Thing 9 - Twitter...

This is not my first look at Twitter, but it is my first time using it for professional reasons.  A few years ago I was coaxed into how great Twitter was for all the instantaneous news & updates at your fingertips.  At first I thought Twitter was pretty cool.   I signed up for a personal Twitter account in the past to monitor sports for the most part.   I was following all my favorite teams, athletes, and other sports related outlets.  I found it to be 'crazy' that if I spent more than a few minutes on Twitter that one of the people I was following would tweet something about a game.  Don't get me wrong I like that I had instant scores, highlights, and follower's opinions, but at the same time I felt sucked in to social media, just like Facebook & Instagram, and was missing out on the face-to-face interactions with my family.  So, I cut back on Twitter because of the 'time suck' it could be.

Now for this course, I was unsure of what I could gain from a professional Twitter account.  I think that it has been nice to spend just a few minutes a day to check out a few education articles & links a day.  I don't know that I can make the time to check out this Twitter account daily during the school year, but I can see myself checking in on it every so often.  For this account I have been following educational sites and educators such as Discovery Ed., Google For Education, Carol Ann Tomlinson, Grant Wiggins.  I have also added local news outlets like ABC, NBC, CBS, Chicago Tribune, and more.  I like reading some of the articles that these outlets have posted instead of picking up the newspaper.
  
One Twitter chat that I joined was #caringclassroom.  It 'meets' on Monday nights at 9:00.  The chat that I was part was facilitated by T Dolezsar-Glarvin.  She is from Canada, and runs the website caringclassroom.com  The chat was great!  It was about 20 or educators sharing about how they connect and reach out to their students.  The biggest (and yet fun) challenge in sharing with other educators was being limited to only 140 characters to share my thoughts.  Over the course of the hour long chat I gained a few followers, and also followed a few people who were on the chat.  Overall the chat was a great way to share ideas with strangers on how to reach out and connect with our students. Though I don't necessarily see myself as having time to become a regular in Twitter chats, I'm glad that this course has given the opportunity to participate in them.