Before this class began, I would occasionally scroll through Twitter for updates on current events but that was the extent of my use. I hadn’t tweeted since the 4th grade and barely followed anyone new. I recently found my old Twitter account from Grade 4 which reminded me why I didn’t tweet or even use Twitter daily. However, in the early parts of February, I found myself on the app for several hours a day in the lead-up and the subsequent Russian invasion of Ukraine. I found people from Ukraine who were reporting the truth of the matter by detailing what they were (and still are) experiencing. I followed links to Ukrainian news sites reporting out of Kyiv that provided live updates and ways for those across the world to lend some sort of hand. Even though at the time I was solely using Instagram for social media, I found that it did not offer the same accessibility or overall communication that Twitter offered. It was also interesting to easily compare the different sides of reporting that were going on in real-time from both domestic and foreign news agencies which is a great tool to utilize in a classroom when discussing governments, media, freedom of speech, and propaganda.

It was this analysis of different information being presented from two sides on one topic that I observed during the first couple of days of my pre-internship practicum this year. However, my co-op teacher did not use Twitter but instead went right to the news sources webpage. While Twitter would have offered an interesting look into how two sides report on one topic as well, the limitation of characters that can be relayed in tweets would not have been as efficient as going straight to the webpage. On the other hand, the abundance of tweets that can be shared and the links and resources that they can contain is a lot more efficient than visiting only two different sides of a story. It is for this reason that I believe that Twitter has a place in the classroom, but it is to be used in a limited capacity for specific purposes. In my classroom, I would use Twitter as a way to find many interesting resources on stories and topics rather than using it to replace actual news sites. Twitter should be used as a starting point for finding many great resources, knowledgeable people, and links, but should never be the end all be all.

Recently I was involved with my first Saskedchat which was my first social media chat as well. I thoroughly enjoyed the chat as it was a great way to interact with new people in my field and have an insightful conversation with them. There was even a fellow educator who was participating in the Saskedchat in Fernie. Using Twitter allowed us to share resources with each other and find quotes or information to back up our answers. The quickness with which we could see each other’s answers along with the ability to easily create reply chains to focus on a specific tweet was very helpful when trying to have numerous conversations at once, especially when using Tweetdeck. I loved Tweetdeck and will be using it anytime I participate in another chat due to its layout and endless ways it can expand your reach when using Twitter.

In my future classroom, I would like to try our own webchat on Twitter (with students I believe I can trust) so students may create better awareness of how to use these sites to their full potential by attaching links and resources in their answers to further validate them. This obviously will have to be heavily monitored and may never even come to fruition, but I enjoy the thought of it and will be something to consider in the near future.