Journal #2

Ferguson, H. (2010). Join the flock. Learning and Leading with Technology, 37(8), 12-15. Retrieved from http://www.learningandleading digital.com/learning_leading/20100607?pg=14&pm=2&fs=1#pg14

McClintock, S. (2010). Enhance Your Twitter Experience. Learning and Leading with Technology, 37(8), 14-17. Retrieved from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/20100607?pg=16&pm=2&fs=1#pg16

Both of the articles titled Join the Flock by Hadley Ferguson and Enhance Your Twitter Experience by Shannon McClintock are about the educational function of the popular social network Twitter. Ferguson details the positive aspects of being a Twitter member such as discovering interesting educators that post useful links and ideas and finding them through lists made by those she follows. In addition to listing the perks of Tweeting, she defines Twitter terminology at the end of her article such as twittersphere, mistweet and twaffic. McClintock talks about Twitter organizers like hootsuite and tweetdeck to allow easy sharing. She also talks about the function of a bookmarklet. Both of these women demonstrate the evolution of social technology from a fun tool toward the realm of education. I can now see the merit in something that I used to think was used just for fun. 

Question 1:

As a teacher, how could I make sure to incorporate the educational aspect of Twitter as opposed to the purely social aspect?

Twitter users can choose to make lists and hash tags can be used to send messages to a specific group of people. Since I will be teaching younger children, Twitter might be controversial to use in the classroom. However, I think this tool would be useful for older kids and if I were to use it, I could require a school only twitter account.

Question 2: How could I utilize a bookmarklet in my class?

I could use a bookmarklet to quickly post interesting and educational links to my specific class twitter. The url of the webpage would go directly into a tweet so it would be easy to share any website with my entire class.