Twitter Adventures

"Great job on your first tweet!", I replied to JMedina@JMedina06822527. Jessica's first tweet reminded me of setting up my account and tweeting my first tweet at the direction of my new employing district five years ago. As part of the new teacher orientation, we were asked to join our district’s students in being 21st-century learners. Boy, my district and twitter have not disappointed.  I have spent countless hours in Professional development during my lunch breaks, conference times, walking down hallways, and at home while cooking dinner. How you may ask? Well, today our cell phones are at an arm’s length away, that beautiful fluttering bird has come to mean I can read and instantly learn something new as I am heating up my lean cuisine spinach pizza in the teacher’s lounge. 

Any topic can be searched, for example, after my reading of “A Conceptual Framework for Using and Evaluating Web-Based Learning Resources in School Education” of interest to me was the subject about cultural responsiveness in using technology.  This is something that I wanted to expand on and learn more about. I opened up my twitter account and at the top right I conducted a search for “cultural responsiveness”. I found this blog post How Digital Content Can Make Classrooms Culturally Responsive and I found according to Geneva Gay, author of Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice, CRT rests on six main dimensions: I tweeted the 6th dimension - Liberating from Oppressive Educational Policies. One thing I saw I could implement in my classroom this fall is to create a “student spotlight.” Focus on one student at a time, and ask them to share their family stories with the rest of the class. Encourage them to take pride in their culture. That was the first time I tweeted a blog post. I was finally engaging in a way that would contribute to someone else’s learning. This was different than a retweet or a like.  I had sought this topic out and it had spoken to me and I wanted to share it. I wondered what kind of response I would get. On my Twitter adventure this week I made my first list! I placed all my Etec 527 classmates on it. I found that I could see their tweets here all together and I could respond to them, like their tweet or click on articles they had shared. I also bookmarked my first tweets.  No more wondering what happened to articles or Professional Development opportunities. I could just bookmark and return when I could spend more time reading. I recently volunteered to help advertise a local math Edcamp. I will be using Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to spread the word about this conference. I just discovered that Hootsuite allows me to schedule posts in the future and often. What a time saver!

What place does Twitter have in my world as an educator and learner? Let me count some of the ways, 1. Get important educational resources 2.Subscribe to relevant hashtags.3. Sync Twitter with relevant blogs.4. Organize and get the word out about PD. 5. Have twitter chats with students. There is so much more to learn about this Web 2.0 tool and I plan on pursuing the benefits of this communication tool.