Twitter_SP13

= Thing 13 - Twitter =

Post something you learned or a resource you found out about from reading your tweets. Please identify yourself as the poster. :)
Like many other social networks, I realized I already had and an account on Twitter when I tried to sign up with my email address, possibly because of the numerous invitations I receive from friends in my email. I even had follewers and people that I followed! The first thing that I noticed on Twitter was instant update on current events, be it sports or technology news. After connecting with people who are into technology in the classroom, I realized how resourceful a micro-blogging site like Twitter can be. Today, I saw Howei DiBlasi make a tweet on Using Google Hangouts and Edmodo to Engage Students. I just learned and I believe students can also learn the same way too. If my students and I follow one another on Twitter for the purpose of contributing to the activities in the classroom, I believe that teaching and learning would not be confined to only the school hours. Students could be notified about upcoming events and change of activities. With the ability to get on Twitter via handheld devices, I hope every student gets a Twitter account. -George Anderson.

I have had a personal Twitter account I used to follow sports and news items for a little over a year. I created a new account for my classes and have been using it since the beginning of last semester. Twitter has been an excellent tool in the classroom for me. I use it to make announcements about projects and homework assignments. It has also been a great tool for interacting with students about issues brought up in class. I often retweet interesting items I see from economists I follow on my professional Twitter account. This sometimes leads to excellent discussions both via Twitter and in the classroom the following day. It has been a great resource to show how my class can be applied in the real world. Also, as Jason said, Pope High School has done a great job adopting Twitter. Every sports team has an account and the school, athletic department, and some fine arts programs all use it to celebrate student achievement and keep parents informed. After following Will Richardson, I came across this [|article] about news and blog comments and how they shape opinions on the post or article. This brings up many implications on the collaborative nature of the internet and how we need to teach our students about responsible use of Web 2.0 tools. -Heath Green

Unlike most of my classmates, I have never used Twitter (that is before today). I have used Facebook for years and I didn't really see the point in Twitter. Facebook already takes up way too much of time, so I thought that I didn't need another distraction. After creating a Twitter account and playing around with it, I realized that I have been missing out! Twitter is definitely a tool that I could use for my personal life and in the classroom. Twitter is a network of people, but you don't have to be "friends" with the people that you follow on Twitter. This is a great asset as an educator because I can follow experts in my field without knowing them personally. This is also a great educational tool because it gives students immediate access to experts. They can even experience what the expert is thinking at that exact moment. Great tool! I definitely plan to use this in my classroom. - Lauren Kinsella

I was very reluctant in setting up a Twitter account for several years. I have had a MySpace and Facebook, but Twitter has not been something I was interested in. I finally set up an account during a technology day conference that I was invited to by the county I work for. I felt obligated to do so, but I was also curious as to what made it so special that the technology department wanted us to set an account up. I have had my account since November and I still don't use it as much as Facebook. I never have thought to use it for professional use. As I started to follow the people on the list within our content information on D2L, I came across an interesting Tweet by [|Kathy Schrock] about IPEVO on her blog. [|IPEVO] is a website for purchasing technology for schools. There are a lot of neat things on this website that would help so much for incorporating technology within my lessons. In her blog, Kathy discusses some new items IPEVO has come out with including the Perch for the iPad which would easily make the iPad into a document camera. Our school doesn't have desktop document cameras and I'm sure missing that from my last district. We have plenty of iPads though, so I think this may be a great purchase for the teachers to share for showing items on the board. (Jessica Tamburro)

I have been using twitter in the classroom for about a year now and I am extremely pleased with the results. First off, I am able to answer questions or give assignments from my own home. Secondly, my students are able to ask me questions about current events and we can have an online dialogue. As a government teacher, this was extremely useful during the Presidential debates and campaigns. Lastly, I am able to connect with my students outside of the classroom. Our school does a great job of updating its twitter feed to inform our community about sporting events, plays, musicals, or any other noteworthy events. Many of my students have been mentioned in our school tweets and I am able to congratulate and talk to them about that at school. I have already benefitted from following the educational experts on twitter. I just found a [|blog post]by Katy Schrock about brand new educational tools in the classroom. [|Ipevo's perch I pad] stand looks like an amazing tool educators could use to display documents in the classroom. I am going to use the perch among other advantages to try and get our PTSA to buy me an I pad for classroom use….wish me luck! - Jason Dasinger .

I created a Twitter back in 2008, but as an active Facebook user, I couldn't justify the need for Twitter at the time. Five years and a new teaching career later, I now see how Twitter can be used to engage learners. I have began to understand the rationale for why Twitter was created and how teachers can benefit from it. Teachers can share information and resources and communicate with students on their language without divulging personal information. Teachers can post Twitter updates reminding students of assignment due dates or the date of the next exam. Updates can go straight to students' phones as text messages. It's a way to communicate with students in the way that they communicate best...though social media. -Tyler Henry

I have had a Twitter account for several years now, but have always only used it for personal use. This assignment opened my eyes to a whole new way to utilize Twitter. I created a separate account for this assignment and plan to continue using it to follow these, and others, for professional purposes. One resource that I learned about while following my Twitter feed this week was something from the [|Tech and Learning] website tweeted by Howie DiBlasi. Each day, this website posts a “Site of the Day” to their page. They are all usually sites that provide teaching resources to teachers. The one they posted today was a site called [|Share my Lesson]. This site is a repository of teacher resources divided by grade, subject and rating. It also has activities mapped to the new Common Core and discussion forums...Mary Beth Jager :)

I have been a Twitter user for several years. At first, I was not sure that it was for me. As time passed and I began to visit it more often, I warmed up to it and now check it on a daily basis. The students actually think that it is funny when they find out that I have a Twitter account. One thing that I have done is retweet history information on a regular basis. By following the history channel, I recieve their "Today in History" tweets. I make sure to retweet the ones that are relevant to my subject and interesting to the students. I also like the idea of using Twitter as a reminder of upcoming due dates and assignments. This may help provide motivation for students who aren't as structured as others nor have the support at home to remind them. I like Diblasi's "site of the day" posts. There are many of these types of things out there to help the students. I have also considered using something like the "Twitter Experiment." -Johnny Tilton

=
I am one of those people who have heard about Twitter for years and never felt like it was something I was interested in. I am not a writer and I rarely post status updates on Facebook, so my thought was, "Why would I need a Twitter account?" That was until this class forced me into the Twitter world! Now, I see Twitter in a whole new light. It is no longer something that I think will provide me with more mundane happenings in the world, but instead provides me with vital updates on news, technology, education, things to do around Atlanta, fashion and so much more. It is like doing a Google search over and over again for things you enjoy learning about and then setting up RSS feeds so the postings come straight to you. Now, instead of reading Facebook at night and wondering about the future of mankind, I now have a living application that fills my mind with new thoughts and ideas and keeps me current with what is going on in the world around me. For all of the negatives many people have to say about technology, I have to say that a Twitter account is one that you could not argue with as being an educational tool that furthers the minds of our young people (that is, of course, unless they choose to follow people like Taylor Swift to learn what time she drinks her coffee.... ;) Angela Medley=====

I am very familiar with Twitter. I have been a member for four years now. For this particular assignment, I created another Twitter name because I made the decision that you wouldn't want to read my ‘tweets’ about my daily encounters and all my random thoughts! I decided to follow the people we have to for this assignment but I also added those educators that I follow on my personal account. I found this great link from one of my followers about [|Using Google to Avoid Plagiarism.]This article caught my eye because in one of my fourth grade classes, plagiarism came up while they were completing a PowerPoint project on an assigned state. While walking around the room watching my students work, I could clearly tell when a student had simply copied and pasted a whole paragraph from a web source and used it on their own slideshow. With this in mind, I decided to put the project due date on hold and have a serious talk about plagiarism to my students in all my classes. At no point did I want to embarrass any of my students but I did want them to see that I could tell when they have copied and pasted something into their documents. This article tweeted by Richard Byrne (@rmbyme) gave me lots of insight into how to each plagiarism in the classroom. –Follow me at techieteacher11 (Amy Zurawski)

I am a Facebook user and when Twitter came out, I had little interest in creating an account because I felt like it was just like a status update on Facebook. I almost never update my status on Facebook. So until now, I never understood the point of creating an account for something that works similar to Facebook. It was just another user name and password for me to remember. While creating my account, I am thinking it will be almost exactly like Facebook status updates. We are given a list of people to follow and I search of each one. One cool thing is I was instantly “following” each of these people or pages. I was instantly getting status updates. Unlike Facebook, I didn’t have to wait for the user to accept me. I do like how Twitter is to the point. You follow people because you want to hear what they have to say or read what they have to share. I have come to the conclusion that is a simple, filtered version of Facebook. (Amy Ghavamian)

=
I admit to being very anti-Twitter before this. Like some of the people above me have stated, it seemed to be just another mindless way to keep track of who the latest celebrity was dating. I use Facebook regularly and am fairly happy with just using that. Twitter was one more password and username (and apparently every username was taken) like Amy Ghavamian said. Upon creating my account, I spent some time playing around and eventually found what I needed to do. After following several people, both required and personal, I was amazed at how quickly people tweet. I was receiving tweets much faster than I could read or keep up with them. I recently read a statistic that said Twitter is growing much faster and more exponentially than Facebook. More Millennials are using Twitter as a means of communication that Facebook. Upon hearing this, I feel somewhat obligated to use Twitter to keep up with my students and the latest trends. I doubt I will ever be a regular tweeter, but I'm going to try very hard to keep up with it. (Sam Colson)======

I’ve had a Twitter account for a couple of years but I have never considered it as resource for education until this class. The Twitter follow recommendations of this helped me to see the merit in using Twitter as a resource for professional growth. With instant tweets from a variety of people on a variety of topics, it is a great tool for keeping up with the latest news in technology and education. Twitter is helpful to me because it provides me with a variety of sources on the developments in key areas that I love to keep up with, education and technology. For example, reading a graphic that discussed how texting affects grammar at [|Does Texting Affect Your Grammar] helped me to analyze how my grammar may be affected by my texting. Twitter is interesting to me because there are such a wide variety of people to follow and learn from beyond the celebrities of the world. It can actually be beneficial as tool to read news/events, communicate news/ events, or comment about news/events. I enjoy the retweet feature and that fact that the people that I follow are retweeting interesting items they have found. Also, I like the fact that you can comment on post which reminds of blogging is another cool feature. The conversation is ongoing. For me this helpful because I love to view how other respond to something I have read as it helps me to refine my thinking or answer a question that I may have. Twitter is such a great resource and I look forward to using to more to grow in my professional and personal life. (Wayne Cordy)

I am officially a Twitter-er, well maybe not yet because I haven't actually tweeted anything, but I am following several people and organizations. Last year, I used the idea of Twitter in my class to get the students to write short summaries of a reading they had been assigned. However, I didn't take it to the level of actually allowing my students to have a Twitter account. I couldn't figure out a way for the students to have a Twitter account and it be only for school use. The privacy controls are lacking and who the students could follow would be endless. After getting an account myself, I realized that this still seems to be the case. However, I was surprised by the resources available on Twitter if you just start following the right people. For instance, Howie DiBlasi had some wonderful links to articles that he recently read. One that caught my attention was about resumes and how they are becoming more visual. The article also mentioned that the average time an employer spends on your resume is 6 seconds! For as much work as I put into a resume, this shocked me, but I digress. The main point is that I found countless new resources. Twitter can contact me to experts in the education/technology fields all over the world, making Twitter a unique resource. (Jamie Nicholson)

I’ve had absolutely no desire to venture into the voyeuristic Twittersphere with all the reality stars and celebrities, let alone bringing my 6th grade classroom into it. Do I sound bias? Probably, but trying it out for this class has opened my eyes to some interesting possibilities. I can see some real value in using it as a professional tool. From my reading and from following my Twitter feeds, I found that it is a unique and timely way to stay in touch with various niches of professional learning networks. I found the following article called: What QR Codes Can Look Like In Your Classroom by John Hardison first appeared on gettingsmart.com at [|:Gallery of Voices.]This article is about using a combination of tools to record students' poetic works of art. The teacher started with Sound Cloud at [|Sound Cloud], a website that allows creators to upload songs, podcasts, and other sounds to share with the world; then after all the poems and or songs were recorded, the students printed QR codes of their poetry/song’s destination to Sound Cloud. The amazing result was a Gallery Walk of the students’ poetry/songs. It sounds a little advanced for me, but was just one of many intriguing technology ideas I found from my feeds. As far as using it for my classroom, I’m still hesitant. After watching the video by Dr. Rankin at: [|Twitter Experience], I am convinced that college and high school students would enjoy having their voice heard in larger classroom. It would enable the classroom to have a more cohesive and collaborative atmosphere. I might try some of the ideas in [|Thirty Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom] at such as #16 Twitterdeo, where students can post/share videos using their smartphones; #17 Communicate with the Experts by following science feeds; or have them try #22 a Online Scavenger Hunt posting videos/photos/feeds as a research exercise. I’m sure the more comfortable I am using Twitter personally, the more likely I will use it in my classroom. (Donna Halverson)

As some of you wrote here, I've been a facebook user and didn't realized the potential of Twitter until recently. I finally created the twitter account and quickly adopt to follow many art teachers and educational organizations. I was surprised that how easy to use Twitter and its concise format allowed me to get access many information in a short amount of time. However, as an elementary school art specialist, I am not sure how I can incorporate in my classroom. Many of my students struggle to type, don't have computers at home, and most importantly it is not supervised by teachers unlike Edmodo. I think Twitter is an excellent tool to use in the upper grade levels such as high school and college. The Twitter Experience video confirmed this when Dr. Rankin was still participating in the group discussion through Twitter even though she was away from the classroom. I loved Twitter as a professional learning tool as I got to connected with other art teachers. I asked a question to a high school art teacher who uses student art blogs, and he re-tweeted to all his followers to see if anybody else uses student blog in elementary schools. Even though nobody tweeted back, I thought it was very neat to build an instant network with art teachers from all over the world. (Apparently he's been on Twitter for a while so he has a large art educator network established.) I know 100% sure Twitter will be one of my best professional learning tools as I get to follow and get to know more art teachers and technology savvys. PS Jamie, the article about the visual resume was absolutely intriguing to me as well. I had my 5th graders to type up their resume as a career building, and this article got me a good idea how I can teach the design elements in the real situation. What a gem we found! (Mi Kyong Kormos)