Social networks can be a great way to have professional development right at your fingertips! My professor asked us to get a Twitter account. Honestly, I was not thrilled; just one more thing to have to keep up with. However, I’m not admittedly a Twitter fan. Seriously, it is so easy to spend hours upon hours going through my news feed full of fancy new technology tips and tricks (Shout-out to Alice Keeler!). I think the reason I enjoyed Twitter so much more this time (I have tried a couple times previously) is that I had a very good recommendation of people to follow. That, I think is the key to using social media to its fullest advantage. Following educators who can help me grow, not only as a teacher, but who can also help me grow my network is valuable. Another social network I joined is Classroom 2.0. Solomon and Schrum suggest (2014) this as a popular site because of its forums, groups, and its archive of lessons, podcasts, and interviews. This site is interesting because your membership, while free, must be approved. So, once you sign-up, you have to wait a few days to get approval. I really like this feature because it likely filters out those sneaky little advertisements that we occasionally face in other social networks. However, I was very overwhelmed by the website in general. It is somewhat difficult to sort through the posts in the forum. As I browsed through the most recent posts in the forum, I had trouble finding something that piqued my interest until I saw one titled, “3 Useful Tech Tools to Use in Your Classroom.” This teacher wrote a whole discussion about the usefulness of Prezi. I was surprised to see that her top useful tech tool. My faith in the site began to diminish. While, I am now a Twitter-fan, I am not sure that I will frequently visit Classroom 2.0. There are a multitude of applications for Twitter in the middle grades classroom. When I taught ELA a few years ago, I would have students summarize using hashtags or I would have them edit celebrity tweets. Neither activity actually uses the technology of Twitter; the first just piggy-backs off the concept, while the second just had me printing off tweets for students to correct. More effective uses of Twitter in the classroom could include recommending students follow certain experts to help them grow a more professional following. By doing this, students could use this as a springboard for their research. While researching ways to use Twitter in the science classroom, I found a lesson that I am really excited about trying. Basically, a high school science teacher assigned an #OrganelleWar with his students. Students created a Twitter account for their organelle and started a campaign for “presidency.” While campaigning, scientists from all over the world began getting involved and adding insightful, new information for students. Now, students and experts are interacting- this allows the lesson to reach that higher level of engagement! I am ready to explore this an option for my cells unit. I’ll keep my blog, and Twitter, updated! Solomon, G. (2014). Web 2.0 How-To for Educators. (2nd ed.). https://twitter.com/ http://www.classroom20.com/ http://www.slideshare.net/BradGraba/twitter-for-nsta?next_slideshow=1
1 Comment
9/18/2016 03:20:25 pm
I share your same attitude towards twitter and trying to keep up with all of the new tweets and re-tweets. I find myself quickly overwhelmed, but intrigued at all of the resources available at my fingertips and couldn’t wait to learn more. I think it’s great that you have been able to locate some really influential people and possibly get some ideas. I personally enjoy following #Edutopia and #Weareteachers. Both of these feeds provide numerous tips and tricks from dealing with trouble students to providing your students with an enrichment activity. I really like the idea of having the students using twitter to create a # for the organelles of the cell. What a creative way to use technology and engage the students in demonstrating their knowledge of content standards.
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July 2017
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