It has been a wild ride with twitter. I have always had a twitter account, but I never really used it. Twitter can be fun at times. From interaction with my peers and posting things myself, it is extremely fun to share ideas with each other.
I found such useful things such as what Jasmine has retweeted. And funny thing is this existed back in my high school, but I never really cared for it. Now, I am studying to be an educator and realizing how important these little things are in a school environment. Twitter has opened my eyes and my mind in some way on that.
Since I am very familiar with social medias and twitter specifically, I did not struggle with working my way in this application. The reason I have always avoided twitter is because it has this bad reputation of “toxic” people. Further using the site, it made me realize that you will be surrounded with “toxic” people/tweets if you surround yourself with it. So far, my feeds are all about education and positive posts, which is really great.
Will I use twitter in my future classroom?
To be extremely honest, I do not see twitter being in my future classroom. Although it is true that we are more becoming online with everything requires using internet (UR Courses, EDTC 300 class, and more). For me Twitter is not the best site to have a classroom setting. I would probably use my account as an announcement account by posting reminders to students. I would probably use it to share some interesting things happening in the classroom such as group activities. I will not use twitter to communicate with my students. Plus, there is also discord, which is becoming more student/classroom friendly with their new forum posts section. Overall, I see discord being more appropriate for classroom than twitter.
In terms of building a professional presence, I feel like LinkedIn account is more helpful in creating connection with peers that have the same interest as you. LinkedIn also acts as an ePortfolio since you can search for jobs there. Overall, I find LinkedIn as a more professional site to use than Twitter.
In conclusion, Twitter is a decent tool to make connections with others and to share knowledge and ideas with each other. I learned so much from my peers and I am always excited to posts things to share. Given that Twitter can be a little “wild”, I would say it is not the best tool for a school environment.
Hi Jozelle! I’ve avoided Twitter in the past for the same reasons as you, but I also have found that it’s been incredibly positive for this class. I think Twitter has been a great place to find inspiring lessons or ideas but I agree that something like Discord is much better suited for classroom communication. The ads and suggested content pushed me away from wanting to use it in a classroom. I hope you enjoy the rest of the semester on Twitter and maybe we can find some more benefits for it!
Good reflections Jozelle, I kind of agree with what you’re saying about not using it in my future classroom. As you said, I think there are other platforms that would be more beneficial to communicate with your class and I am not sure I feel the need to promote what is happening in my classroom.