Reflection #21

(1) Describe the Resource / Experience:
During my resource search this week, I discovered a blog entitled “Twitter for Academia”. It is a blog that is authored by a college media professor and he discusses how he uses Twitter, a public social networking site, in his classes with his students. A lot of the other resources I discovered talked about using specially created social networking sites in education, so I thought it was interesting to see a public social networking site being used.
(2) Lessons Learned / Applications for the Classroom / Recommendations for Yourself or Others:
Before reading this article, I didn’t know how Twitter worked. I’ve heard people talk about it on TV and on the radio, but I’ve never investigated it any further. However, after reading this article, I learned that Twitter is a public social networking site that allows users to create, share, and receive “tweets”, or short 140 character messages, from their “friends” on the network. Twitter sounds very exciting and I would recommend that myself and other teachers investigate it further because I think I could be a very useful resource in the classroom. I think using Twitter in the classroom would really motivate students, especially pre-teen and teen students, to participate in discussion type activities. I’m actually considering creating my own Twitter account to see firsthand how it works, and to further investigate how I could use it in my own classroom. I’ll be sure to keep all of you posted as I learn more about Twitter and how it can be effectively used in today’s classroom setting.
(3) Links to Readings, Resources, or Discussions:
These ideas directly link to the following resource from my Resource Log:

Perry, D. (2009). Twitter for Academia. Message posted to http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/

Moreover, these ideas directly relate to the section in chapter 8 of our WikiText that discusses social networking tools.