Twitter and Me!

Twitter and Me
The activity we did with Twitter in Tuesday's class was a learning experience. I never have taken a test or done anything education related on Twitter before. As the class typed their tweets and everyone responded at same time, I feel like I did not have much of a chance to read the tweets, since I was typing my own response and trying to put a word document together at the same time. I think that social networks could be used for educational purposes and could be very effective considering a lot of kids are familiar with them.

I created my Twitter about a year ago and didn't really start "tweeting" til about halfway through the summer. Twitter did not catch my attention as much as Facebook did, but my parents both had Facebooks and monitored mine. They would constantly rag on me about my status's and different posts I commented on. I was not allowed to sware and I was only allowed to put up certain photos. I got so sick of them telling me, "Take this down" and "delete this". So, I switched to Twitter. My parents are both not very familiar with technology, Facebook is as far as their social networking goes, so my Twitter was anything I wanted to post without the nagging of my parents.

If social networking such as Twitter and Facebook were to be used in the classroom, I think that students and teachers should have their own personal account and a professional account. Teachers and students could learn a lot from each other if they used social networking in the classroom. One thing I did not know about Twitter was the Tweetdeck. Having everything in columns makes the "tweeting" experience a lot easier. Teachers could posts assignments on Twitter and students could turn them in, they could have class discussions, answer any questions about classwork or homework, or they could simply take a quiz like we did in class. A principal from a New Jersey high school replaced the schools website with a Facebook page, and it is accessed more than the old website. This is just one way how social networking is a positive force for students, teachers, and staff.

Overall I do not think Twitter would be a bad idea for the classroom, or any social networking site for that matter. In this article, you can see the 60 different ways Twitter can be used in the classroom.