There was a time when Twitter was seen by so many as a waste of time. Few people believed it could play any sort of significant role in education. Those beliefs have changed quite a bit over the last couple of years. Hopefully after completing the activity over this tool you will be able to see the value of using Twitter in a variety of ways in your classroom.
Take a few minutes to share your thoughts about Twitter and how you could use it in your classroom or to connect with other educators from around the world. Do you think you will continue to use Twitter? Why or why not? Please include your Twitter handle in your post to help your colleagues find you.
I've been trying to come up with ways that I could use Twitter in the library and the best that I have come up with is new books just in or maybe a new cool website I want to share with the kids. I could see the use of Twitter to tweet happenings at the school, ie games, concerts, scores, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn my mind, Twitter would be more useful for me in the professional development area. There are so many educators out there sharing what they know and what they learn. I like to use Twitter when there are conventions going on because you can learn from other sessions that you weren't able to attend or in the case of ISTE this year, "attend" a conference that you aren't even close to!
Whether or not I will use Twitter on a more regular basis, I'm not sure. I may set up the Twitter Dashboard as that looks like a good way to sort through and keep track of my account. I just find myself wasting too much time going through and reading tweets and then getting off track! I feel guilty going to Twitter and reading because I feel like I'm wasting time, not learning!
@rhonnabrianna
Just get used to not reading back through reams of tweets, just pick up where you land in, it's easy to think you've missed ultra-important stuff, if it's that important, you'll see it again.
DeleteAs a librarian, I might tweet out links to book reviews or resources for books that teachers use in the classroom.
DeleteAs far as using Twitter for PD, I have found that there are certain hashtags that yield information that is useful to me. I use TweetDeck so that I have columns for the hashtags I follow. For example, a couple of my favorites are #4thchat (since I am a 4th grade teacher), #elemchat, and #plpnetwork (posts from Powerful Learning Practice).
I do understand that it is easy to get caught up reading tweets and lose track of time! I generally give myself just 15-30 minutes a day. I've found that if it's a really cool thing, it will be retweeted and I'll see it another time! Hope that helps!
Patti Grayson (@pattigrayson)
I'd like to address a couple of things you mentioned in your comment.
Delete1) there are amazing teacher librarians who are active on Twitter, and they would be glad to talk to you about how they use Twitter... not only for their own professional development, but also involving kids in the conversation. They have been able to provide some amazing learning opportunities for their students because of Twitter, including using Twitter to initiate contact with authors, illustrators, etc.
2) I use Twitter to connect to other people around the world- professionally and personally. Some of my closest friends and colleagues are people that I only see face to face a couple of times a year, but with whom I am able to stay connected on Twitter. Sometimes we tweet about education. Sometimes we tweet about our lives. I know about their families, pets, ice cream preferences... it sounds like mundane details, but that's what you know when you are connected to another human being.
3) I think your "wasting time" perception comes out of the stereotype of what social media is. If I'm following Ashton Kutcher (which I'm not), then I might see that as a waste of time. When I follow Sir Ken Robinson, I know he's sharing things daily that make me think.
4) Finally, I have to say that you will not get a lot out of Twitter unless you put some part of YOU into it. I wrote a post almost 2 years ago about how you must invest time into creating your own network. I hope you read it and understand what I mean about "investing." http://avenue4learning.com/2010/11/16/investing-the-time/
@michellek107
p.s. I am now teaching in my "dream school" because of a connection that started on Twitter. That's HUGE to me. :-)
I signed up about 2 years before I really started using Twitter. It is now my main professional learning tool - a constant companion. I love that I can connect with educators around the world at any time using my phone. I can also miss a few days without compromising anything. It is crucial to select people to follow who appeal to your interests, and you need a big enough group of both followers and people you follow for it to work well. I found it more useful once I had more than 150 followers.
DeleteI signed up for twitter half way through a three day conference in February. So I started following a few people then. But as the second video said I felt like twitter was in a foreign language. But proof that language immersion works... I have jumped in and it's making a lot more sense. I have found some great articles and think I am following some great educators that without this tool I would never had contact with. @sarahg716
ReplyDeleteP.S. I love that I know how the first video was made and I can do it myself! :)
Rhonna--couple of thoughts for you about "wasting time." First, there's the adage, "Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." :D So if you're enjoying what you're reading, it's all good! I've read a ton of articles lately about how we've become so busy that we forget how to enjoy life around us. Maybe getting lost on Twitter now and then is part of enjoying life!
ReplyDeleteSecond, you never know when what you read will be valuable. In classes, at dinner parties, in meetings, whenever we interact with others, we draw on our collective knowledge. Reading what others have tweeted help broaden our worldview (yes, even if it is the occasional article about some celebrity) and keep us connected to current events.
Third, and this one took me a while, I don't think the expectation on Twitter is to read everything. I just don't have time at school to check Twitter. But when I get home, I don't go back and look at 10 hours of my feed. As one smart presenter said at EdCamp Omaha, the important stuff gets retweeted. If it's vital enough, you'll get it eventually.
Enjoy your continued adventures with Twitter! I think it's grand. :D @MsRowse
@rhonnabriana : I completely understand what you are saying about being distracted on Twitter. I have been there myself. The change came for me once I started to realize that I couldn't read everything and I needed to filter what was coming through.
ReplyDeleteSomeone once told me that Twitter is like a fire hose; if you try to drink it all in, you will drown. I use a Twitter client that allows me to sort data into certain hashtags or users. That way, I get the main ideas without drowning. If someone tweets something important, it will likely get retweeted by someone I follow closely or will appear in one of the streams I follow.
I also limit myself to how much time I spend on Twitter each day. I will keep it running in the background to notify me when someone mentions me or sends me a DM, but I only scan the streams every so often.
I hope that helps. Don't try to friend everyone and start to think about who you would like to follow more closely and add them to a stream in your client. Most of all, don't get discouraged, you can't know/read everything. The good stuff usually floats to the top anyway. @nathanghall
Rhonnabrianna,
ReplyDeleteI joined Twitter on June 14, 2008. If it had not been for the incredibly supportive people I found there I have no doubt I would have quit after the first month. It was a full 3 months before I had the "a-ha" moment when the lightbulb came on and I finally understood on a deeper level.
You said something that really stood out to me. You said, "I just find myself wasting too much time going through and reading tweets and then getting off track! I feel guilty going to Twitter and reading because I feel like I'm wasting time, not learning!"
I don't think there is anyone who is a regular user of Twitter who doesn't feel guilty from time to time for the amount of time they spend on Twitter. It is very possible to find a link to a blog post then find another link from there and another from there and so on. The trick is figuring out a system for organizing tweets to read later on when you do have time. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said you can see Twitter being used for PD. I can learn more useful information in one hour on Twitter than I can in an entire year of workshops. I am not exaggerating. I could read professional journals such as ISTE's monthly Learning and Leading with Technology, but it is missing something that is terribly important to learning and that is personal interactions. I turn to my network for support as well as feedback. I follow people who push my thinking and who have helped shaped many of the beliefs regarding teaching that I have today.
I highly recommend setting up the Twitter dashboard like Josh described in the tutorial video in the class. I know others will disagree with me, but I cannot even imaging using twitter.com. I fought using Tweetdeck for the longest time because it seemed so confusing, but it really does make it easier to see your tweets broken into streams.
Let's talk more about this next week at #digicon12.
I like the idea of using twitter for PD. I think that I will start with that then see where it goes from there. using it in the classroom? I can see it but probably down the road. As mentioned earlier I like the idea of tweeting about school events - no such thing as too many reminders! Last week at the reunion sending tweets was mentioned and I am proud to say that although I have yet to tweet I was not the person who said "What are you talking about?"
ReplyDelete@mrsmuel
I really don't think I will be using Twitter to communicate with students or other educators. I just have never been a fan of it.
ReplyDeleteI've read tweets before from some of my friends out side of education, and I guess I just don't get the point of posting what I'm doing that that moment in time, or what I was thinking about, or a photo of something I saw. I can do the same thing with Facebook, and that is something that I don't do often either.
I can see where people can connect, but I just don't feel that it would be a useful tool for me.
@tkleag
I signed up to Twitter today and found it to be very overwhelming. I have been active in the technology realm for a while but have never been a twitter fan. Now things are becoming clearer as to why. It’s going to take a while to get the terminology down. I can see the benefit of communication being a bridge between educators. Just today I found some cool apps from the history channel for smart phones and cannot wait to test them out. I can also see how twitter can become addictive, therefore needing to plan my usage accordingly, not spend hours ciphering through tweets. For the classroom, I liked the idea of using twitter as a pen pal lesson, by having my geography class connect with other students around the world, understanding and learning certain attributes of other countries and cultures. Beth how do you use twitter in your DL class? Like I said before it’s going to take some time to get a handle on the aspect but once I do watch out.
ReplyDelete@MrLipska
Even though Charter's cut cables ended the Digicon12 session early today, it was amazing how much information was disseminated during the day. The cooperative storytelling video ideas and the ways to have students reflect on their learning were superb in themselves. Those alone can revolutionize our teaching. But in the afternoon, we learned that Twitter can also do that! Wow!
ReplyDeleteThis is Sara Beyer. How many entries to these blogs have I lost because of not having "signed in" properly? Who knows! Just now, above, I had to sign in as anonymous because my URL - presumably my Twitter URL - has illegal characters. If it really did, would Twitter have allowed me to use it? I signed up for it a week ago, and I've already got two followers...only, after a whole week. It would be nice to know what I've been doing wrong! I'll just have to keep using Anonymous until I find out. To anyone who can help, I say in advance, "Mil gracias!"
DeleteHey, I finally figured how to do this, thanks to Kathy Smith! Wow, Kathy!
ReplyDeleteI am one of those people who felt that twitter was not for me. After the Digicon12 bootcamp, I am now willing to give it a try. Our school district has a twitter site on the website but I have not made good use of it. I now plan to twitter activites going on at my school.
ReplyDelete@chershfeldt
I am not fully convinced I’ll be using Twitter a lot; especially on a personal level. I’m not one to constantly tell people what is going on in my life. I have a Facebook account and I am accused of being a stalker because I don’t post very often. Friends that post every detail of their day will get themselves filtered or even removed.
ReplyDeleteI have been thinking of the benefits of Twitter at a district level. I would be interested in using it to keep parents informed of school happenings (events coming up, time changes, game scores). I am also thinking about using it for classroom purposes. I could keep students and parents informed/reminded about assignments/projects and due dates.
I do have a couple of questions: When following a # can you “block” someone (so you don’t have to see their tweets, but can read the others)? Can you stop someone from following you (say you had a true stalker, ex-boyfriend)?
@JanHill_wy