Thank you for coming! I teach ESL, but this is not meant to be subject-specific. Find out other departments + anyone use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
I hope to follow this today. I’ll present just for a bit, but then you’ll have time to try it out. Plan around on Twitter. Create an account if you want. Read and view the resources on my website. Help each other.
I always try to keep this in mind when I try out something new. How will this help my students learn? Not just something “neat” but something “deep” to help them think critically, dig deeper into their subject, increase their skills. This is how I am approaching Twitter. That’s me in the egg – I’m a newbie. I will NOT be able to answer all your questions, and I will not be able to show you all the features of Twitter. I am not an expert. I’m experimenting. I’ll show you what I’ve been trying to do and the issues and challenges I have along with what I have liked.
First a little just about social media in general. Bear with me – this is only 4 minutes and though it’s not geared specifically towards Twitter. I find it interesting.
I’m on facebook. What do I want with Twitter? I don’t care about Justin Bieber and I don’t need to be cluttered with more celebrity news. This is one reason why I stayed away from it for so long.
This is what I discovered. One person described it as a conference – the good part where you share ideas. It’s free – and we know we don’t get to go to professional development conferences for free around here anymore.
So after all that I decided to try it out. How does Twitter work? Here’s a silly clip from Grey’s Anatomy. But here you can see my Twitter profile.
Here we get down to the nitty gritty. What’s the terminology and how do we read an update? Let’s look at my site now. . .
I’ve learned so many things. Every time I login I read an interesting article, I grab a fun activity to do in my class, I learn a new productivity tool, I ask a question (and get an answer). How did I find these things? I found people to follow. I looked at articles that gave me some recommendations, I followed them, then looked to see who they followed. I checked out hashtags and when I saw something interesting someone wrote, then I followed them.
So many articles about the hows and whys of Twitter.
Baby steps. Not much yet (compare to my personal account). Haven’t made formally sign up. After class “chatter.” Reminders. Fun activities.
We all have the same 24/7. I go days without checking. I lurk. I browse when waiting to pick up my kids, etc.