Twitter...

I have to admit I was not as into Twitter as I was with the other tools and resources that we learned to use over the past eight weeks.  I had added sites such as US News Education, Teachers Net, the Library of Congress, Borders, and TIME to follow at the beginning, but within the last couple of weeks I had also added the suggested pages such as Badger Link, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, and Wisconsin State Superintendent of Education Tony Evers.  I also followed two educators who were in the areas of educational resources and engaging students in the classroom and collaboration.  These people were useful to follow, because they all were related in one way or another to education.  I was able to keep up-to-date on current events on education, along with taking a look at lesson plans and other educators’ opinions on topics.

·         State Superintendent Tony Evers includes a link on his tweet about Diane Ravitch.  Ravitch is a great resource in the field of education.  I read her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System (2010) last semester.

·         Badger Link provides access to online resources.

·         Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction à  I have added a few links related to Social Studies topics and Personal Financial Literacy, which I have taken training to teach within my social studies classes next fall.

·         Diane Ravitch has also been mentioned in tweets on the Teachers Net links.

·         The Library of Congress page has been something I have been following for the past month and a half, because of a workshop I am taking through my district.  I never knew how great this webpage is!  There is so much information included on the site, and I cannot wait to share this information with my students!

I have also followed my classmates, professor, and the Today Show!  The Today Show gives daily news as if you were watching the show!

Reflection on my Personal Learning Network (PLN)!

Throughout the course of Technologies for Collaboration and Learning my personal learning network (PLN) has greatly increased over the last eight weeks.  I have come to learn many new technology tools that I can use within my classroom with my students and with other teachers within my school district.

·         Voice Thread-I found this to be a very handy discussion tool.  I have participated in many online discussions throughout my college years, but to be able to actually record and listen to others’ comments makes the discussions much more interesting.  I find it easier to say my comments rather than type everything out.  Just like when I am responding to emails at school I find it much more personable and handy to just pick up the phone and make a phone call rather than type a conversation.  This would be a tool that I will use in the future in discussion purposes.

·         Blogger-I have never blogged before taking this course.  I have found it to be a great tool to use for discussion purposes.  I could see myself using blogging as a communication tool with parents in my classroom.  It would be great to post a weekly blog to let parents know what is taking place within the classroom.  Parents could also respond with questions or comments they may have at any given time.

·         Wiki-This is another great tool to use for discussion, but also for posting documents to share with others.  I could see using this tool at school, but there is one area that I am not too sure on.  This area is that pages are not locked and others can make changes to the pages that are posted.  Working with fifth graders this may be a problem.  If they are not sure what they are doing or if they accidently delete something than someone’s hard work is all gone!

·         Del.icio.us (Social Bookmarking)-I have found this bookmarking tool to be very handy.  Just last semester I was bookmarking many websites that related to my research papers and class discussions.  I would bookmark these sites on my laptop, along with e-mailing these sites to myself if I needed them at school.  By using del.icio.us I can add it to one place and access this anywhere I am able to connect to the internet.  This would be a nice tool to use with my students when working on a research project by setting up a del.icio.us page.  I would set it by adding a few sites for students to use, and as they found related sites they could bookmark them for classmates to also use for their research.

·         Google Docs-I was very surprised with this tool!  It was great to be able to work on a group project without being in the same room as your group members (because everyone is so busy now days).  There were many areas that could be used in this program such as documents, surveys, spreadsheets, and presentations.  I could definitely see myself using this within my classroom.  Students could sit at their own computers and work on a given project with others in the class.  If they needed more time they could also work from home!

·         Google Page-I have found this as a great tool that organizes all of my web pages that I use on a daily or weekly basis.  Students could set up their own pages with easy to access sites used in the classroom.

·         RSS Feeds-I have always seen the icon on my computer, but I never had set up any RSS feeds.  I found these very interesting.  I set up my blogs into my RSS feeds, and it was very easy to access classmates’ blogs when reading and responding to other blogs.  Students could add these to their own Google pages.

·         Web 2.0 Tools-There were many Web 2.0 tools that were introduced to me throughout the course.  I researched timelines tools, which would be great to use while teaching social studies.  Concept mapping tools would be great in so many subject areas to help students organize their notes and research.  I also found the online story telling tools (creating a short video) and creating a website neat to use.  There are many areas of the tools that I can use with my students in the future.  These could be incorporated into so many subject areas!

·         Flickr-I did not work with this tool much during this course, but it does look very interesting.  I could upload my photos, manage the photos, and share with others.

·         Online Conferencing (WebEx)/Scheduling (Doodle)-I found the online conference and online scheduling to be very easy to use.  I could see myself using these tools when meeting with parents.  My parent/teacher conference schedule could be used within Doodle to give parents a chance to sign up for a time that works the best for them.  In the case a parent was unable to meet in person for conferences I could set up an online conference.

Even though there were many tools that I would use with my students within my classroom there were also a tool that I found interesting, but I could not find myself using this tool on a daily basis in the future.

·         Twitter-I cannot see myself using this tool in the future.  I did find it interesting to follow others in related topics of interest to me.  But I am not a person who comments on what I am doing at various times throughout the day.  I may use this tool to find information on related topics, but I will not use it for other purposes.

I have learned how to use many tools and programs that I can use in my personal learning network (PLN).  I have explained above in each area how I will use each of these in the future, along with using them in the classroom and with my students.  I understand some areas may be more difficult to use in the classroom, because of the internet safety and district policies.  I will check these policies before using specific tools and programs.  I now have many more tools to use in my classroom (more than I could have imagined learning in such a short time)!  I will continue to build my PLN by adding new tools and programs as I come across them.  I am excited to learn more about the CyberSmart tool bar that I have added to my computer.  There are so many new tools that I have yet to explore!

Twitter and Web 2.0 Tools!

I believe that by using Twitter within the classroom it could be both a benefit to me and to my students.  It could personally benefit me in the way that I could type in key words related to a class project or activity.  I could find someone on Twitter that specializes in that particular area that I am looking to incorporate into my lessons.  This person could have ideas out there that they have posted comments on or ideas related to a certain event.  For example, I love history (especially American history)!  I could find a historian that tweets and find out some wonderful information that I could incorporate into my social studies lessons.  My students could use Twitter to help them find information on a certain topic, along with keeping in touch with classmates about homework assignments or questions.  It could also be used as an after school communication tool between parents and teachers.  If parents had homework questions after school they could tweet the teacher for a quick and easy response.  E-mail works the same way, but to me a tweet seems to be a quicker response (especially if it is connected to a cell phone that sends an automatic response).

Twitter and other microblogging tools could be used in many areas of education within the classroom.  While viewing the slide presentation “31 Interesting Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom” many ideas came to me on how I could personally incorporate Twitter into my lessons.  One way students could use Twitter within the classroom would be to research various areas of their curriculum.  I thought it would be interesting to follow an author or a historian.  These were ideas suggested within the presentation.  Students could also bookmark links to share with other classmates on what they have found while researching.  I thought it would be neat for students to follow another student their age in another country.  This could be used as a pen pal.  They could be learning at the same time about their pen pal’s home town and country.  I also found it very interesting that there were games that were mentioned on the presentation about Twitter.  There seems to be endless ways that students can use Twitter with education tied into it.  I always thought Twitter was just another instant messaging tool, but I have learned that there is much more to it than I originally thought!

I looked at the web 2.0 tool pages that were created by my classmates.  The following three areas were tools that I believe I could use within my own classroom lessons.

1)      Concept Mapping - I believe that students could use concept mapping in many subject areas.  It is an outline format that can be used to organize a set of notes, reading, or research materials.  I have heard of Inspiration in the past, but have actually never used it myself.  I am excited to use this area of tools within a research project with my students.  They could use the concept mapping as an outline to neatly organize their notes, along with creatively thinking how to organize these notes.

2)      Quizzes and Polling - I have used quizzes and polling such as Survey Monkey in the past to take quick surveys online.  I did not think of using it within my own classroom, but after reading about the uses of the tool I believe I could incorporate it into a classroom lesson.  I could use it in a couple of different ways through assessments and surveys.  I could quiz my students on a lesson through basic questions, along with surveying my students on how they believe a certain lesson or activity went in class.  I had not thought of using this before, but now I am thinking of incorporating this into my unit plan as an assessment strategy.

3)      Google Sites & Weebly - I could see myself using Google Sites& Weebly within my classroom.  In the near future I would like to set up a classroom website.  I could list class assignments on this site, daily notes, and resources the students could use for extra help.  I am not sure I would use it with individual students, but a class website would be a nice tool to have within the classroom.

Source Cited            Creative Commons.  (n.d.).  31 Interesting Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom.  Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dhn2vcv5_118cfb8msf8.