Once upon a time, there was a girl who tried Twitter, and …sadly…did not like it. The girl quit using twitter, finding that there was not much of interest there to keep her entertained. Eventually she cancelled her account. Yes.. obviously the girl was me. Until recently I have not had a twitter account, an Instagram account, or Tik Tok account. I know how to use them all, but I found that some people I care about were so completely sucked in by social media that it affected their personal lives. I also found that while there are a lot of positive things about social media, there are also many negative messages, and it affected my emotions. That being said, social media is now a permanent part of our lives, and as such our students will be using it, therefore I feel it is pretty important to be media / internet savvy. With that in mind, I took this Edtc300 course to learn how to use it better. I am very careful about what I look at now, and how much time I actually spend on news or social media sites. (Never read the news comments.. the trolls live there.)
Now… I should actually get back on subject, and say that since joining Twitter again, I still have mixed feelings. I avoid the negativity, because I am on there only for certain information now. I am obviously following educational tweets, but I also am a photographer, and so I enjoy those tweets. I also really enjoy science so I like tweets about stuff like this.. and also this. I do find that I enjoy connecting with other educators, and I like some of the resources I find there, many which I will probably use in future classrooms. Something about the layout of Twitter bothers me however. I am not sure what it is exactly. It feels too busy for me, and I find that I end up overwhelmed with information that I feel I should follow. This happens because Twitter thinks it knows what I like, and it tries to get me to follow the feeds of people I would normally not care less about. This feeling of being overwhelmed by information is probably only a me problem. I also find the hashtags somewhat confusing at times, and if I did not have the list provided me by our class, I would have difficulty knowing which hashtags were in use. I am also fairly verbose, so I find it difficult at times to limit my thoughts to 280 characters. (This is probably good for me.. ) Sooo…
I have also taken part in some Twitter conversations… noteably, one that happens on Thursday evenings called #SaskEdChat.
Basically, the host asks a question, and then those of us who are there, answer the question and discuss it. I find it interesting, but i also find that it is a slow moving process. The good thing is, I am able to complete other work at the same time. I think it is probably also a good way to make connections in the education community and perhaps also a good professional development tool.
My final conclusions about Twitter? I will probably continue to use it for the interests I have already mentioned, and as a way to continue with my professional development and the connections I can make within the school community, but I will probably keep it limited to that. for now.. If you are interested to see what I have been “tweeting” please feel free to visit..…
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