Journal #2: “Join The Flock/Enhance Your Twitter Experience”

“Join The Flock” (NETS-T 1&3)

Ferguson, H. (2010). Join the flock. Learning and Leading with Technology, 37(8), 12-15. Retrieved from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/20100607?pg=14&pm=2&fs=1#pg14

Summary: This article discussed the many benefits of joining the social networking site Twitter and how beneficial developing a PLN can be to your learning and teaching experience. The author goes over the major steps in order to develop your PLN. First, start with creating a twitter account. This is necessary in order to communicate with your fellow teachers. Second, learn how to follow someone. For teachers, you would want to make sure you are following other teachers out there that may share beneficial knowledge with you on subjects you are interested in. He also discusses the process of exposing yourself on twitter. He suggests that you share your knowledge on twitter so that other teachers can benefit from your knowledge as well, not just you from theirs. Last but not least, don’t forget to tag your tweet!

Q1. From a teaching standpoint, how do you see yourself using twitter as it pertains to the classroom?

A1.  First off, there are many useful aspects of twitter for educators. Getting yourself connected with other teachers is an easy way to seek help and easy access to many useful resources. It also helps you to see other teacher’s progress and help when they are in need of assistance. Before twitter, most teachers did everything alone. Now they don’t have to.

“Enhance Your Twitter Experience”

McClintock, S. (2010). Enhance your twitter experience. Learning and Leading with Technology, 37(8), 14-17. Retrieved from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/20100607?pg=16&pm=2&fs=1#pg16

Summary: This article took a more in depth look into what to do once you’ve created your PLN. It gave great advice to expose yourself and make comments on others good ideas such as, “Yes!” or “Love it!” before you retweet it. That way, you can make yourself known and enter into the conversation. It also spoke about twitter terminology and to familiarize yourself with twitter terms.

Q2. How could you see yourself benefitting others using twitter?

A2. Once I am a teacher, I plan on using twitter to look for advice on great lesson plans and ideas on resources for the classroom. I will benefit others when I create my own lesson plans and expose myself on twitter and share them with my fellow educators.