Twitter and Me

While I have used Twitter personally for little over a year now, we recently incorporated Twitter into my one class as a method of connecting with professional educators and other learners around the globe. We created a professional Twitter specifically for this, to keep our personal and professional lives separate. The professor has had us incorporate Twitter in many different ways so far, he has had us have discussions on the material we have read, we have even taken a quiz by the use of Twitter. Both of these are completely new concepts that I have seen used in the classroom and I feel they have both pros and cons.

Through this method of instruction I have learned in a hands on way what a Personal Learning Network and  Professional Learning Community are and how they can be utilized, both by teachers and students. Twitter has allowed me to discover as series of new methods of communicating both now as a student, and ways that as a teacher I could eventually utilize with my future students, their parents, coworkers, and other educators. Now, using Twitter could be problematic in some ways. One way being not everyone may have access to this technology or fully understand what to do with it. Another one may be that technology is not always reliable and doesn't always work when we need it to. I feel that because of this we cannot rely on Twitter alone to communicate, but we should definitely use it as a resource, both in teaching and learning.  twitter and other sites like it open so many doors and possibilities to both teachers and learners that not using it in some shape or form would be letting this resource go to waste.