My thoughts of Chapter 6 of "Blogs, Wikis, & Podcasts"

I have to start off by saying that, before I read this chapter, I never thought Twitter could be used for anything productive. I have always seen Twitter as a silly website that celebrities used to let the whole world know what they are doing; I never found it interesting. I also truly NEVER thought Twitter could be used in a classroom; this chapter proved me wrong! I do have to admit that I have never truly taken the time to look at Twitter & its capabilities. This chapter explained to me what exactly Twitter was & why it was used. I found it extremely interesting to see the various ways Twitter has been used throughout various classrooms.  This chapter has influenced me by reinforcing the old saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” I never gave Twitter the time of day because I always believed it was something silly; I never gave it a chance! It also has taught me that something that I may think is silly or unproductive can be turned into a useful classroom tool. This leads me to my next point: I can’t wait to use Twitter in my classroom! I have various ideas of how Twitter can be useful to me & my future students. The first idea that I have for Twitter is to keep parents updated of what is going on in our classroom. I can post short Tweets of what we did throughout the day, along with various links, videos, or any photos that we took in class. The next idea that I had for Twitter in my classroom would be used as a homework tool. I would post a question to my students & then have them post their answer to their own twitter account. By following all of my students’ twitter accounts I can then see who answered the question. This is something that can be extremely helpful (and can save paper!) but can also be adjusted for those students who don’t have a computer at home. For example, I can either give students time to complete the question during school, or I can simply have them write their answer & turn it in the next day in class.

The next tool that was introduced in this chapter was the online social bookmarking. Fortunately, I have had the opportunity to already work with this tool & I LOVE it! We have created a delicious account within class & I used it all the time. I have been able to not only store personal websites, but I have been able to store websites that can help me in the future. I have saved things for my future classrooms & it has helped me to connect with other teachers. By using my delicious account I have been able to see what other users are also bookmarking the same websites. Then I have been able to view their other tags to see if anything interests me or can be helpful for my future career. Social bookmarking is something that I will continue to use as a teacher. I also hope that I will be able to get my students involved as well. One way that I plan to use social bookmarking is in the semester long research project I have talked about in previous posts. My students can find helpful websites for this research project & in order to keep track of these websites they can put them into their delicious account. They can then also see other users who have tagged the same websites! This will lead them to other possible resources for their project!