Twitter in the classroom

Twitter should not be intimidating to educators or administers.  We need to demonstrate to our students the same curiosity and enthusiasm we expect from them when teaching a new material.  The life- longer learner is not something that can be taught in a lesson, it has to be modeled and embraced.  In the Langwitches blog, they discuss how educators wanted to embrace this new technology but where hesitant to make that initial step.  In the world that we live in today, we cannot write off new technology as a fad- we need to at least dip our feet in the pond.  By testing the waters we can discover as community, the true value of new technology- remember you are not alone!

Moving on, one really great idea that I found about using twitter was interacting with characters of a novel, on twitter.  In Hanniewelch's blog, blog-o-licious she goes in depth about her experience of using twitter in her methods class to design a lesson.  While the students were reading a novel- Harry Potter and the Socerer's stone, they would be able to tweet to characters from the novel.  She added that the lesson could be even better if they used twitter as a reading log- by having their tweets linked to a discussion.  Even if the students were not that excited to read the book, they could become more excited about the material if they were able to interact with the characters, so that the characters become more relevant in their lives.  Take the plunge- look or tweet Lord Voldemort7 at @Lord_Voldemort7 !


Look to see if other characters are on twitter- maybe first just show your students their page.  After a while, go for it! Lurk, tweet, hashtag, twitpic do it all! 

Using Ning as a Filter for the Best New Ideas

Ning is something that you might not be familiar with, that ok, I wasn't either until just recently.  Ning can be compared to a social network, but it is directed for a certain group of people (ie teachers).  One Ning site that I visited recently I found very useful because of its relevance of topics being discussed.  This site is called Teacher 2.0, where teachers from all realms are free to blog about varied topics relating to teaching.  As Professor Alan Levine stated in his video of New Media Consortium, we cannot keep up with technology (although we have to try our best).  We need different tools to help us find the most important and useful technology that we can incorporate in the classroom. Teacher 2.0 is another way to keep up with the new tools that are being offered.