Twitter in the Classroom!

What exactly is Twitter?

According to Twitter in the K-8 Classroom- Globally Connected Learning, teachers can use Twitter to introduce students to the connected world of a learning network. Students should make a profile with an avatar and a detailed bio stating their age and purpose of using the twitter. Also, privacy settings are important! You can make your tweets public or you can change it that only people you approve can see them.

But What can Twitter be used for?!

There are so many ways you can take advantage of Twitter in your classroom! But, make sure to have proper twitter etiquette including being polite, not gossiping, don't plagiarize, and respond to your followers.

Have no idea what to tweet about?! Here are some great suggestions!

But make sure your tweets are quality; are they clear, concise, grammatically correct, and informative. Also make sure to make use of Twitter vocabulary like RT (re-tween), # (hashtag), @ (mention), and DM (Direct Message). All of these tools will make using Twitter in the classroom effective, easy, and fun!

Another site with very useful twitter information is A Must Have Guide On Using Twitter in Your Classroom. This site, I think, is more helpful for teachers who have older students and maybe even college professors.

Here are some of my favorite helpful tips from this website:

1. Ambient office hours: With Twitter, Howard Rheingold at Berkeley uses Twitter for group contact, which he calls “student-to-teacher-to-student ambient office hours.”
2. Keep students in the loop: Using hashtags on Twitter, students who were not able to make it to class can follow along and stay on top of the conversation.
3. Attendance reminders: For students who have trouble making it to class on time, send reminders before school to get them in the door earlier.
4. Twitter pop quiz: Send out quick quizzes on Twitter, and have them count for bonus points in the classroom.
5. Parent communication: Parents can sign up to receive tweets from teachers, learning about activities, tests, projects, and more.
6. Find foreign pen pals: Students can use Twitter to communicate with students in a different country, learning about their hobbies, home, school, and more.
7. Twitter can improve writing and punctuation: As long as students are held accountable for their grammar, using Twitter offers a great opportunity for improving writing and punctuation.
8. Communicating with experts: Find authors, scientists, or historians on Twitter and get connected; a great resource for the classroom.

Both of these sites are worth checking out. They make be excited to use Twitter in and outside of the classroom!

Connecting Through Social Networking

A great way to connect and seek informal professional development is through Social Networking. Here are TWO helpful communities I find helpful and informative on google+

The first one is English Language Teaching (ELT). They provide helpful resources, discussions about important topics, tips for Teachers & Learners of English [ELT/EFL/ESL]. Specifically on here are various articles about grammar, geography, participation, and listening skills. As well as worksheets, information about seminars and teaching abroad.


The second community I found helpful is Teachers for Interactive Language Learning (TILL).
This site is great for creative, sharing, and daring individuals interested in helping others learn English as an additional language! This site has some nice inspirational quotes, teachercasts, material suggestions, and job opportunities.


Both of these google+ communities have great resources and opportunities to discuss questions that may arise in the ESL classroom!

Diigo VS Pinterest

As a teacher I'm always looking for resources on the internet. I find so many good ones but I often forget them and don't save them for later use making the time I used to find them mostly wasted. I my technology class we discussed two different websites that can help teachers with this problem. 

Presented to us were the websites Diigo and Pinterest. These wonderful sites help teachers save the resources they find and catalogue them for future use. 

Pros of using Diigo

• Highlight on sites that have been bookmarked and saved to the library. Highlighting makes referring back to specific information easy.
• Multiple tags for each site you bookmark. There are even recommendations given, making tagging speedy.
• Descriptions for each bookmark.
• Follow anyone on Diigo and that will show up on your feed. 
• Messages can be sent to the people you follow.

DIIGO Cons

• You can't post comments on other peoples Diigos' and you must message people get in contact with them.
• You have to enter a CAPTCHA in order to follow people (this can make getting resources tedious)
• When you add a bookmark suggestions are not given for other possible bookmarks.  

Pinterest Pros

• When creating a pin you can add tags. Additionally you can search by using  specific tags.
• Instead of just messaging you can comment on each individual post. 
• You can follow people and they can follow you. 
• When you re-pin something you receive suggestions of other boards to look through.

Pinterest Cons

• You can't highlight text on pinned sites. 

I like both of the sites for different reasons. Personally I am bias towards Pinterest because I have used it before and the boards make it very user friendly and aesthetically pleasing. On Pinterest I found so many resources in a short amount of time just by using a few key words. Diigo was a more confusing and I feel less to the point. It was also lot more time consuming and it took a lot more time trying to google and find a website and then think of something to describe it by and think of tags for it. Pinterest is amazing because of the pictures, I am a visual learner and have a visual memory so I found this much more useful. With Pinterest they offer similar articles with the same tags which is awesome.I will continue using Pinterest because I find it much more user friendly, though I do see the benefits of Diigo I don't think they outweigh the cons of the website.