Assuming you now have a Twitter account and are looking for educators to follow, check this twitter list: "All nominees in the 2010 Edublog Awards category for Best Individual Tweeter! These tweeters have been around for a while, and regulary post on Twitter.
Looking for literary authors to follow on Twitter, check this resource: Literary Tweets: 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter
Here's a cute video to entertain you about using Twitter:
Nancy White & Suzy - An Intro to Twitter from CommunityMatters on Vimeo.
Back to this blog a few days later....Just found this posting about how a high school social studies department is using Twitter: Developing a department Twitter feed. Increasingly,Twitter is making its way into the educational setting for both teacher professional development and for integration into the classroom, though teachers are more likely to use the school-safe site Edmondo for microblogging.
Twiiter logo from: Image from: jhuskisson.com
4 comments:
I love Twitter, I think it is a great tool and I hope to use it in my own classroom one day. It took me a while to get used to, and I am afraid it is difficult to explain to those who do not tweet themselves.
I hope in the future when I have a classroom I can have all my students interacting with each other through twitter outside of the classroom, making the classroom as big as it can be!
I currently have a personal twitter account, but plan on creating a professorial one very soon, as I am starting to realize the professional benefits!
I do believe that Twitter is a great resource for the classroom. I really like the idea of being able to share information with other teachers from all over the country, or world for that matter! The exchange of information is impressive and exciting.
Having said that, there is one concern that I must share. I feel as though at times educators can be so excited about "the next best thing" that they can forget about some pretty great things that are happening around them. The reason that I bring this point up is that I would hate to see people relying on Twitter over having face to face professional conversations with master teachers in their own schools. One thing that technology is robbing students of is the abiliy to sustain live conversations with people. Sometimes being present in a room to watch a teacher do a lesson is the best way to learn. How does the teacher respond to certain situations? I feel like there is an element of reality there that is not present in online videos or suggestions of lessons that often seem staged, or come from a utopian world of teaching.
Please understand that I am not protesting Twitter, I really do see the value. I am simply suggesting a balance of real life interaction with the ever growing resources available in the digital world.
It is hard for me to wrap my mind around Twitter. Even after creating an account, starting to follow some professionals and looking at Stacy Baker's blog about using Twitter in the classroom and watching her Prezi about it, I'm not 100% for Twitter. I understand that Twitter is a quicker way to communate short brief information to people but doesn't Facebook do the same thing?
In the classroom, I am not sure how Twitter could be used to benefit instruction.
I feel that any type of social media site can better connect students to classmates outside of the class. I know during student teaching one of my cooperating teacher's AP Bio class had created a Facebook group in order to study with each other, ask questions about material,labs, projects and discuss things that they didn't understand.
Though Twitter may become a usefully tool in the future, after figuring out how to use it, but right now I'm a good old fashion Facebook girl.
I think Twitter has a lot of potential as a learning tool for both teachers and students. As teachers, it is a constant influx of brainstorming that we can take a snapshot of to find useful tools, ideas, and thoughts of our peers in the education field (or any field). Twitter is just like Google, where you can find a good website or link to help meet your needs.
In the classroom, I think Twitter is great for discussions. With only allowing 140 characters, provides students to answer quick hit questions and provides enough characters for them to ask questions. Twitter can provide a forum for students who are shy and wouldn't normally speak out loud, to answer questions and participate. Being on Twitter, you can see the range of responses people provide each other. This can be used in the classroom. At this point, I would like to have a "teacher controlled" version, only available for the class, so that it can monitored and students will not get off task and allow their personal life to be involved in it.
Twitter is one of the tools available on the net and as teachers, we need to make sure we stay on top of all the new trends and programs so that we can integrate them into our classroom. Our students may already be using them, so we might as well take advantage of that fact and put it to school use.
Post a Comment