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These four tweets represent main areas of interest to me; sports, education, punditry, and political/social commentary. I can easily get lost in the Twittersphere at any moment. The primary challenge for me as am educator is developing ways to integrate Twitter in my classroom. I found some great suggestions in the Richardson book. For example the wiki, Twitter Collaboration Stories provides an abundance of valuable suggestions which I could certainly use in my government and Civics classes. Westlake High School in Austin, TX has a Twitter account in which one can find links to student work or live presentations. I follow many educators and professional accounts on my personal account and get some valuable suggestions for lesson plans.
In the spirit of increasing my usage of social media I have established an account for a history-themed trip I run every year. It is my goal to use this tool to send pictures back to all interested parties (parents, family members, students) and as a means of communicating with everyone back here in the "States" while we're in Ireland. We leave on Friday.
Hopefully there will be plenty of shots like this one coming back to Connecticut next week via Twitter. Here I am in front of Lenin's Tomb this past July. I am happy to report that he is still dead.
As someone who did not grow up with the technology that students have today, I have also "come late to the social media game". I also thought that Twitter and Facebook were for the younger populaton. I started using Twitter for a class and found it very informative for professional information. It is great to reach out to other higher education professionals that work in my area for ideas, advice and best practices. I like your history themed trip account idea. What a great way to share information and pictures on the history of countries that you have visited.
ReplyDeleteI have a Facebook account myself and I use it here and there, mostly to keep in touch with family, and that is as far as I got with social media. My cousins were more recently trying to show me how to use Instagram, because I was just using it to make my pictures pretty and not using the social aspect of it. It can sometimes be overwhelming because the world of social media is growing, but I have to admit by taking this class I am beginning to see how these different sites can be used in educational ways. I also like the fact that you will be able to utilize social media to keep those at home abreast of your travels to Ireland!
ReplyDeleteI just followed your new twitter account and am looking forward to following the school trip to Ireland. Thanks. As you already know, I am huge fan of Twitter. I have learned more from the connections I have made on Twitter than many of the professional development conferences I attend, Coincidentally, I just did a presentation last fall at The National Council of Teachers of English convention on Twitter. The presentation was done with colleagues I met on Twitter, and then we sketched out the presentation using Google Doc. We were delighted our proposal was accepted.
ReplyDeleteDuring the conference, NCTE had a large monitor available showing all the tweets with the hashtag #ncte12. If NCTE is pushing Twitter as a communication tool, I think it is about time we got more teachers on board.
This was a great post. I love hearing different perspectives on facebook and twitter. I think it's important to remember that to a certain extent we are all continually "learning" when it comes to social media, because it is always changing. I know that I joined facebook when it first started and it is completely different today. Social media is constantly evolving so no one is ever as "behind" as they think they are!
ReplyDeleteHave a wonderful time in Ireland! When you get back you will have to write a post about it!
Forgot to add that I LOVE your title for this post!
ReplyDeleteIt ate my comment from last week, but I found this very enlightening as I struggle with my own feelings on Twitter. Thank you for your views!
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