Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Twitter

Founded in 2006, Twitter is "an online social networking and microblogging service that enables users to send and read text-based messages, known as tweets" (Roblyer & Doering, 2012, pg. 221). Tweets consists of a hash tag, prefix with a pound sign (#) with a topic, with a message up to 140 characters. Before enrolling in this course, I only used Twitter to interact and/or communicate with friends, keep up with celebrities and politics and latest news on fashion. However, Twitter can be a useful tool in the classroom to stay up to date on the latest developments in education.                                                                                                     
As describe by Roblyer and Doering (2012), Steve Wheeler identified at least 100 ways to use Twitter  in education, such as "Twit Links, Summing Up and Twitter Pals" (pg. 222). Following education tweeters such as Vickie Davis (@coolcatteacher), ACTIVboardNZ (@ACTIVboardNZ), Discovery Education (@DiscoveryEd) and We Are Teachers (@WeAreTeachers), I was able to receive tips on instruction or technology use, read various useful articles, and save hyperlinks for future use. I found that searching for a specific hashtag or topic (#socialbookmarking, #assistiveTECHNOLOGY, #delicious, #glogster) yielded the better results for weekly assignments, rather than tweets from the "educational tweeters" I follow.
As a future reference, I will follow accounts that provide a variety of information on education topics such as www.commoncore.org (@common_core) and Common Core Math (@CCSSIMath) and to search for hashtags on specific topics when microblogging. Twitter is not only a way to communicate with friends and receive the  latest news on politics, celebrities and fashion but it can serve as an excellent resource used to enhance my teaching skills through microblogging.
Reference

 Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A.H. (2012). Integrating educational technology into teaching 6th edition. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill Prentice Hall.

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3 comments:

  1. UnknownJuly 24, 2013 at 5:26 AM

    I agree that microblogging is a good resource for teachers. There are so many people in the world that will give educators great information on teacher topics. Thanks for the links in your blog. I will have to follow these people to see if they can help me in the future. I struggled a little on using this site, so thanks for the information. This has been really an informative class.

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  2. UnknownJuly 24, 2013 at 5:53 AM

    I really enjoyed reading your blogs and gaining information and resources from them. This class has really given me many resources to choose from to help prefect my teaching methods. Thanks again and have a wonderful school year.

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  3. UnknownJuly 24, 2013 at 7:13 PM

    I am glad that I was introduced to the world of Twitter! I can see how informative it can be! I will admit that I will also start following movie stars, singers, etc! I will definetly use it to follow educators! We can learn so much from each other! Good Luck to you in your future classes!

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