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.

The Final Frontier

With the growing availability of technology that is available to today's society it has become incredibly important that today's teachers and schools are willing to substitute their old traditional beliefs on teaching and increase their willingness to utilize these new technologies in their classrooms and teaching styles.

All About Me

My name is Krysta Kelly and I am a sophomore at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. I am a Secondary Education Social Studies major. I originally started out as Business major and then switched to History, and then to Secondary Education Social Studies. 

I believe that technology has many pros and cons when it comes to utilizing it when learning. One of the cons is that it has the ability to make some students lazy, for instance if the instructor posts their lecture notes online for the students, many students will risk becoming lazy because they feel they do not have to listen and take notes in class because they will be posted later. Another con is that because information from the classes can be posted online many students may not even attend class except for tests if attendance is not mandatory. 
Technology in learning does have some benefits and pros because the use of technology, like smart boards, laptops, and online systems like D2L, provide students, like myself, ways to further pursue the information taught in the classroom outside of it.

Teaching with technology I feel has many benefits today because the use of technology that is avaliable is giving educators new methods and ways to teach a subject and to make learning more enjoyable for their students. It also opens up more possibilities for potential assignments. People today, especially young people, are becoming more and more technology forward and technology has become a massive part of many people's everyday lives, so I feel that for education instiutions not to utilize something that has become so important to today's world would do more harm than not using technology in today's education system.