Tweet, Tweet

For this lesson, I revived my Twitter handle which was created three years ago for a different tech class that I took. I am pretty sure that the account hadn't been touched since I finished that class. I have been engaged in Twitter for the past 4 weeks, and I have to say that I still don't love it. However, I do respect that there are some pretty specific questions that hands down are best solved by using Twitter. First, real time updates to various scenarios. You can't beat Twitter for finding out what is happening at X event right now. But in a more professional sense, it's also a nice way to get a quick overview of ideas from people that I am following. It's a little faster and easier than checking in on all the websites and blogs that I typically read and follow. Twitter let me see a quick overview of ideas that I could then go follow up on the blogs. As is the case with most of my social media use, I can see myself as a passive user of Twitter, taking the information that is helpful to me, but rarely posting. Although maybe that will change. After my very first tweet, one of my co-workers mentioned the very next day that she followed my link and also read the article. So perhaps I'll end up using its power.

A new resource that I discovered via Twitter is the Google Teacher Tribe Podcast @GTeacherTribe. This show is hosted by Kasey Bell from Shake Up Learning @ShakeUpLearning and Matt Miller from Ditch That Textbook @DitchThatTxtbk. This podcast seems great. The new season has just started, and the first episode did a great job of summarizing all the new updates to Google Classroom. While many of the changes are pretty intuitive, there are some new things that I definitely learned from their podcast. There are also many people in my school who are just beginning to use Google Classroom so this is really helpful for me to reference as I try to assist them. After listening to the first podcast, I am also going to listen to some previous episodes on Google Keep. They were raving about all the ways they use it, and I have struggled to figure out how to incorporate it. I have trouble getting my notes in Keep organized, so I'm interested to see if they can offer some new ideas on how to manage that.

TweetChat

My tweetchat experience was much better than I expected. I have never participated in something like this before. I initially was planning to join the #ICEilchat, but I ended up participating in the #mschat (middle school chat) hosted by @Jeremybballer. I am really happy that I stumbled into this chat for my first experience. It was very slow moving which made it easy to understand and follow. There were only 6 or 7 other educators participating and only 6 questions asked during the hour. I could easily follow it and not be overwhelmed. It also happened that most of the other middle school teachers also taught ELA and I discovered a great new story writing app, Storybird that I'm excited to try out. I also watched a lot of the #ICEilchat, but did not actively participate. That chat was much busier with both questions and people, and more challenging to follow my first time. It did look interesting, and I have marked future #ICEchats on my calendar. I may try another one. 

@Jeremybballer was tweetchat host. Personal photo.

My PLN Going Forward 

In my district almost all websites related to social media and networking are blocked which makes it difficult to develop an online PLN. Our web access is slowly increasing as our school administration becomes more comfortable with the role of technology so I think that within a few years there's a chance that our teachers will have access to some of these resources while at work. In the meantime, its up to teachers to follow and read up from home or on a personal device.