I will be the first to admit that before now I have never been interested in Twitter. I joined Facebook years ago and thought that Twitter was just a duplicate of the status feature of FB. Even when friends encouraged me to join, I shrugged my shoulder and refused. Now that I have created a Twitter account and explored the site, I see that it has more implications than just status updates. I did enjoy interacting with my classmates on a different level, but I realize now, that’s not all Twitter can be use for. I am now interested in "following" certain people and organizations, not for social purposes, but for information. I especially found it interesting to follow news tweets and educational technology tweets. Twitter is a fascinating tool that allows me to stay up-to-date on current events and trends! I can see how it can be used for educational purposes, especially in high school. For example, a class studying the oil spill can follow news coverage from the coast. They can document changes and even compare different news agencies.
As a third grade teacher, I had to think creatively to come up with a practical educational use for twitter that would be safe for the students. One idea I had was to create a class twitter account that follows other elementary classrooms. I could have a daily “tweeter” who would be allowed to tweet the most exciting thing that happened that day. A great thing about twitter, then, is that it could help an educator teach “main idea” because the character limit keeps users from reporting unimportant details. For example, if I wanted a student to tweet about the day, he or she will have to think about the main event of the day and narrow down his or her response to one or two sentences.
My only concern with Twitter's use in education is getting through filters and blocks that protect schools from inappropriate Internet usage. Understanding its potential in education is the first step in getting it approved in schools, but close monitoring by the teacher is necessary to ensure proper usage. I will definitely attempt to gain approval in my school to use it this semester.
The following is a link to my twitter account: http://twitter.com/vgilbert01 Feel free to "follow" me if you wish!
Twitter! What can I say Valerie I think we both were up for a challenge with this one. It took us a little while but we figured it out. This tool is great for social purposes but I don't see it being used in schools yet. It's gonna take a lot of monitoring to be used in classrooms.
ReplyDeleteHey thats a great idea for twitter! If all the 3rd grade teachers used it, the "tweeter" for the day would really feel that he/she is doing something. This was actually one of the few social networking sites that was not blocked by our filter. Good luck with that!
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