Week 2 Twitter

#OpenTwitter #CloseTwitter 


    I have had a Twitter account for about six years now. I got my account when someone at school told me that it was a district requirement. I found it odd that the district was making social media a requirement. As teachers, I think we are always watching our backs. You can never be too careful, so social media just seemed like a bad idea for the district to embrace. I have only used Twitter professionally, never personally. I do know that the district is always asking us to hashtag events. I have used my Twitter account very little. I find myself resetting my password every time because I never really use it.  I try to keep my personal life separate from my work life, so I have never downloaded the Twitter app to my phone.
    No one had shown me the benefits of Twitter until taking ETEC 527. I can now see that I can connect with educators from inside and outside my district. It is a great way to see what is happening in different places and share ideas. Parents who want to follow me can be aware of what is happening in the classroom and school-wide events. I think it is a great way to open up the classroom and allow parents to feel involved. Twitting doesn't take too long since it limits the number of characters one can type, and it is simple to re-Tweet. Now that I feel more comfortable about Twitter, I think I will be a more active Twitterer. However, I plan only to use it professionally and not link it to my personal social media. In the past few days since I have made my way back to Twitter, I have already gotten some great ideas for the beginning of the school year. 
    I have been connected and communicating with parents through Class Dojo, which I will continue to use. When I started my Twitter account, I shared my Twitter handle with parents, but only one or two followed me. I was more successful with Class Dojo. I had 100% of my students' parents join. However, I think that Class Dojo limits who I connect with, while Twitter connects me with a whole world of educators and librarians. 
    One issue I have come across with Twitter is that my students are all under 13 years old, which is the age Twitter requires to create an account. Unfortunately, I will not be able to use Twitter directly with my students, but I can still grow as a teacher by getting ideas from other great educators. Even though my students cannot have their own accounts, I can still share my Twitter findings with them. Now, I know I can search using a hashtag, which means I can see multiple posts and pictures related to a topic or current event. For example, next time there is an eclipse, I can search for #solareclipse2021 and show them photos taken by different people. I wish I would have done this for the #broomchallenge. It would have opened up so many discussions, and we could have gotten to the science behind it. 
    As a teacher and future librarian, I can see the great benefits behind Twitter, and even if my students cannot use it, I can still use it effectively to enhance my teaching. 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 1 Vanity Search

I found this assignment to be enjoyable! In the past, I have done Google searches of myself. I knew it as egogoogling. However, I had never gone to such a depth. Less than two years ago, I legally changed. I only kept my middle name and my paternal last name. This made my search challenging because my previous name was very long. I had to play with it because I found multiple combinations of my name. The searching techniques learned from my previous Library Science classes came in very handy. My maternal last name, which was part of my previous name, is Fauvet which is not common. I have never met someone with that last name that is not related to me. Once I searched "Velasco Fauvet," all the results were either my sister or me. There was not much to be found that would be categorized under social media because I have those accounts set with an email that I only use for online accounts and subscriptions, and those are all linked to my nickname. I purposely did that to keep my...
Read more

Week 5 Vanity Search Take 2

Image
  https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/962466-selfie-stick Conducting an online search of ourselves is something most of us have done. I remember searching myself back in the day using my dial-up internet. The two things that I would see of myself at the top of my search were concerning my high school swim team and Myspace. I remember my sister and I trying to compare who had more search results.  Since my last vanity search, my online footprint has not changed much. What did change is how I search. Reading other classmates' blogs helped me develop more search keywords to attach to my name, which in effect filtered my results.  I think as a teacher, my instinct is to be very careful about how much of myself is out there. If I were in a different profession, I probably would want my name and picture out there. For example, doctors purposely want people to know about their practice, studies, published articles, and patient reviews. Of course, only as long as everything is positi...
Read more

Week 4 Hyperdoc Adventure

Image
  https://www.aoptech.org/michele-kiss.html What in the Hyperdoc?!?! There are many Web 2.0 tools available at the tip of our fingers. With so many out there, I am constantly learning from professors, peers, and colleagues about new online tools that I can use when planning lessons. However, this time around, I felt far from being smart. Hyperdocs have been in front of my nose this whole time, and I was unaware that they had a name or were a thing. Hyperdocs allow the teacher to provide students with an organized digital lesson plan that enables students to navigate through all of the content using web tools that empower the students to collaborate, engage, apply critical thinking and problem-solving skills, create, inquire, explain, and reflect.  This past school year, I was exposed to hyperdocs more than ever, without even knowing it. Hyperdocs were provided for most of my virtual asynchronous professional developments. In fact, I embedded hyperdocs for my asynchronous stude...
Read more