Jul
13
Twitter for Education
Filed Under Blog Posts, Technology Class Assignments
Since our last class, I have been following several people with education related focuses on twitter. I had a twitter account set up about a month ago (for work purposes) so there are a couple people that I have been following longer. Here’s who I’ve been following:
CollegiateRVA
ScienceMusofVA
urichmond
WorldEd
preschoolers
DEN
NytEducation
stewardschool
HenricoSchools
LitPartNYC
LiteracySpeaks
Lemons4Literacy
ReadingHorizons
FirstBook
teachermagazine
By and large, I think that twitter is more of a marketing tool than a way to get really great ideas about teaching. Maybe I’m following the wrong people? The tweets I enjoyed reading most were links to articles, mostly posted by the literacy related twitter-ers. I think in that aspect, it could be a valuable resource. However, it seems like most of them are just linking to things that are out there on other major sites. For me, I think that Google Reader is a more valuable resource and is much easier for me to navigate.
Professionally, I use twitter for work. We use it as as marketing tool but also try to post things that are helpful for parents. Most of our followers are media contacts or vendors. For us, this seems to be helpful in terms of getting our name, services, and community events out but I’m not really sure. I didn’t engage any of the educational focused twitter-ers since most of them are large non-profits rather than actual teachers.
After seeing the TweetDeck in class, I did set that up. It definitely made following multiple people much easier. I suggest it to anyone that’s following more than just a couple people. It makes putting out your own tweets easier too…very user friendly.
Overall, since the most value I got from following people was linking to articles I’m not sure what the benefit of twitter is over a variety of other sources for information. Following people on twitter also makes me feel a little bit like a creepy voyeur…it gets a little bit addictive too. But if it turns out to be a really valuable resource for information I wouldn’t have found otherwise, I’ll eat my words.
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