Twitter is an online social networking service and micro
blogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of
up to 140 characters, known as "tweets". It is an online networking
that enables multiple communities to communicate. Personally until this class
twitter was a way for me to communicate with my friends and post silly statuses
that were practically meaningless. I recently created a professional twitter to
follow other teachers and students interested in teaching.
In class my professor
gave us a quiz on twitter. We were allowed to all communicate through a hash
tag and discuss what we thought was the best answer to the question posted. While
he was describing the assignment I really didn’t understand how useful twitter would
be. When the quiz started it became very clear how remorseful twitter can be. Through
reading others comments and tweeting with classmates I learned more about the
chapter then I would have ever grasped reading it and taking a quiz alone. Some
may call it cheating that we all tweeted each other the answers but I thought
we all learned more than we ever could on our own. We created a small
Professional learning community (PLC) inside our classroom. We all collaterally
worked together using everyone as a unique addition to the answer created.
Through this experience I have learned just how useful
twitter can be. Twitter has expanded so much further than just social networking
it can be a whole new way of learning information. As a teacher I can benefit
so much from this. I will be able to connect with other teachers who are
dealing with the same problems I’ll come across and they might have different
ways to solve it or help me learn more about how to solve it. It will also help
me to create new lessons and ways to teach. I will become part of a global wide
teaching community. This is something I never thought would be possible when I chose
this career.
Not only will twitter be useful for my personal learning but
for my class as well. I can connect with the students and their parents to have
surveys or even quizzes just like what I was given. I can also use it to understand
my students better and allow them to maybe voice their opinions in a different
way. I am majoring in early and special education, for special education student’s
twitter might be a better way for them to answer questions and understand my
lesson. They can connect to other students like them and try and figure out the
problems on their own and talk to other students just like them. Twitter has
really expanded the learning community and allowed everyone to become connected
in a unique way that I never thought could happen.
