I have been using Facebook for a while now and have finally become familiar with all it has to offer. I can keep in touch with family and friends through instant messaging, photographs and live feeds. It is amazing the numder of “old” contacts I was able to find using this site.
As Dr. Dave introduced us to Twitter, I thought to myself, OH, NO–not another social network! As I got into the site, I found it to be somewhat similiar to Facebook. It allows you to post a “status”. That is, what you are doing or something that is on your mind. I viewed the links posted on our class syllabus, I found a couple of ideas for using Twitter in the classroom. As a first grade teacher, I am always trying to find applications! An eighth grade teacher used twitter to begin a collaborative story. Each participant visted the site and added a sentence to the story. This became very popular, and children from all over the world began adding to the story. I could easily do this with my students. Other teachers used Twitter to review lessons and for parent communiation.
Since I am already aware of Facebook and know how to manuveur around the site, it is doubtful that I would use Twitter in my classroom. I feel facebook offers so much more that I could do with my students–upload photos to build community and connect home and school, find friends, instant messaging which would allow me to monitor and provide individual feedback to each student. With its’ overwhelming popularity, I am sure many of my students are aware of Facebook. Using Facebook at the beginning of the year would allow students to get to know me personally by viewing my family photos andImy status entries. I would like to encourage them to become members so that i could get to know them too!
