Journal 2 (NETS-T 5): Join The Flock and Enhance Your Twitter Experiance

Citations: Ferguson, Hadley. (2010). Join the flock. Learning & Leading with Technology, Retrieved from: http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/20100607?pg=14&search_term=join%20the%20flock&search_term=join%20the%20flock#pg14

McClintock Miller, Shannon. (2010). Enhance your twitter experience. Learning & Leading with Technology, Retrieved from: http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/20100607?pg=14&search_term=join%20the%20flock&search_term=join%20the%20flock#pg16


These two articles give a good, brief summary of the benefits of having a Twitter account, the strategies one uses in order to connect with people of similar interests and the reasons why educators and teachers should join twitter as a way of enhancing one’s understanding of the professions and teaching methods and techniques. What the articles highlight are professional learning networks (PLN) which are communities of individuals who share similar interests. As a novice to using twitter, ‘Join the flock’ describes the process of following someone on twitter, re-tweeting, and eventually tweeting one’s own messages. The article uses the analogy of trying to join a conversation at a party as a metaphor for the way twitter eliminates the hesitancy one can in real life of exposing one’s ideas to others and also the difficultly one can have in real life in finding people who have similar interests without a guide. “Enhance Your Twitter Experience” delves more specifically into how one with a twitter account can find specific topics on is interesting by using techniques such as the use of hashmarks (#) that target specific topics of conversation. For educators—and just as with any group of people with similar interests—twitter connects teachers with educators from around the world in order to share their knowledge of the profession.

Question 1
How could twitter be used by my students in conjunction with what they are learning?

Answer 1
Twitter is not only for following celebrities and friends; news organizations, influential people in education, business, etc. and other media outlets also have Twitter accounts. And in an effort to get my class more knowledgeable of the world around them and what important events are happening, having Twitter accounts will provide another avenue, other than television and the internet, to stay updated on events which we will discuss on a daily basis in my classroom.

Question 2
In what ways is Twitter better than face-to-face collaboration with other teachers in my school?

Answer 2
Although it is always a good idea to work with the teachers at one’s school, Twitter provides connection to teachers and educators from different educational backgrounds and environments. Some teaching methods and techniques could have been developed as a result of the particular educational environment at a particular school. And considering that a teacher is limited to one teaching environment, twitter expose teachers to those techniques that would otherwise not been possible in a certain environment had a teacher only looked at their immediate environment. Moreover, because of the ease-of-use of having conversations with other educators, Twitter can motivate teachers to continuously shape and update their teaching styles because of the way it exposes one to resources through the people one meets through Twitter.