Twitter Assignment ED
505
The technology in education class has been a unique
experience for me to say the least. It
would be easy for me to say how great twitter has been, however, I honestly
cannot say that at this time. One being with all the different technology
assignments due each week for the class I found it hard to concentrate on
searching twitter Due to old habits I
found putting in a search phrase much more relevant and quicker finding results than the first
several people I followed on twitter.
The first week of class I used some of the websites
suggested in the syballus to find some educators to follow and picked some
local people, however, with this being summer they did not seem to have a lot
of significant post. I mainly experienced
a lot of irrelevant chatter initially; therefore, I was turned off to
twitter. I think if I am able to secure
a position back in a public classroom I can see where connecting with a couple
of educators could be helpful on one subject.
However, during this class I did not find it very useful and my
inexperience with twitter was probably the major factor which I can work on in
the future. I did see among our
classmates how the hash tags could be helpful for a class or group of students
to research the internet thought out the year.
I enjoyed seeing the twitter post among classmates each week and the
different web sites relating to the same subject (ex. Digital divide)
therefore, a class or group of students could quickly build up a database of
references on the internet with twitter.
Consequently, the irrelevance of twitter was due more to be not being
confident with the technology than twitter itself.
One hash tag I tried to follow outside of the class was Ed
Tech k-12 Magazine @#ow.ly/n1L81, another one was Digital Maverick @
digitalmaverick. Both had some insightful tweets, however, a
lot of chatter also that was not relevant to our assignments. Another one I followed was Karl
Fisch@Karlfisch his blog is thefischbowl.blogspotl.com. I did not do a good job following them due to
they had so many tweets I found it quicker to search the net on my own,
however, as stated above in the future once you find someone tweeting about
subject you are interested in with practice I am sure you can learn to search
tweets more effectively than I did during this class.
In conclusion, I think posting a tweet with a website
attached on a particular subject like we did for class is much more helpful for
education purposes. Therefore, our class
hash tag was the most useful tweets in my opinion. I can also see where social
bookmarking like Delicious can help organize your tweets, websites, and
bookmarks now that assignment is finished.
Ed I can definitely see how you came to this conclusion. I too often did searches regarding whatever topic we were discussing, but in doing so I found great people to follow and its makes me confident that if there is a new technology to emerge or anything new in the educational world but someone on Twitter will be talking about it. Im happy that you'll still consider using it if you go back into the classroom. I think it is a great way to integrate technology into the classroom as well as a great professional development tool for teachers.
ReplyDeleteEd,
ReplyDeleteI completely understand, because I seem to be a lot easier until you do it. It was difficult for me too. However, I have found twitter to be a great source of information after I increased the number of educators to follow. Also, I agree that a class can be a reference data using twitter. Additionally, I think we all have more confidence using twitter which means we will use it in our classrooms.
I did not see a whole lot of significant posts either. I looked and found some interesting things, but nothing that was great. It also seems like there is not a lot of room for a lot of great information to fit. I did gain confidence using it and think that if I ever teach an upper grade, that I will use it. I think that it could be a great tool under the right circumstances.
ReplyDelete