Sunday, July 18, 2010

I have tweeted. I am glad that I said 'never say never' in the last post. What I found helpful was the possibility of forming discussions and reflections and receiving and passing on information through twitter. I did not understand the environment well enough appreciate it as a tool. Like many, my only exposure to twitter has been through the reign of silliness imposed on us through celebrities. I concede that it can be used in positive and productive ways. It remains to be seen how I will use this technology but I am definitely more open than before the class. I also want to offer a thumbs up on the class discussion we did. Although it had a few glitches, I found it useful and engaging. I do not think we should do that too often but it is a great way to have certain discussions. I also appreciated the 'webinar' although I imagine it could work better technically. But I found hearing and sort of seeing our technology practitioners was more illuminating than reading them. It is not that what they wrote wasn't presented well, but I think I have a 'slight' bias against trendy things and their presentation assured me of their expertise and sincerity. They definitely had their students' learning as their goal.

3 comments:

  1. I agree with the positive comments on the discussion we had. I think it went well too.

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  2. You make an excellent point. Twitter does get a very bad reputation due to the mostly inane information that floods it's steams. In the proper hands, and in the proper situations, there is defiantly strong potential to be found in it's ability to connect people and ideas from across the world.

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  3. I thought the point made be Kirstin that Twitter could be helpful for making professional connections and sharing resources among those who are the only teachers of subjects within their school was a valid one. Personally, I don't think I'll be using Twitter in my private life. But I see that it could be useful for building my PLN.

    I have very serious issues, though, with using it during class to carry on side conversations. It seems to me that we should be teaching our students how to FOCUS on the topic at hand, not tweeting about stuff. I realize that there may be some learning going on in the side conversations. But having multiple learning avenues going on at the same time could result in students missing essential learnings from one of the other avenues.

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