Prior to this week, I have never used or explored Twitter. When people talked about Twitter and their "tweets" it was from a strictly social, personal perspective. Honestly, I don't have the time to tweet about going to lunch or other minor daily occurrences, so I never had an interest in joining. I didn't realize the professional aspect of Twitter or how much I was missing. Having spent hours on it in the last two days (thanks to two extra snow days!), I am very excited about Twitter's potential as an integral part of my PLN and its place in the classroom. Solomon and Schrum (2010) mention Edmodo as another sharing resource (p. 36). I am familiar with this tool and actually use it frequently in my class. I appreciate the secure and private aspects of Edmodo and will likely continue to use it for student use. However, for my PLN, I can see Twitter playing a key role.
I do have concerns about the time factor of keeping up with my Feedly account and now TweetDeck. My life, like many of yours, tends to get very busy. I usually am strong at prioritizing and remaining organized in chaotic situations, but right now I"m struggling a little. My family is my top priority, and I often step away from school work to play a board game or watch a basketball practice. Our farm responsibilities also are ranked highly, as animals can't always provide for themselves. (This cold weather has been quite tiring!) That leaves any "extra" time left for my classroom plans and MET classes. Luckily, sometimes I can intermix the two. I read Professor Hartman's comment about not overwhelming us with Twitter this week, and I greatly appreciated her consideration. As I work on this post, I hear "chirps" of new Tweets waiting to be read. A change in settings might be necessary to maintain my sanity. :)
My other worry is about tweeting. As a first-time Tweeter, I worry about making mistakes or not sending it out correctly. I found the resources that were included in this week's folder extremely helpful. Two aspects stood out to me. First, I like that Richardson & Mancabelli (2011) gave the advice to begin contributing to Twitter by retweeting (p. 43). This, I feel more confident doing. I'm hoping that once I get started, I'll also contribute original ideas. The second suggestion was to not read every tweet and to accept that the tweets will come in too quickly to deal with. Betcher reassured me that I "don't need to read every tweet" (Twitter Handbook for Teachers document). This, I'm going to have to accept and learn to select specific tweets to read. Overall, I am excited to discover Twitter will likely be an invaluable resource professionally and look forward to seeing how it could be utilized in the classroom.
My Twitter name: @DDaniel115
Richardson, W., & Mancabelli, R. (2011). Personal learning networks: using the power of connections to transform education. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.
Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2010). Web 2.0 how-to for educators. Eugene, Or.: International Society for Technology in Education.
I also like the advice about retweeting. Like you, I am also a little worried about tweeting. Not so much about the format, but more about not being quite sure what to tweet yet. I use my personal Twitter all the time and have never had a problem, but it seems so much different when it is for more professional purposes. I'm hoping I will feel more comfortable as I retweet some and spend more time on my professional account!
ReplyDeleteI am totally understand how you feel about trying to keep up with all of these great resources. They are really great but I feel like I am going to fall behind making sure to keep up with them. Just the last few hours I have been looking for different Twitter accounts. I can't believe how many are out there that I want to join but at some point I just had to stop. I had a hard time keeping up with reading all of the tweets that were coming in. I came to the realization it is impossible to keep up with all of them.
ReplyDeleteI think the second piece of advice you shared was the most important when using Twitter. Before this class I had my personal Twitter account set up to receive tweets from our school, local news, and random pop culture outlets. I used it as something to kill time when I had a few minutes here and there. There really is no way to keep up with everything. Just use it when you have a minute here and there and read what you can. I like the idea of using my MET twitter account now when I'm bored for professional growth instead of the mindless dribble from my personal account.
ReplyDeleteI can definitely relate to your post about prioritizing. I have so many things going on that I have to manage my time wisely. Don't worry if you can't keep up with everything the people you are following on Twitter are tweeting. There is no way I can keep up with it all. There are ways to manage the info on Twitter to make it easier:
ReplyDelete1 - Use a Twitter client (TweetDeck or HootSuite)
2 - Use hashtags to find content your interested in
3 - Use Twitter lists to follow groups of people (this is how I will easily keep up with everyone in this course). I haven't shared much about Twitter lists yet, but I will soon. I'm trying to give you some info in small chunks, so it's not so much at once.
It will become easier as we move along in the course!
Thank you for the suggestions! Using TweetDeck with hashtags has definitely helped me to find the most helpful tweets. I truly do like all the information available through Twitter and being able to skim through what has been posted. I'm sure like most things, using Twitter will become easier and quicker with experience. :)
DeleteThanks again!
Deb I was thinking the same thing about how I'm going to keep up with everything, but thankfully Hootsuite is an application for the iPhone and Feedly does the same, plus Blogger ans Twitter are also IPhone and IPad apps! Pretty much my life is on my
ReplyDeletePhone and iPad I have no idea what I would do when I actually have to resort to using a computer to Tweet or check BB. Deb you will be surprised by how many neat educators and education magazines you can follow via Twitter! Let the searching begin!