Classroom Tweets!

This past week I have learned a lot about Twitter in relation to teaching. I gained a lot of important information from two articles titled, A Must Have Guide on Using Twitter in your Classroom and Primary Perspective. These articles each provided tips and examples of how to use twitter in the classroom.

In A Must Have Guide on Using Twitter in your Classroom, there are a lot of great ideas for ways to use Twitter with your students. The site notes different areas where Twitter can be useful, including communication, organization, resources, and writing skills. The site then demonstrates different ways in which a teacher can promote these elements of education using Twitter. There are a couple great suggestions for using Twitter as communication that I really liked. For example, using Twitter as a way to have open office hours at all times of the day. Also, it can be used to silence students who often blurt out comments because now they can tweet them instead. A unique idea provided on this site is to use Twitter as a way to keep parents notified and up to date on what their children are learning. I think this is a great idea because it allows parents to feel involved and it provides them a chance to be a part of their child's learning and also connect easily with the teacher.

In Primary Perspective, the author discusses how she used Twitter with her 1st grade class. She uses a lot of graphics with her writing in order to show exactly how she did different things with Twitter for her class. It was very helpful to see the exact ways in which she Tweeted with her students. It provided a lot of insight into making the classroom a global experience. I like that she used Twitter to contact both parents of her students and professionals in different fields that her class was studying. She specifically states that she uses Twitter to show her students that they have a voice and that the world is listening to it. I liked this idea a lot and I liked that her students were able to learn about various perspectives and cultures. I think this would be a great tool for the ESL classroom because it allows for a global perspective and can help facilitate intercultural competence through Twitter.

Overall, I would love to use Twitter with my future ESL students. I think it could make the classroom a really interactive place and allow students to form global perspectives. This would be a great idea especially in the middle or high schools when students most likely will already have Twitter accounts of their own. It is a great way to keep in contact with students and learn from professionals all around the world!

Twitterchat Chaos!

A few days ago I joined Twitter. After joining, I tried a Twitterchat for the first time ever. I chose to attend the Educational Technology Chat, #edtechchat, from 7-8pm EST on Mondays. I arrived on the chat page a few minutes early to prepare myself. I was not sure at all what was going to happen. At 7 the chat began and I started to realize why Twitterchats are such useful resources for professional development. The moderator began the chat by signaling a question with the symbol Q1. This helped me to establish what the conversation was going to be about and allowed me to think of something to say. I did not know a lot about the subject which was STEM schools and students. After watching the chat for a little while I finally figured more out about the subject and asked a few questions that pertained to ESL. It was a great experience to learn more about a subject that I did not know well. This is just one great way that Twitterchats provide professional development. I found it very challenging to keep up with the chat while also trying to write my own posts or respond to others posts. I hesitated to send my first Tweet but it was really exhilarating when someone responded to it. I felt like my voice was heard and that I was an important part of the chat because people cared about my contribution. Part way through I was given the chance to identify myself as a first time user of Twitterchat. At this point a lot of the users made Tweets welcoming me to the chat. The moderator himself even wrote a Tweet that welcomed me and encouraged others to follow me. I gained about 14 followers from the chat and felt appreciated. It was a really inspiring and interesting experience. Feeling so welcome definitely made a difference. It allowed me to open up, be comfortable, and enjoy an experience that I was hesitant about at first. The fact that I felt very comfortable sharing my thoughts and asking questions is another reason why I would definitely use this as a source of professional development. Overall, I would definitely use Twitterchat again for professional development because it was a really fun experience and I did learn a lot about a topic of which I knew very little.

A Learner is Like a...

I have recently explored the theory of Connectivism in relation to knowledge and learning in today's world. Both the concept of learning and the concept of the learner have been affected by the growth of technology. The theory of Connectivism takes into account technology and networks when defining or giving place to knowledge and learning in current times.

Today, a learner is like a mapmaker (cartographer). In making this comparison, I hope to highlight the fact that a learner must know where to find certain information or knowledge in order to be successful. Similar to a map, a learner must know where to find information (cities) and what sources (roads) to use to access it. I think that this is the perfect analogy for today's learner because knowing where to find information has become more important than learning all the information that is needed. This notion has become a necessary part of learning in the new age of technology.

In the article, "A Learning Theory for the Digital Age", Siemen discusses learning theories of the past including behaviorism, constructivism, and cognitivism. He then proposes a more up to date theory called Connectivism which relates better to learning today and provides an answer for the limitations of previous theories. In this article he says, "The pipe is more important than the content in the pipe". By making this statement, Siemens is demonstrating the fact that it is more important to know where to find "knowledge", than it is to know certain "knowledge".

Additionally, in the video, "The Network is the Learning", Siemen discusses how networks, nodes, and the relationship between the two represent the role of learning today. "What we know today is not as important as our ability to continue to stay current... If I'm not continually learning I'm becoming obsolete in my particular field or within a particular knowledge space...A network continually evolves and continually reforms itself." By making this statement, Siemen is highlighting the fact that today's learners need to stay as current and up to date as possible because technology and the knowledge provided by it is continually changing and growing.

Overall, learners today should be mapmakers. Know where to go to find the knowledge you need!