Twitter Thoughts
Up until taking EDTC300 I never had twitter, let only never thought I would ever get Twitter and use it. I never understood the point of it, or how to use it properly so I stuck to using Instagram and occasionally Facebook. People I know would talk about tweets they saw or would ask me if I was following along with some drama that was going on, and again I would think to myself “what’s the point.” If I really wanted to see someone’s tweets I could quickly search up their Twitter account on google and read it that way or wait until some other account shared the drama on another platform; which is what usually happens. When I saw that we would have to join Twitter for this class it made me a little nervous because I was not sure what to expect at all; however, after only using it this short amount of time my thoughts have changed and I think it could be a great tool to use in my future as an educator.
As a new user of Twitter at times, I can find it to be overwhelming because there is so much thrown at me and it can be hard to find something that I want to see. Often times I look at my phone after not being on it for a long period of time and it makes me jump at the number of notifications that I have, and I wonder if I missed any interesting tweets that I might have a difficult time finding afterwards. On the other hand, when I do find accounts to follow their tweets are interesting and helpful. For example, @teachertoolkit or @TCEA or @teacher2teacher are all Twitter accounts that I follow, and I find they share useful articles and tips to use in the classroom that can be very useful as an educator. I have also really enjoyed interacting with our #EDTC300 class twitter posts. I find it so useful to be seeing what our fellow classmates are finding and to be able to have conversations around different topics. For example, as seen in the image to the left a conversation a few of the EDTC300 students had a conversation about whether cellphones should be banned within schools or not (Check out this link for the entire conversation https://twitter.com/noelledyck22/status/1525955877479632901). I also like being able to see updates of everyone’s learning projects and knowing when they have posted on their blogs so I can go check them out.
Twitter could definitely be a valuable tool in my future classroom, including:
- Using it as a communication tool for parents and/or students. This could include reminders about due dates, field trips, quizzes, or I look into activities we are doing within the classroom.
- Have polls or open chats for students to share feedback, ask questions, etc.
- Use it to connect with other classrooms.
- Show off my own classroom; make posts to help out other educators when possible!
- It can be used as a research tool by students. Possibly by looking up different hashtags and seeing what is being shared in connection to them.
One experience that I found really engaging and useful was getting to participate in Sask Ed Chat! Again this was something that I had no idea this type of thing went on or you could do on Twitter. This experience was such a great way to grow my PLN and connect with other educators across Saskatchewan. I loved getting to see others educators’ responses to the great question that were generated in this chat and even the great conversations that were started by the responses that were submitted. I am very grateful that @kbhildebrandt shared Tweet Deck with us beforehand as it made it so much easier to follow along with the conversation and keep track of the questions and responses being discussed. Without Tweet Deck, I would have definitely been lost. It especially made it easier to see what our fellow classmate’s responses were and the conversations coming up. I really enjoyed participating in this professional development experience, and could definitely see myself participating in some more!
I look forward to becoming more active/present on Twitter as I begin to figure more stuff out, as well as carrying it out into my future!
Hi Tadyn!
This post was very inspirational to me as I continue on my journey through blogging, Twitter, and other Edtech resources! You put so much thought and effort into this post and that is how I would like my blogging to look! When it comes to technology I normally run for the hills as I can never make any of my accounts look as amazing as everyone else does! I guess that is a part of the reason I am taking this course to gain the courage to learn about all these different social platforms such as WordPress and Twitter!
I am still becoming used to Twitter and the regular commenting and posting as I never used Twitter before! This project is actually a lot more difficult for me than I thought it would be as I am not an avid Twitter user or social media user in general. I have Facebook and Instagram but I never post anything, so keeping up with all these Twitter posts and comments is definitely a challenge! Twitter is a great resource for educators to learn from each other and have conversations with people from all over to develop our professional online network! I have already learned so much about Twitter and technology through this experience! Thank you for adding the cellphone post as I believe it is a great example of how educators can come together and discuss important topics to help educators!
One major problem I was having was trying to figure out how Twitter can be used in the classroom and you provided a lot of resources that I haven’t thought of that would be a great use of Twitter! I love the idea of showing off your classroom to the world! Lots of new teachers looking for ideas on how they should set up their classrooms and lesson ideas for kids and social media helps with that! It is also a great way to show parents what their kids are doing every day to keep them up to date!
Sask Ed Chat was a great experience as I connected with so many new educators and even received some follows afterwords and Tweetdeck made this such an easy experience as I could see what everyone was posting!
Thank you for sharing that! I really enjoyed this post!
Cheers,
Noelle