Tweet Tweet - Twitter Reflection

 

Twitter: @teach_educ

https://twitter.com/teach_educ 

Over the past 8 weeks, I have been using a Twitter account for my EDUC502 class. I will be honest when I say that I am not necessarily a "Twitter" person. I have other social media accounts that I use for my own personal use, but Twitter is one that I have not really dove into as an adult. My husband LOVES Twitter and has been pushing me to get it because he primarily uses it as a news outlet and to stay up-to-date with sports. After using it the past 8 weeks, I can see why many educators would and do use Twitter. 

When this assignment was first introduced, I'll admit that I was not too excited about it. The idea of tweeting 120 times seemed daunting and overwhelming. Once I got into it, I realized it really was not too difficult to find things to post about. I began doing so using my Read-Alouds to keep me accountable for posting something each day. I then was adding in pictures of things that my students were doing each day in class. I found that it was not hard to post when you just thought about the things that you were doing on a daily basis and just documented those things. 

I additionally liked once I began to grow the account and follow more people. Once I did so, I was able to feed off of their posts in my own tweets. I think my overall favorite thing about using the Twitter account was that I saw SO many resources from other educators that I never would have if I did not have this account. I somehow stumbled upon a lot of accounts of teachers out in the Mid-West and it was really cool to see different projects and classroom happenings that they posted daily. I got some really great classroom management ideas and saw some fun activities that I thought would engage my students. 

I realized that I was using my Twitter account more like an Instagram account where I was posting a picture with some type of a caption rather than using words to only tweet a thought. I think that if I were to continue to use an account as my current self, teaching in the classroom, I would probably switch to just using an Instagram account instead. I would be able to post pictures and caption them the same way that I was doing using Twitter. I think that this can work well for a teacher in the classroom. 

In opposition, I see how Twitter can be a great tool for administrators. I can see how principals can use it to network with others. I also think it can be a great tool to push out information to parents and students (if they are old enough to access). Especially on the High School level, I can totally see a principal having an account and sending out quick updates so that staff, students and parents can be in the know. While I think that teachers can use Twitter too, I see it being less relevant in the classroom setting since at most you have 30 families to connect with that change year to year. I see email being more effective to reach out to them since it is a small number. 

Overall, I enjoyed my experience with Twitter. I got very excited when I got notifications that told me my "tweet was getting noticed" and showed me how many people viewed it. Overall, I gained what I thought was a decent following, although who knows, they may be mostly Twitter-bots!