Twitter. It’s the one social media I’ve constantly avoided. It’s always seemed like that website people go on to start arguments, post lies, and occasionally talk about the news. I’ve gone my whole life managing to barely avoid Twitter, that was until EDTC 300.

Now, I won’t lie and say I’ve never used Twitter before. My generation grew up on social media, and I knew more about crafting a tweet and hashtags before I joined the app than my parents did after years of it. However, Twitter just never appealed to me. The occasional funny tweet just wasn’t enough to keep me entertained. I found that Twitter worked too hard getting me to follow new people and topics. I also hate the fact that Twitter starts your feed where you left off and makes you scroll up to see new things. If you let Twitter take you to the top by clicking the pop-up, you end up missing so many older tweets. Overall Twitter was just not something I cared to use.

Then, for EDTC 300 we started a professional Twitter. I was convinced I wasn’t going to like using it and that once again Twitter would disappoint. However, I found that using Twitter for professional learning gave my feed a really meaningful structure. I was no longer just scrolling through celebrity drama and oh so many poorly suggested topics. Now when I open Twitter, my feed is curated to a specific need. Even those annoying suggestions are much more useful now that my Twitter use has a theme.

Twitter has become a very useful way for me to learn so many classroom tips and engage with other professionals. I get to see so many useful articles with great assignment ideas or tips for creating a classroom community. I’ve especially enjoyed being able to find ideas and help with secondary math since a lot of help is given to elementary education instead. Twitter has made me excited for my future classroom and I think it’s an amazing way to continue learning throughout my life! In the future, I see Twitter mostly as a way to continue professional development and find cool new lesson plans or ways of teaching. However, I have really enjoyed the class list and the easy way to see what everyone in the class is up to. I think that could be utilized in a high school classroom as well as a way for students to collaborate.

I don’t think Twitter is all positive, however. There are a lot of things that make finding new information very difficult. One example is that aside from regular ads, Twitter likes to give you random tweets from new topics you might like. Maybe it’s just my Twitter, but it seems to think I’m interested in very random things like ballet or popular videos. This makes my feed cluttered with Twitter suggestions instead of actual content I want to see. Another thing I don’t enjoy about Twitter feeds is that a lot of what I see is other people’s likes and comments. Occasionally this is great and I see a super useful post, but most times I end up seeing the same tweet 10 times as everyone in the class also likes it. These things make my feed so cluttered that I’ve taken to just going into my following and deciding which account I want to view.

There’s still plenty for me to learn about Twitter, I mean I’ve never even heard of a Twitter chat, but so far I’ve enjoyed getting to discover so much great information on Twitter. I’m excited to continue curating a community of other professionals on Twitter!