Twitter
I reluctantly joined Twitter a little over a week ago. Since then, I have had some ups and downs with the experience. At first, I followed some professional people and organizations that I respect. Then I sat back and watched tweets come pouring in. I was rather overwhelmed! So much information was populating my twitter feed, and it all seemed largely unrelated and random (despite the fact that I mostly followed social workers). My brain had a very difficult time organizing the thoughts and ideas that were being shared with me.
Then I decided to focus my attention only on one or two tweets that caught my eye. This helped me to filter out a lot of the chaos and discover some helpful ideas. "Cool," I thought, "this might actually provide me with some useful stuff."
Then I realized I had made a rookie mistake: I didn't put the good ideas I found in any particular place. Now when I try to go back through over a week's worth of tweets to find one specific video, it is impossible to scroll back that far. I have not come across an easy way to search the content of the tweets I received, so I fear the cool video has been lost indefinitely. Bummer.
Luckily, I did retweet one idea I really liked, so I was able to find it again in my old tweets. This sorting activity takes materials I already own and uses them in a creative and educational way to practice identifying emotions. A very helpful tweet:
I also shared the idea below with my administration because I think it is so simple and cool:
Mindfulness has recently become much more popular in the world, and it has many applications in education. I love the idea of taking an isolating punishment that makes students resentful and replacing it with a consequence that actually teaches a positive skill that can be used to avoid further incidents!
Twitter Chat
After immersing myself in standard tweets for a while, I tried to take it to the next level and join a Twitter Chat. My first attempts were wild failures! During #edchat, I saw an interesting comment and posted a question in response. Then I heard crickets...
For the next hour, I watched a completely random collection of resources and comments that had no theme in common. It was overstimulating and confusing. At the end of #edchat, a moderator posted this comment:
... suggesting that the topic of the hour was supposed to be "test retakes." Well, if you just look at a sample of the comments right before that one, you'll notice that technical education and humanities degrees were just a couple of the many, many topics that were discussed in lieu of the actual chat topic. Epic fail.
The next day, I tried #ipadchat and there were literally only three tweets during the first 30 minutes. I don't think a moderator was even present. What a waste of time!
Finally, I found my niche with #SOCIALWORTHIT. The participants in this chat were discussing a topic of interest to me, and they actually made sure their tweets pertained to the topic! It was what I imagine a Twitter Chat is
supposed to be. That said, I still had some difficulty following threads of conversations. I do like this feature that allows you to pop out one conversation thread and read it chronologically:
Okay, then. To Tweet or Not To Tweet?
For me personally, I don't get enough out of Twitter Chat to make it worth the time. What seems to work best for me is to focus my attention on one or two regular tweets that catch my eye each time I have the opportunity to check Twitter. Then I must remember to RETWEET the things I find useful and wish to refer to again. I also need to think about using something like Symbaloo to help keep and organize some of this information.
Twitter is definitely an interesting source of information. Although I didn't initially think it was for me, I think I'll give it a little more time before I make a final decision. I'll have to wait and see if I get many ideas that I actually use, and if that makes it worth the time. If you have suggestions/feedback for me, feel free to tweet @LincolnSchoolSW
