you are an educator as well as a couple areas of education you’re interested in.

Feel free to add more details if you’d like. Bonus points for you, you PLN overachiever! Does your profile at the top of your Google+ page look something like the screenshot below? Excellent!

Now, you need to find people to follow on Google+. Scan all the awesome folks you follow on Twitter. Start searching for these tremendous educators on Google+. Put them into your circles. But what’s a circle? Circles on Google+ are a way to connect with people. Once someone is in your circle - any circle - you see what they share on Google+. Can you have multiple circles? Yes. Can people be in more than one circle? Definitely. If you have multiple circles, they can be used as a way to filter who you follow on Google+.

Pro tip: these awesome educators you’ve circled in on Google+ - whose posts are they sharing? Yup, you guessed it: circle those folks in as well. Similar to Twitter, Google+ isn’t really useful until you start to circle people in. Build that PLN!

Sharing on Google+

So. You’ve got this fancy Google+ account all tricked out. You’ve added people to your circles. Now what do you do with it? Yup, YOU SHARE! But what do you share? Great question. People share their blog posts. People share interesting or thought-provoking articles on Google+. Read an interesting post on Google+? See that +1 button on the lower left corner of the image on the right? Yes, the one with the red arrow pointing to it. Click that button to share this post with everyone that has you in their circles. Additionally, many blogs have a +1 button on them as well. Click that and the cool blog post that you’re reading - on someone’s blog, not on Google+ - will go out to everyone that has you in their circles.

Ready for the next step? You’re darn right you are! Start looking into Google+ communities. These communities can be created by anyone. They can be public or private. Membership can be automatic or moderated. The communities that you are interested in are probably focused on some specific aspect of education. Communities are a great place to get answers to your questions or share your expertise in a given area. Search for the right Google+ communities here. Contribute to the discussion! Share your experiences. Answer other community members questions. Pose questions that you have that you want expert feedback on. Want a couple of communities to join? I dig the 20% Time in Education and Chromebook EDU communities.

Pro tip: when you join a community, check out the notification feature - a little bell on the left side of the page. You probably want notifications off so your inbox isn’t deluged with emails.

The Best Part of Google+: Google Hangouts

Yes. You’re right - I did save the best for last. While I like the features of Google+ I just shared with you, to me what sets Google+ apart is the ability to do Google Hangouts.

What are hangouts? Face to face video conferences. That include easy integration of the Google apps suite. And screensharing capabilities. As well as silly sound effects and costumes that can be superimposed onto your face. And, the best part? These video conferences can be uploaded directly to your YouTube channel for later viewing! (A super easy - and free! - way to screencast, even on a Chromebook!)

Yes, Google Hangouts - and hangouts on air - have almost limitless possibilities. I’ve planned conference presentations - and entire conferences - on them. I’ve piped into conferences remotely to talk about tech tools. Talked with software developers and given them feedback on their products. Done a group video letter of recommendation for a friend. I’ve brought experts into my classroom and connected with other classes all over America. I’ve had conversations that got too big and complex for Twitter get moved to Google hangouts. I talk pedagogy with other history teachers from all over the United States about once a month via Google hangouts. A few of us were even crazy enough to run an edcamp entirely through Google hangouts!

Yes, that was a brain dump of possible uses for Google hangouts. Really, though, the sky is the limit with this awesome tool. Socratic discussions across classrooms? Do it! Remote tech support? Done. The fifteen things you thought of that you could use Google+ for while reading my list? Go out and do them. Soon. Then leave your innovations in the comments section below so everyone else can ‘borrow’ them!

History #flipclass Discussion

I got to hang out with Jason Bretzmann, David Fouch, and Tom Driscoll on a Google+ hangout tonight and chat about flipped history classes. The conversation ran a little long - not the worst thing in the world. We chatted about summer PD, what we'd learned this summer and would be taking into our classroom in the fall, and what changes we saw making for the next school year.

I live demo'ed Voice Comments for the gentlemen. We ended with our summer beer highlights. Hope you enjoy!

History #flipclass Discussion

I got to chat with Frank Franz, Jason Bretzmann, David Fouch, Kaelyn Bullock, and Dan Hoehler tonight on Google+. It was a good, wide ranging conversation on flipping history classrooms. Check it out below!

History #flipclass Discussion

I got to chat history #flipclass with Tom Driscoll, David Fouch, Jason Bretzmann, and Frank Franz today. It was a good discussion that we uploaded to YouTube. Check it out below! Unfortunately, I hit the 'Off the Air" button too early...

An Alternate #COflip Definition

As I look around at, for example, Thomasson Morris Instruction, or #ladygeeksanddave, the power of collaborative flipclass planning is really clear. Like crystal clear - the more teacher brains you have working on an idea/unit/lesson, the better it will turn out. This has always been my experience with collaborative planning as well - the more dedicated people you bring to a collaborative session, the better it will turn out.

I flip my world history class. But I don’t have a collaborative partnership like the two that I mentioned above. However, I do have a Twitter account. And a Gmail address. So as I was preparing to head home from school on Wednesday night, this article came across my Twitter feed. As I read about Crystal’s struggles with her 11th and 12th grade Math Analysis class, I realized they were the exact same struggles that I was having with my 9th grade world history class. As I hopped over to my Gmail account, I saw Crystal was online. A 10 minute Gchat occurred: what was she doing to try to get more students to own their learning, what was I doing to try to accomplish the same thing. What class structures were we using - tests, deadlines (or lack thereof), other things. We talked about sources of leverage for to get our students to more own their work. Frustrations were vented. Was anything solved? Not yet. Did I feel better? Yes.

To me, #COflip is having a PLN to call on. It is being a connected educator. I know both of those things aren’t revolutionary. At all. But the ability to reach out, via Twitter or any of the myriad of Google tools, to teachers all over the world? To have all those brains, and all their experiences and thoughts to call on? That’s powerful. And for me, that’s my #COflip.

History #flipclass Discussion #3

I got to chat with David Fouch and Tom Driscoll about flipping history classes last week. Check it out below!

History #flipclass Discussion

I was lucky enough to get to hang out on Google+ tonight with David Fouch and Tom Driscoll and talk about what the early year in a flipped history class has looked like for us. We also talked a bit about what flipped-mastery looks like in our classrooms. Some cool ideas and questions came out of this discussion. Check it out below!

Here Come the ELA and SS Flippers

I was lucky enough to attend FlipCon this year in Chicago – I’ve written about this a lot, so no need to rehash it all here. One thing, though, that struck me was how math and science heavy the conference was. By my totally unscientific estimating, I’d guess about 90% of the teachers at FlipCon came from one of those two disciplines. Given the seeming paucity of English and history flip class folks out there, I was hopeful of finding a burgeoning community of Humanities flippers, and the events of the last couple days were an exciting part of the consolidation of that community.

Tuesday evening I got to lend a history perspective on a group discussion on flipping ELA. It was great to hear Cheryl Morris, Troy Cockrum, Kate Perry, and Andrew Thomasson discuss what flipping English is. With the Common Core becoming a reality, and given the similarity between the English and history Common Core standards, I feel that there is a lot of collaboration possible between English and history flippers. I enjoyed being mostly a wallflower and learning from these other talented English flippers.

I just finished up a great group discussion earlier this evening with Chase Moore, Tom Driscoll, David Fouch, and Frank Franz about flipped history classrooms. And while clearly the number of flippers in the Humanities isn’t nearly equal to the numbers in math and science, it is exciting for me to build a content-specific flipped class community as a support network.

Thanks for sharing your expertise, everyone. Hope I get to participate again. The videos from these two discussions are posted below.
 

 Flipped ELA discussion

 Flipped history discussion