Twitter Adventure

 

I vividly remember sitting in a college classroom in the fall of 2009 listening to my fellow classmates discuss and debate the implications and future outlook of a new application called Twitter. In my own ignorance about the impact of technology, I quickly scoffed at the idea and predicted it wouldn't take off.  Needless to say, I was wrong- very, very wrong. Now 15 years since its debut, there are over 500 million tweets sent per day on Twitter.

Twitter has been described as the SMS of the Internet. It has connected billions of people across the world through the use of short bursts of text AKA "tweets" and has revolutionized social media with the use of hashtags to follow and curate information. Personally, I am not a regular or avid user of Twitter. Throughout the years I have dabbled in it here and there, mostly to keep up with celebrities, follow politics, and to stay up to date on current events or election campaigns. I have employed the use of Twitter at educational conferences at the request of keynote speakers, but I honestly have never thought about Twitter's application in the classroom, especially since I work at the elementary level. The Twitter adventure I embarked on this week has in many ways challenged my thinking much like what happened when I first heard about Twitter in that college classroom many years ago.

Throughout this week I tried to keep an open mind about the capabilities of Twitter, despite my previous experiences. This assignment revealed three brilliant uses of Twitter that radically changed the way I view and will use the app going forward: hashtags, lists, and the ability to tweet from other applications. 

Using the college class hashtag #ETEC527 really opened up my mind to the possibilities and genius of using this simple trick. Hashtags make it easier to discover posts, follow topics of interests, and filter through a sea of information to find relevant content. Previously, I had described Twitter as not being user friendly and over complicated to use. Using the hashtags to search for content really made my experience much more user friendly this time around, making me rethink the way I had been using Twitter before. Another benefit of using hashtags was the way it connected me with people and groups to follow that focused on a particular topic or subject of interest. It is a great way to network with other educators and experts in the field. 

Using hashtags and following people are great features, but it can lead to a massive amount of information being sent to your feed making it feel cluttered, overwhelming, and disorganized. The list feature allows you to customize, organize, and even prioritize the Tweets in your timeline. I appreciate how I can create lists on my own by topic or interest. This makes managing the large amount of content manageable and more user friendly. I can even pin lists to my homepage so that I don't miss content that's important to me.

Cross Posting

Our culture and world has become immersed in social media. Its impact has changed the way we share and create information. I have been aware of the ability to share content to different platforms such as Twitter for sometime now, but I honestly never done it. This week I was reading a blog post about the top new educational tech tools in 2022. I wanted to share the content with my fellow classmates as it pertained to an upcoming group project we all shared. It was so nice to be able to share the article immediately on my Twitter feed along with our class hashtag to connect to my other classmates without having to leave the website I was on. I know this has been a possibility for awhile, but I suppose I have never had a real need to use it before now. I plan to use this feature much more in the future. 

Twitter is, for the most part, a user-friendly tool that has many features that make sharing and curating content simple and fast. From a professional viewpoint, I still am not sure how I could use Twitter on my elementary campus due to age restrictions and the maturity level of my students. I do not think it is an appropriate ed tech tool for this group demographic. However, I do see many ways it could be used in a professional manner between my colleagues and myself. We could create a school hashtag that could be used to share relevant articles, ideas, and research with each other about the best teaching practices and effective technology. Lists could be curated and shared that follow experts in the field that pertain to our school's objectives and goals or to follow political leaders that have a direct impact on the laws that affect public education. Twitter could be used as a way to garner feedback from each other on important school matters and decisions. Twitter is also a great way to connect families and build school camaraderie by making the community feel included in what is going on inside the school. 

Twitter and I have come a long way from our first introduction back in 2009. I believe Twitter and I are finally becoming friends after this week of exploration as I better appreciate what it can offer and bring to the table. While it isn't a tool that works in all educational situations, it definitely brings value to the table when used appropriately to foster collaboration and sharing of content.