As an avid Packer fan, I know that certain players tend to say the dumbest things on Twitter, which get them in trouble. One fine example of this is, Nick Barnett. His most recent blunder is a comment made about a former Packer, let's call him, Brent. The comment was in reference to "Brent's" possible surgery on his ankle and Nick's desire to have Brent come back for redemption.
Having Twitter will benefit my unhealthy obsession with the Green Bay Packers become an addiction as I now am a follower of Nick Barnett, Aaron Rodgers, and the newest addition Brian Bugala.
On another personal note, my family has, on numerous occasions, mentioned to me that I tend not to communicate a frequent basis with them. Maybe Twitter can help.
As far as school is concerned, I know Twitter could help with communication between staff and the community as far as event schedules, conferences, weather delay info, etc... Students could benefit from reading the thoughts of their teachers during the year, and maybe develop a closer relationship (school appropriate of course).
How might Twitter be used in education?
In the Twenty-Nine Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in Education, I found the polling site, http://twtpoll.com/ to be the most helpful. Since I teach a self-contained math class, the number of students are not large enough to create a personal survey. With a Twitter poll, my students can create their own survey/poll and the whole school can take the survey. The benefits could go further than just the math skills they would develop by having to graph the results and analyze them. Thinking of good polling questions, and seeing the affect they can have on their school is not a daily occurrence in special education.
New Tools and Use in our School...
I looked at social networking (www.dailymile.com), GoogleEarth, and the use of surveys.
Social Networking (dailymile.com)
I liked this site the moment Sarah E. started to describe it. Students and coaches can track what their athletes are doing during the weeks of summer and can track their progress during the season. They have the ability to motivate, challenge, set goals, and suggest training tips or workouts.
As a distance track coach it would be great for me personally and as a coach. This site can help me monitor their efforts and mine. Sometimes I tend to tell my athletes to do as I say and not as I do. Now with this site, they can keep me honest to my goals.
GoogleEarth
I love geography, and enjoy GoogleEarth. Before viewing the wiki on this site, I knew GoogleEarth was a neat site, but I didn't know all of the features it can do. I can create my own virtual tour of different nations, continents, regions, cities... In fact GoogleEarth will become part of my unit project.
Surveys/Polls
I had mentioned earlier that Twitter can allow my students to create surveys for the whole school to take. Surveys can also benefit me as a special education teacher. I have around 20 students on my caseload, and they have a wide variety of teachers that I cannot stay in contact with. A beginning and end of the year survey can help me to understand what I need to change in order to be an effective case-manager. Doing these surveys online can keep the comments anonymous and quicker to complete rather than the paper and pen version.
If you get all your relatives to follow you on Twitter, you'll need to do more than retweet things about the Green Bay Packers ;-)
ReplyDeleteI'm happy you enjoy the dailymile website. I enjoy it a lot as well. I've been busy with school and track lately and I actually feel guilty that I haven't been posting/working out. I even showed it to my mom who can't manage to use a cell phone much less a social networking site but she is learning slowly as well.
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