twitter in education

Twitter is one of the largest social networking platforms on the planet. We can follow alot of famous people and their thoughts on certain issues easily by subscribing to them to see what they post on a daily basis. In education however, we do not see a large audience that are sharing articles or twitter posts regularly. This is where the hashtag comes in. The hashtag is a symbol that can link your post, to other similiar posts in twitter by clicking the hashtag. This is a very powerful tool to have because you could be doing research and by having your own hashtag you can see other posts that are similar to others so you can see the research and thoughts of others. For educational purposes hashtags that I would use would be the following:

#ntchat –New teacher chat

#vitalcpd-using technology in the classrom

#edtech –tweets related to tech in the classroom

I would use #NTchat because I would like to know the daily experiences teachers go through in the classroom. Also this would help me see the challenges that they go through daily, and how the teachers improve on a daily basis. This is very important because alot of teachers can benefit from how they deal with challenges in the classroom. This can greatly help the teacher not feel overwhelmed during the semester, and feel that they are part of a team. Aditionally, I will be using #vitalcpd because this would give me a sense of what technology other teachers use and have found effective to work in the classroom. Since I will be teaching 8th grade math, I would look for the technological tolos and experiences teachers have had with using technologies. Finally, I would be using #edtech to see what new technology was introduced in the classrooms, and how the students respond to it. Overall, twitter can help the teacher be more creative and share their findings with other teachers. We are not just teachers, we are scientists, and we must learn with students for them to grow into professionals.

Twitter for teaching and learning:

Twitter like I said is a very powerful social networking tool that has shown alot of strength in sales and advertising. With education I would not integrate it with just any classroom. I would integrate it with my 8^th grade students in math, so that they can share daily challenges that they had in the math classroom, such as a mathematical problem. However, the way that twitter can help teachers is by using hashtags. Teachers often like working alone and are scientists because they sometimes do things by trial and error. There is nothing wrong with this. However, sometimes the teacher can become frustrated and students can be left behind. Twitter has the power to help the teacher take shortcuts in the classroom. The way it can do this is by connecting teachers with each other across the world. The instructor will be able to find the experiences that other teachers had when using certain technology for any subject, as well as understanding how the other teachers overcame challenges. This can be very motivating for the teacher, because he or she will be able to pin point where they are and what necessary steps to take in order to be successful in their classroom. This can be a little challenging but in order for this to work the teacher will have to use twitter and share with others the challenges they had. This way you can become a role model to other teachers, and you will be more motivated to work in your classroom.