On Tuesday afternoon I met with the instructional technology facilitators in Mooresville, North Carolina. They are a great group of people doing excellent work with teachers and students. One of the things that we talked about during our meeting was how to share our ideas for using educational technology with the people that we serve. And, of course, we talked about how to support those people once we’ve shared our ideas with them.

One of the suggestions that I made to the group was to develop a four part messaging system to support the ideas we share with teachers. The system starts with a post on your blog in which you introduce a tool or strategy. That post should also be sent as an email. Then for the next couple of weeks write follow-up posts that support the implementation of the idea in the first post. These follow-up posts could be along the lines of “five ways to use X,” “five teachers who have used X,” “five things you might not have thought about regarding X.” These follow-up posts can also be sent as emails. The overall purpose of this strategy is to remind and provide reinforcement for your ideas about educational technology.

Here’s how I have implemented this strategy in the past when introducing people to Thinglink.

1. Introductory post that includes an explanation of what Thinglink does and how it works.
2. A post about five ways to use Thinglink. A reference back to the introductory post is included for the folks who missed it the first time.
3. A post with examples of Thinglink projects completed by students. Again, a link to the introductory post is included for the folks who missed it the first time.
4. A post introducing some less-obvious uses of Thinglink including some examples of app-smashing with Thinglink. For example, I often combine the use of PicMonkey and Thinglink. As with the two previous posts I include a link back to the introductory post that offers instruction on how to use Thinglink.